by Guy Stagg
Prior to the invention of the printing press, the best way to propagate a new idea was via an itinerant preacher. For a religious idea, vagrancy was also a seal of authenticity – if not orthodoxy. When Paulician preachers showed up in Macedonia around the tenth century, they found a willing audience, and the Bogomil Church was born.
Which brings us back to Cosmas. Even though his sermon was written to warn against the heresy’s rapid expansion, Bogomilism soon spread throughout the Balkans. By the beginning of the twelfth century the heretics were established in Constantinople. Their leader was now a tall, withered figure named Basil, a former physician from Bulgaria who, according to one rumour, learnt medicine in Ohrid after being expelled from a monastery. Basil was so popular with the city’s nobility that Alexios Komnenos, the Byzantine emperor, invited him round for supper. Convinced the emperor was about to convert, Basil shared his secrets. He explained how his followers would pray seven times a day and five times a night; fast on the second, fourth and sixth days of the week; and observe bans on meat, alcohol, sex and Church sacraments.
Komnenos listened to everything that Basil told him. When the meal was over, he called the guards. Soon each one of the city’s heretics had been rounded up.
In the Alexiad, an epic account of the emperor’s reign attributed to his daughter Anna, the trial of the Bogomils occupies several chapters. Basil’s execution forms perhaps the most vivid passage in the entire chronicle. A massive bonfire was built in Constantinople’s hippodrome, its flames stretching thirty metres into the air. The heresiarch was given one final chance to repent, but instead began to rant and rave, boasting that God would reach down from the clouds and rescue him. His cloak was thrown onto the fire and flared up at once, but no, shrieked Basil, look how it floats through the sky, soaring towards heaven!
At this point the audience grew nervous. Some had visions of the cloak ascending like an angel; others were convinced that demons protected the master Bogomil. Eventually the guards lost patience:
Then they [. . .] took him and pushed him, clothes, shoes and all, into the middle of the pyre. And the flames, as if deeply enraged against him, ate the impious man up, without any odour arising or even a fresh appearance of smoke, only one thin smoky line could be seen in the midst of the flames.
I left the lakeshore, heading east up the side of Mt Galičica. Half an hour after setting off, I realized my water bottle was almost empty. Overgrown gullies sank from the road, with streams rustling along the bottom, but I was confident I would pass their sources higher up and did not climb down for a refill. Yet higher up the noise of the water became faint, until I could hear nothing except the heaving wind and the whisper of my stepcount. Five thousand five hundred and twenty-two. Five thou-sand five hundred and twenty-three.
Heretics were on my mind that morning. This was the first day of real heat, and there was something menacing about the dry air, the brindled black of the forest – it was easy to picture a starved preacher hefting round some forbidden text. As I rose through the trees, my feet became swollen and my shirt damp. Also, the water in my bottle stewed, its plastic cap hot to touch. And, when I looked up midmorning to see the crags smoking ahead of me, I immediately thought of bonfires.
Closer, I could make out domes of rubbish, heaped high and set alight. Plastic crates, fabric furnishings, scrap packaging and mounds of books – hundreds of volumes, centuries of work, their pages flaking into the air.
Smoke billowed onto the road. There was smoke in my eyes, smoke in my mouth, and the smoky fumes were greased with heat. I opened the water bottle, tipped it back, gulped once, twice, and the whole lot was gone.
After that the road veered between dense forest and overgrown heathland. The air was warm, and I walked fast, hoping for a house where I could ask for water. Nine thousand four hundred and seventy-six. My mouth was dry, my tongue thick. Nine thousand four hundred and seventy-seven. Points of pain edged my skull. Nine thousand four hundred and seventy-eight.
Nine thousand four hundred –
Nine thousand –
I gave up the count.
Twenty-three kilometres from Ohrid, at the highest point of the road, there was a clearing. A log cabin stood in the middle, the windows boarded up and the walls swarmed with graffiti. Behind, I could see a brick outhouse with its door ajar. Holding my breath, I ducked through the doorway. Shit was smeared on the walls and floor, like markings for some strange ritual. Flies screamed above the toilet bowl, but I found no sink, no tap, nor any sign of running water.
Beyond the clearing the road sank through slopes of alder, oak and ash, descending into the Prespa Valley. This was a basin midway between Mt Galičica and Mt Baba, a checkwork of low hills and terraced orchards, tipping south towards Lake Prespa. Surely I would find a drink soon.
