by Guy Stagg
Most accounts of medieval religion give the impression that, wherever you find a pious cult preaching devout simplicity, a chain of influence leads back to Gnostic Christianity. According to my host, this accusation was simply an excuse for persecution, used first by the Byzantine Empire, and then by the crusading forces of the Catholic Church.
‘Is like Iraq!’ (Here Damjan slapped the table.) ‘The Americans want a war, so they make up reason for invasion.’ (Here he smacked his lips.) ‘Before Iraq, there are no terrorists.’ (He slapped and slapped.) ‘But after Iraq, everyone terrorist.’ (He smacked and smacked.) ‘Read the history. Is certain.’
The most infamous of all medieval heretics were the Cathars, who emerged midway through the twelfth century in the region ruled by the counts of Toulouse. Preaching a familiar mix of the popular and the puritanical, they soon rivalled the local Catholic Church. In response, Innocent III called a crusade – the first ever against a Christian country – and in the spring of 1209 a band of noblemen from northern France marched their armies south to conquer the heretic city of Albi and the dissenting towns of the Languedoc. There they uncovered widespread rejection of the clergy and sacraments, as well as sectarians who refused to swear oaths or abide by the law, and deviants who took part in orgies and infanticide.
It was the Bogomil Church reborn, carried west in the wake of the crusades!
Recent scholarship has cast doubt on all of this. Fasting and intensive prayer were common devotions in the High Middle Ages, and it would have been easy to recast regional customs as profane rites, thus gaining papal sanction for a violent power grab. The King of France was keen to assert his authority over the counts of Toulouse, and looking at the range of names given to the heretics, you can glimpse the paranoia that inspired his campaign. Although widely known as Albigensians, the heretics were also called Bougres – the French for Bulgars and the root of the English word ‘buggers’ – Poplicani – a mangling of the name Paulician – and Manichaeans. In the nineteenth century this deviant reputation was seemingly confirmed when historians settled on the term Cathars, from katharos, the Greek for pure – a word originally used to describe the ascetics of the Early Church.
When I mentioned the Cathars, Damjan started shouting. ‘Bogomils the same!’ Smack. ‘The Greeks invent the heretics to make excuse for empire.’ Smack, smack. ‘Then they burn anyone who tries to start rebellion.’ Thump. ‘Is certain.’
Well, it was certainly possible. And, as we sat in the kitchen together, it was not hard to believe. Outside, the moon bathed the grove in a fragile light, blue and green and sometimes silver. I watched shadows seeping through the plasterboard walls and Damjan’s face becoming drawn, as if he had aged half a century while we spoke. I was no longer confused by his cartoon expressions, but enchanted, for it seemed he was not telling me the history of the High Middle Ages, but a piece of folklore handed down through the generations: the story of a few believers who held onto their faith despite doubts, despite fears, despite wild cries of condemnation. Who lived brave and lonely before the world.
And perhaps he was. Because an almost identical argument was first put forward a century ago, and printed in the most unlikely place.
The eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica is the collector’s favourite, a grand summary of global knowledge published just before the First World War. It contained, for the first time, an entry on Anarchism. If you ever have all twenty-nine volumes to hand, flick to the end of the first book and you will find the article between Anapaest and Anastasius. Its author tracks the theory’s origins to the Greek philosopher Zeno, the sixteenth-century poet Bishop Veda, and to ‘several early Christian movements beginning with the ninth century in Armenia’.
Which movements? The author does not say, nor does he give any evidence for this astonishing claim. However, it’s possible to work it out.
Run your finger down to the article’s last paragraphs and you will see the term Christian anarchism introduced, with Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You given as the guiding text. Find a copy of Tolstoy’s book and turn to the opening chapter, where he discusses the work of a Bohemian revolutionary called Petr Chelčický, who believed the Gospels commanded pacifism and the renunciation of political power. This is the line to look out for: ‘Chelčický taught what has been taught until the present by the Memnonites and Quakers, and what in former years was taught by the Bogomils, Paulicians and many others.’ Here, surely, is the source of the encyclopedia’s unlikely taxonomy. The early Christian movements that inspired anarchism were the Paulicians and the Bogomils. But, Tolstoy argued, this interpretation of the Bible is likely to be met with persecution. ‘All such books, which are called heretical, have been burnt together with their authors.’
