Now and Then
Posted on Friday, September 14, 2012, under greece, hitchens, myth, politics, religion, serbia, the balkans, travel logs
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Quintus Curtius Rufus, a Roman historian (1st c. AD) wrote on Alexander the Great and his troubled, at least initially, founding of the city of Alexandria in Egypt: ‘There is a report, that after the king had completed the Macedonian custom of marking out the circular boundary for the future city-walls with barley-meal, flocks of birds flew down and fed on the barley’. Driving through the Republic of Macedonia this summer I wondered if the road builders of the recently-fledged country followed in the great man’s footsteps. Because the long stretches along the ‘Aleksandar Makedonski’ motorway are completely unmarked: no lines of any kind or colour. Have the birds gobbled up the barley?
Driving along the ‘motorway’, dotted with bumps and holes of
all shape and size, can be a pretty scary experience, especially at night, the
road being unlit save for your car’s headlights and, if lucky, moonlight. That
was on the way to Greece,
north-south direction. On the way back some nine days later, south-to-north, we
knew better and drove in broad daylight. But the persistence of bumps and holes
proved too much and eventually steered us off the main highway and onto the
local ‘E-roads’, which proved to be – surprise, surprise – in no better state.
Only when we got on the very local, virtually vehicle-less 125a, leading through
beautiful landscapes along the Pčinja river, only then did we finally open all
four windows and let in the warm summer air, scented by sundry wild flowers.
On the Macedonia-Serbian border crossing we were the only
customers. Which must be why it took ages both for the Macedonian and the
Serbian boys in blue to let us through after giving our passports some
seriously close scrutiny. The Pelince border crossing must be one of the most
romantic (if that is a suitable word for a border crossing): right in the gully, surrounded by lush forests
and so, so quiet, only birdsong and the humming of river is heard.
A ten-minute drive past the border takes you to the St Prohor
Pčinjski Orthodox monastery, it being the real clincher behind our original detour.
The monastic complex is beautifully arranged, comprised of the St Prohor Church
and the magnificent konak, the
imposing residential building, sporting a unique architectural style. The place
was abuzz with workers, busy with all sorts of repairs and adjustments – you
could see something positive was taking place. A further proof for the care and
concern for its surroundings was this wooden notice board (see if you can
figure out what all the symbols stand for). Click to enlarge.
St Prohor’s life story is a
story of a devout and a dedicated anchorite. According to the apparently
extensive and well-preserved hagiography, Prohor was born in the first half of
the 11th century, into a wealthy and educated family. One day, elated
upon hearing Matthew’s ‘He that loveth father or mother more than
me is not worthy of me’, Prohor abandoned what remaining shreds of secularity
were still fettering him, and left for the high hills, never to return. The next thirty
two years (some sources say much longer) he spent living in a small cave with the
mountain beasts, sleeping on the bare rock, feeding on wild fruits and grass,
drinking water from the mountain spring, never setting eyes on a living human soul.
Well, almost never. The legend goes that one
day a hunter hard on the heels of an injured doe, which has just found a
shelter with Prohor, comes across the old man, is immediately startled and
starts backing off. Prohor calls out to him and the two begin conversing. The
hunter turns out to be a Byzantine military aristocrat Diogenes (which Prohor
somehow already knew) and eventually Prohor prophesies Diogenes is to become the future emperor of Byzantium. Prohor also pledges Diogenes that once he becomes a king, he should duly
remember the old hermit’s prophesy.
Decades later, Romanos IV Diogenes (1068-1071)
has a dream in which the old prophet admonishes him with words: ‘Why, great
Diogenes, have you forgotten your old garb and me the old hermit? Make an
effort and build me at least a small temple where I could pray to God until my
final days’. The Emperor, frightened, immediately sets off to the north Macedonian
mountains to try and find Prohor. After many days of fruitless search, Prohor reappears
in Diogenes’ dream and tells him to go to Mount Kozjak and look for a cave
above which a white eagle soars, after which Diogenes finally finds the cave
and in it the old man’s remains, lying intact and quite unspoiled. On the spot Diogenes
builds a small church dedicated to St Luke and further down, at the Pčinja
riverbank, another, a more imposing one, where St Prohor’s relics remain to
this day. 