Thirty kilometres from Ohrid I passed sluice gates and sewage pumps. Irrigation ditches divided the orchards, their channels dry but for a brackish residue resembling drool. By now my tongue was rough and the saliva sticky in my cheeks. I thought of fasts, of ascetics, of wandering holy men living off air. Surely I would find one.
Thirty-two kilometres from Ohrid I saw an orchard with rubber hoses netting the trees. One of the hoses was leaking, a clear liquid spilling from the rubber and muddying the ground. When I bent down to collect some, the warm earth crumbled like biscuit. The liquid had the same flavour as metal, as mould – the same temperature as blood. After just one mouthful I poured it away, but now my gums tasted singed.
Thirty-five kilometres from Ohrid and at last I came to a stream, a shallow trench with sides of pebble and turf. Silt clouded the water, but I filled and emptied my bottle twice over. Then I lay on my back and listened to the current giggling past. The ground seemed to sway beneath me, and the braced impatience I had felt since Ohrid relaxed. Lying beside the bank, I realized why the Bogomil Church still haunted my thoughts.
Pilgrimage had shown me what was radical about the wandering life, as on the road all tokens of status were left behind. Food and shelter were riches enough, while possessions were excess weight. This made it easy to sympathize with preachers and cults on the fringes of the faith. They resembled the penitent movements I had learnt of in Italy, without the power and pageantry of mass devotion. But perhaps my sympathy was really uncertainty. Unlike with Catholicism, I could not fake any familiarity with Orthodoxy. Instead I was drawn towards its outcasts, for they seemed to endorse my growing sense of exile.
Thirty-eight kilometres from Ohrid I stopped at a clay-coloured town called Resen. The convent of Sveta Bogorodica lay in the hills above the town. At six o’clock I reached its gates and lowered my rucksack to the ground.
The convent was set in a grassy bowl collared by woodland, its church and chapter house whitewashed halls. The cellblock was whitewashed too, with a veranda of timber beams and sculpted banisters. A pair of Alsatians were tied to the veranda, and they started barking when I let myself in, straining at their chains and scratching the earth. Although I called out, I heard nothing over the baying dogs. I knocked on the chapter house door: no response. I circled the courtyard – flowerbeds, herb gardens, and a chicken coop on a balding lawn – but nobody was home.
As I turned back towards the gates, a woman stepped from the cellblock. Black clothes hung loose off her body, and a pair of half-moon spectacles made her whole face peer.
I explained that I was walking to Jerusalem and looking for somewhere to spend the night.
The woman crossed her arms, uncrossed them. Her gaze was pained, as if trying to place some dreadful memory. ‘Only Sr Paraskeva can give you permission,’ she replied in Australian-accented English. ‘Sr Paraskeva’s away.’
I asked if I could camp on the grass outside the convent. No answer. Or was there a priest in Resen I could stay with? Again, no reply. Had the woman spent time in Australia? I wondered. No, nothing.
Thanking her, I lifted my rucksack onto my shoulders. As I moved off, she spoke once more. ‘You know, I’ve bee
n on pilgrimage. A few times I slept in parks. And a bus stop too, but that was just one night.’
‘Where was this?’
‘You know Fruška Gora? It’s in Serbia. It’s this mountain with all these monasteries. Or Asenovgrad? That’s Bulgaria. That’s mountains too, but with chapels. Or Meteora, you know Meteora? Hold on, I’ve got a picture somewhere.’ She searched her pockets, handing me a postcard of a monastery balanced on a slender stump of rock. ‘That’s Greece. That’s the Pindus. Meteora, like meteorite. Are you travelling there?’
I gave the photograph back, promising to try.
‘It’s tough when you’re travelling alone, when you haven’t got anywhere to sleep – I know it is! There’s only me here at the moment, so it’s not proper for a man to stay. But if it’s just one night, I guess you could use the guestroom.’
‘That’s very kind.’
‘Except, if someone comes to visit, someone from the village, you have to keep out of sight until they’re gone. All right?’
‘Fine.’
She held out her hand. ‘I’m Anna.’