Tolstoy was convinced that real Christianity meant political radicalism. Funnily enough, the Bogomils thought the same. Cosmas’s sermon noted how the heretics claimed to be true believers. However, by the standards of the Orthodox hierarchy they were anarchists. They teach their people not to submit to the rulers, his sermon warned. They blaspheme the wealthy, hate the king, ridicule the elders, reproach the nobles . . .
The eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica was published in 1910, the year that Tolstoy died. This particular article became one of its most widely read entries, reprinted in books and pamphlets for half a century. The author was even described as the ‘father of modern anarchism’. Like Tolstoy, he was a Russian aristocrat who gave up his wealth to live by radical principles. Unlike Tolstoy, he was exiled from Russia and spent his life wandering Europe, even serving a short spell in Clairvaux Prison. His name, of course, was Prince Peter Kropotkin.
A gun tower painted like a Greek flag guarded the border near Bitola. I crossed over at midday on 2 May. I was worn out from racing through Macedonia, and reaching Greece brought no sense of achievement. But that Sunday was Easter again. Time for a break.
When I reached Florina, the first town after the border, I took a bus south and spent the weekend with a university friend and her family. When the weekend ended, I caught another bus back to Florina, intending to rejoin the Via Egnatia. However, midway up Thessaly we passed the Pindus Mountains, and, remembering my promise to Anna, I stopped to visit Meteora.
It was a deranged landscape, where the lip of a plateau had splintered into a canyon of stone pillars. Sometimes they were smooth, sometimes wrinkled, and sometimes scarred with black gullies, or streaked with granite bands, or pitted with sandstone caves like the howling sockets of a skull. The first hermits came here in the eleventh century, climbing the pillars to live as stylites at the top. Over the next five hundred years they built a chain of monasteries on the stacks. However, from the sixteenth century their numbers declined and now only six foundations remained, with a tiny staff of monks and nuns.
I arrived on Tuesday morning and tramped up through the canyon. The heat was thick and the air stuffy. All weekend I had been feeling unwell, and the higher I climbed the more feverish my symptoms – face hot and throat gagging. I only made it to one monastery: a Byzantine fort perched on a monolith of golden-grey conglomerate. From below it looked as delicate as honeycomb, but within the corridors were close and the courtyards cramped. And each room was packed with people, with hundreds and hundreds of pilgrims.
Otherwise I remember little of Meteora, except for the ranks of coaches crammed with tourists and the school trips crowding the footpaths. And the hermit caves teeming with climbers. And the canyon forest foaming like a jungle canopy.
That evening I stayed at a campsite in the village of Kastraki. From midnight until dawn I threw up every half-hour, until my stomach was empty and I dry-heaved onto the grass. Then I lay in my tent, too weak to leave.
The day was warm, the weather humid, and by mid-morning the tent’s fabric had turned fluorescent in the sun, the putty odour of new plastic mixing with the fetid tang of half-digested food. Lying there, I knew my journey was becoming drudgery, yet I remained
anxious about falling behind, twitching and trembling with impatience. I was convinced that I should never have left the route, never have come to this pilgrim playground, and I decided that, if I wanted to get better, I must start walking again. Not take the bus back to Florina, but hike out of here at once. By heading east across the Olympus National Park and north up the Aegean coast, I could rejoin the Via Egnatia at Thessaloniki. This would add a hundred kilometres to the distance, but I told myself it was penance. It would cure me.
Later that afternoon the heat became close, smothering. Eventually the sky clouded over and rain fell. Each raindrop made a puncturing noise as it landed on the tent, and all evening the valley was loud with thunder.
Next morning I packed away my sodden kit and marched into the hill country of central Thessaly.