Sveta Bogorodica was built on terraces. A brick chapel occupied the top terrace, a brand-new building with marble offcuts lying by the door, navy and white like little fragments of the night. The main church stood on the next terrace down, its piecemeal walls constructed from brick and stone, its roof tiles blotched with lichen. Inside, the ornaments were sooty and the icons masked in smokestain.
Another terrace down was the cellblock. My room was up a wooden staircase, along a wooden gallery, and through a wooden doorway at the far end. It was a modest space. Unvarnished timber floor. Unpainted plaster wall. Three mattresses piled to one side. Three rugs folded on top. Yet the effect was somehow comforting, for unlike the monumental austerity of a Cistercian monastery, the simplicity at Sveta Bogorodica seemed improvised. Maybe the nuns were also guests here, making their lives as small as possible and leaving no trace behind.
While Anna showed me round, I asked questions about her pilgrimage.
‘I didn’t have much money,’ she said. ‘That’s why I slept out. In Croatia the police took me to a hotel, said otherwise they would arrest me. There were plenty others sleeping in the park – local people, local men – but because I was foreign they thought I was rich. All I had was fifty euros – for emergencies! And I gave that away – to a homeless man! He didn’t have any money, any coat, nothing to eat. I knew that, even if I gave him all my money, I was still much richer than him. Then I went to a church to ask for some bread and you know what happened? The priest gave me a hundred euros. Like that, a hundred euros. I said: I want your address! I want to pay you back! But he said: It’s a gift. Keep it. Then I started laughing, like maybe God was playing a trick on me.’
Once I had unpacked, we sat in the kitchen. Glass jars crowded the shelves, containing vegetables preserved in oil or pickled in brine, as well as jams, jellies, marmalades and chutneys, with plastic containers of spices and pots of herbs labelled by hand. The whole collection twinkled like a bag full of marbles.
Anna made grilled-cheese sandwiches with a roast-pepper paste called ajvar. ‘It’s special cheese,’ she told me, ‘Lent cheese.’ This year Orthodox Easter fell five weeks later than the Catholic festival, which meant Anna was still fasting. No meat, no dairy, no oil, and only one meal a day. ‘We can eat soya and quorn, but the shops always run out. I tell them: Buy enough! Stock enough! Then Sr Paraskeva changes what days we fast, how many meals we have—’
‘So there’s only you and Sr Paraskeva living here?’
Anna nodded. ‘Macedonia has all these empty monasteries, and the Church wants to fill them up. Problem is: no vocations. Except for the big places, most have one monk, one nun, and plenty are empty.’
‘Is it difficult, just the pair of you?’
‘I guess we argue.’ She paused. ‘You could say I’m used to it.’ Paused again. ‘See, Paraskeva’s actually my mother.’
‘Sorry?’
It went like this: Anna’s parents were originally from Macedonia, but they emigrated when she was a child. Anna and her sister grew up in Australia, until their father died and their mother decided to become a nun. So she gave away her possessions and bought a one-way ticket home. ‘My sister was pregnant. Paraskeva left the week before the birth. My sister thought she was losing both parents, one after the other. But a nun gives up everything for God. Family, everything.’
‘Her name – what does it mean?’
‘St Paraskeva! She was a pilgrim. She ran away from home. Went all round the Balkans, went to Jerusalem, lived right next door to the River Jordan. But when she knew she was going to die, went home again. I call the nun here Paraskeva because, see, she isn’t my mum any more.’
‘Even though you came with her?’
Before Anna could answer, the dogs started barking. My host moved to the window and then ducked down with her hands to her mouth. ‘Hide!’
Out of the kitchen, up the staircase, along the veranda – crawling on hands and knees. Then into the guestroom, into the corner, flat behind the mattresses. Stay still. Try not to breathe. Listen to the cheerful shouts coming from the courtyard. Glance through the door at the middle-aged man waiting by the gate. Notice the baseball cap, the waistcoat, and the cardboard trays stacked in his arms. What’s he carrying?
I turned back, holding my breath. It was almost eight, and a lazy light clouded the convent. My shins were scraped, my elbows sore, but when I closed my eyes the pain subsided and I felt very far away – exiled from all I had known, hidden in this half-wild place. Lying there, I could smell grass and pine and the hazy scent of pollen. I could smell spring falling fresh through the air.
When I opened my eyes the sun had set and the room was gloaming over. The voices outside were quiet now, but then Anna called my name.