I threw up again as I climbed out of the valley, but after a few kilometres my stomach settled. Rising higher, I noticed thistles growing tattered by the roadside and rainclouds gathering on the horizon. I walked. Kept walking. Pushed on. Once more. Well done.
But I was not better. The following afternoon I arrived at the village of Krania, on the northern edge of Thessaly. The weather was damp, so I went into the church for shelter. Rain pattered on the windows and plashed against the roof, while a priest recited prayers in the choir. When he was finished, I asked if there was anywhere I could stay. He did not answer; instead he took my arm and walked me to the cafe opposite the church, pointing at the drunkest man in the room. The drunkest man in the room stood to shake my hand, but collapsed before he reached me. By the time I had helped him back into his seat, the priest was gone.
My new companion spoke a little English. As I explained why I was here, he slurred something about a spare room, gesturing for me to sit and muttering the phrase: ‘You are welcome.’ On his table there were two bottles of wine, one bottle of ouzo, a jug of water, a jug of ice, a plate of half-eaten pastries, an ashtray full of cigarette ends, three or four shredded napkins, and ten or twelve empty glasses.
I pulled up a chair.
The man was called Christos. He had skinny arms and a perfect pot belly. His face was knotted, each expression formed from a twist in the mouth. Another man sat opposite him, stubbing out cigarettes in the leftover food. This man was slimmer, the tissue pulled tight across the skull. His name was Kyriakos.
‘Today is special day,’ said Christos, motioning towards his friend. ‘Today is birthday.’
I wished Kyriakos a happy birthday, but Christos shook his head.
‘Understand,’ he went on, ‘Kyriakos have three sons. One policeman, one lawyerman and one dead in a car crash. Today his son is twenty-one, but he is dead!’
When I realized what he was saying – that the two men were drinking in commemoration – I apologized and tried to leave. However, when I stood from the table, Christos gripped my wrist. His eyes were blank and blazing, his breath aniseed bitter. ‘You are welcome,’ he said again, tightening his grip. Then Kyriakos began to sing, swinging his elbow to keep time.
Standing there, I tried to imagine drinking away the evening with these two. It was the kind of traveller’s tale I had hoped for in Greece, but now it seemed wretched. Yet the weather outside was no better and I still needed a bed for the night, so I sat once more.
Kyriakos wore rimless glasses, the lenses smudged with prints from his fingers. He was a maths teacher and had spent two decades working in German primary schools. That was the language in which he spoke to me, mixed with the odd word of Italian. ‘Dresden, München, Stuttgart,’ he repeated, ‘piccolos, piccolos.’
Christos had been a sailor. For thirty years he sailed container ships down the western coast of Africa, across the Indian Ocean, to Singapore and Shenzhen, to Jakarta and Shanghai, and Mother of God how he missed the sea. He was also a communist and believed every man had a right to a job, a house, a car— At this point Kyriakos interrupted to order more wine, offering me a glass. I told him that I had been ill, but Kyriakos insisted the wine would help. I explained that I did not drink, so he nodded and called for ouzo.
There was a mobile phone in the middle of the table. Each time it rang, Christos covered the handset with his fingers. ‘Nobody home!’ he told me the first time. ‘Joke telephone!’ he said the second. By the fifth or sixth call he was tired of the game. ‘My wife,’ Christos admitted. ‘She comes from Thailand. Says I drink too much. Never understand Greek culture.’ His mouth twisted into a sorry smile. ‘Only time I drink is because I miss the sea.’
The afternoon was draining away, and a sloppy yellow light filled the square outside, while inside the windows were steaming over. When I reminded Christos that I needed a place to stay, he returned to politics: ‘I am communist. Every man must have room to live.’ Worried that I had misunderstood his original offer, I asked again about a bed. Before he could answer, Kyriakos launched into another song. I repeated my question, but now Christos was singing too, marking the tempo with a glass of ouzo.
Part of me wanted to laugh. Part of me wanted to shout, or shake my host by the shoulders. If there were no beds in Krania, I needed to leave. Already the sky was dusky, the evening coming on. Cigarettes smouldered in the leftover pastry. Backwash bubbled in the dirty glasses. The rain pattered, clamoured.
I stood from the table.
As I lifted my rucksack, Kyriakos raised another glass of ouzo towards me. In the flurry that comes from a decision finally made, I took the drink and swallowed it. Turning, I saw an Asian woman with fragile features waiting in the doorway. Of course: Christos’s wife!
My host lurched forwards and started gurgling in her ear. He must have explained my story, because she left the cafe and moments later returned with a key. Then she led me across the square into an apartment building opposite. It was so sudden, so unexpected, that I never even thanked her. Nor did I thank the two men who rescued me from the rain, or apologize for ever doubting them.
The flat had white walls, white furniture, and bedsheets of crimped white cotton. Its windows faced the square, and, unpacking my rucksack, I glanced up to see Christos leaving the cafe. His arm was draped along his wife’s shoulder, neck hanging back, mouth open wide. He looked like he was trying to taste the rain, or rinse the tears from his eyes.
I had no map of the Olympus Range and found my way using a compass. Whenever I came to a hilltop, I would take a bearing off the crushed cone of Mt Olympus, but then drop into another valley and zig and zag off course again. The mornings were wild with birdsong, but the afternoons felt heavy and still, and the canopy thickened overhead until it seemed I was sinking below ground. Clouds of flies hovered around my face, catching in my nose and mouth, while the path disappeared beneath the swollen foliage.
All weekend I walked with my eyes to the floor, trying to remember a few phrases of Greek, though there was nobody to ask for directions. In fact, the whole area had an atmosphere of sudden desertion. On my first afternoon the tracks were covered in cowpats, yellow butterflies dithering over the fresh faeces. An animal smell ripened the air, but the cows had all disappeared. That evening, as I descended into a seething green valley, I heard the echo and clang of goatbells. I stared through the thickening darkness, yet I saw no goats, nor sheep, nor shepherds hurrying home for the night.
Crossing the range, I started making lists again: ancient philosophers, Attic tragedies, and every member of the Classical pantheon. But I was too agitated to remember much, my thoughts flustered with frustration.
I could not understand my decision to walk from Meteora. It meant I had to improvise a route and kept going astray. I felt guilty about leaving the Via Egnatia, for though I hoped to follow an unbroken chain of Roman roads and medieval trails, now my plan was disrupted. And I felt guilty about the glass of ouzo, too – my second drink of the pilgrimage. But I told myself it was a mistake, no more. It would not happen again.
Mt Olympus marked the upper edge of Thessaly, where the Pindus punched east towards the Aegean. A road wrapped round the mountai
n’s southern flank, rising through forests of pine, cresting a thousand metres, and then coiling down towards the coast. On Monday afternoon I joined its course and around teatime came to a parting in the trees, catching sight of the Aegean fifteen kilometres away. The sea shone hard as hammered bronze, tilted in the light, with the Thermaic Gulf arcing away to the north. Looking out, I imagined I could see across the gulf and glimpse the pale sprawl of a city on its farthest rim. Thessaloniki.
It took me a week to reach the city, stopping each evening at a roadside chapel. Since Meteora my confidence was shaken, so I did not seek permission from the local priests. Instead I passed fretful nights under flickering oil lamps, waking before dawn to hike off with my head bowed. Although I had given up learning about Orthodoxy, it was easier to sleep in these bedroom-sized shrines than ask around for a host. During the daytime I held long conversations with imagined figures from the past, or dreamed up fantasy versions of my future. But, when strangers called out to me, I pretended not to hear. So I never found out the names of the Bosnians who shared their lunch with me in the plantations below Olympus, before buttoning down their denim shirts to lay tobacco seeds in the midday heat. Nor the middle-aged men who bought me lemonade in the cafes near the coast, exchanging newspapers and asking over and over why Europe was punishing the Greeks. And I ignored the Arab children squatting at a junction outside Thessaloniki, who waved as I walked by and then ran into the road to swab the windscreens of the waiting cars.