‘It was Kiril,’ she said as I emerged. ‘He was worried I might be lonely. I told him: Don’t worry! Don’t come here all the time! I told him, but he won’t listen.’
The trays contained about ninety eggs. Anna asked me to carry them into the kitchen. ‘I have to paint them in time for Easter – every one!’ she said, adding: ‘If you wanted to give me a hand, I guess you could stay another day.’
I did want to stay. Stay tomorrow and the rest of Holy Week. Stay long enough to see spring bursting from the hills around Resen and summer shimmering on the Prespa Lakes. To see autumn burning in the forests of Mt Galičica and winter smothering the Pelagonia Plain. I was tired of travelling and sick of being a stranger, so why not leave off walking and rest here for a while?
However, I had promised a friend I would reach Greece for the first week of May. So I thanked Anna and explained that I must push on.
A few hours later, back in the guestroom, I was woken by a noise from outside. The moon was very bright and the convent buildings luminous. My host was wandering around on the terrace below, talking to herself in broken sentences. Her voice sounded fitful against the immense silence of the valley. I watched her locking and relocking the gates, and for a moment it seemed she was trying to open them, trying desperately to escape. Then she turned away, muttering to the dogs in the mad midnight light. I wondered what calling had taken Anna from her home and what loyalty kept her here. And I wondered if she would wait out her life in this place. Who was she waiting for?
From Resen my route climbed again, circling the Baba Massif and the border with Greece. All morning I roamed among high meadows and mixed woodland, a warm breeze teasing the back of my neck. That afternoon I made my way down onto the Pelagonia Plain, approaching the city of Bitola.
It was May Day. There were hundreds of clouds in the sky. There were hundreds of fields at my feet. There were thousands of families out in the fields, picnicking in the long grass or playing games on the ochre earth. Waves of tobacco and wheat washed towards the River Crna, while the smoke from barbecues scrolled the summit of Mt Baba.
I hiked hard all afternoon, and after thirty-seven ki
lometres I reached Bitola. On the edge of the city I stopped at a grand church in a grove of fruit trees. Its caretaker, Goran, lived next door. His cottage had a bedroom, a kitchen, and a bathroom no bigger than a cupboard, with toilet, sink and shower fitted one on top of the other. Goran was child-thin, his beard too bushy for the rest of his body. Earlier that day, when giving directions to the church, Anna told me that he had wanted to be a priest ever since he was young. After seminary Goran came to Bitola to look for a wife. Ten years later he had not found one.
Although the caretaker spoke no English, his friend Damjan was here to translate. Damjan was paunchy and pug-faced, with muscle-packed shoulders and hands the size of shovelheads. He had a degree in civil engineering and a diploma in transport infrastructure, but worked as a taxi driver.
When I asked whether Goran could become a priest without a wife, Damjan bit his cheeks. ‘We are a poor country,’ he said. ‘The priest is a well-paid man. Many women want to marry the priest, but nobody marries Goran.’
‘No girlfriend?’
‘Too shy! Ten years, not one.’
Goran was fasting, so I ate with Damjan. We opened the windows and doors and sat in the kitchen, sharing plates of sausage, gherkin and bread. My companion talked for the whole meal, the chewed food falling from his mouth. At one point he tried to sell me a holiday home in the hills above Bitola, at another point he lectured me on Yugoslav nationalism, and several times he suggested I marry his niece. Although I nodded and laughed as he spoke, I struggled to read the furious glee in his features.
Then we discussed heresy, Damjan beating the table while he talked. Again, I could not say whether this was anger or delight.
In the late eleventh century Pelagonia was thick with heretics. When Bohemond, Prince of Taranto, marched his army along the Via Egnatia to join the First Crusade, he stopped off here for supplies. The Gesta Francorum, an account of the campaign written by one of his knights, records how the army laid siege to a heretic town near Bitola. Once the citizens surrendered, the whole place was set on fire – buildings, livestock and every last inhabitant. Who were these poor unfortunates? Bogomils, perhaps, although the Gesta Francorum does not say. Nor does it provide any detail about their profane practices. Of course, it’s unlikely that a crusader army could tell the difference between a community of Orthodox ascetics and a sect of Byzantine heretics. And Damjan argued that there was no connection with the dualists of the Early Church anyway.