Incidentally, Diogenes’ own fate as an emperor
turned out to be a sort of royal martyrdom in its own right. This from
Wikipedia:
During his reign [Diogenes] was determined
to halt the decline of the Byzantine military and stop Turkish incursions into
the Byzantine Empire, but in 1071 he was captured and his army routed at the Battle
of Manzikert, lead by the Sultan Alp Arslan.
[…] According to a number of
Byzantine historians… Arslan at first had difficulty believing the dusty and
tattered warrior brought before him was the Roman Emperor. He then stepped down
from his seat and placed his foot on Romanos' neck. But after this sign of
ritual humiliation, Arslan raised Romanos from the ground, and ordered him to
be treated like a king. From then on he treated him with extreme kindness,
never saying a cruel word to him in the Emperor's eight-day stay in his camp,
and then released him in exchange for a treaty and the promise of a hefty
ransom.
[…]In the meantime, the
opposition faction scheming against Romanos IV decided to exploit the
situation. While still captive [Romanos] was overthrown in a palace coup, and
when released he was quickly defeated by the army led by one Andronikos Doukas.
Pursued by Andronikos, [Romanos IV] was eventually forced to surrender by the
garrison at Adana
upon receiving assurances of his personal safety. Before leaving the fortress,
he collected all the money he could lay his hands on and sent it to the Sultan
as proof of his good faith, along with a message: "As emperor, I promised
you a ransom of a million and a half. Dethroned, and about to become dependent
upon others, I send you all I possess as proof of my gratitude".
Andronikos stipulated that
Diogenes’ life would be spared if he resigned the purple and retired into a
monastery. Romanos agreed, and this agreement was ratified at Constantinople.
However, John Doukas reneged on the agreement, and sent men to have
Romanos cruelly blinded on June 29, 1072, before sending him into exile to Prote
in the Sea of Marmara. Without medical assistance, his wound became infected,
and he soon endured a painfully lingering death. The final insult
was given a few days before his death, when Romanos received a letter from
Michael Psellos, congratulating him on the loss of his eyes. He finally died,
praying for the forgiveness of his sins, and his wife Eudokia was permitted to
honour his remains with a magnificent funeral.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanos_IV_Diogenes
Now, all these machinations have a familiar ring
to it. Have the successive governments on the Balkan
peninsula in recent history not been their own worst enemies? Have
they not been vying for power under any excuse and at any price? Have they not
been pursuing their own fat interests instead of ensuring the prosperity of
their own citizens? Has this blatant disregard not led many Balkan countries to
an economic as well as spiritual cesspit?
As for the spirituality and the church, well,
look at Prohor’s shining example and then look at the Orthodox elite in Greece, Serbia,
Russia
today. In Russia,
the Church has acted as Putin’s bodyguard, to paraphrase Hitchens. The highly
privileged orders of Greek and Serbian monks are exempt from tax, drive expensive
cars, talk on mobiles, and bicker over property and funds. One recent example:
The
around 2,600 monks residing at the Vatopaidi monastery in Mount Athos defied
the Greek Ministry of Finance last year when it required the so-called
autonomous territory pay property taxes on its commercial property.
Mount
Athos, a 300 km2 peninsula in Greece,
is off limits to women and is exempt from paying VAT. Its mandate prohibits
“heterodox or schismatics to live on the Holy Mountain”
and states its elected Abbot “must not have been convicted of malversation of
monastic property.”
Its
chief operator, Abbot Ephraim, is charged with money laundering and
embezzlement in a land swap that saw valuable state land traded for less
valuable property held by Vatopaidi.
The
Hellenic court handed him a six-month suspended sentence in February 2012.
Another
monk also took the blame, as well as a former judge from the area in northern Greece where
the land swaps took place.
Ephraim,
who posted €300,000 bail, was released after four months of detention in
Korydallos prison. The former abbot is now residing at the monastery and is not
allowed to leave Mount Athos.
The
Greek edition of the International Herald Tribune reported that Ephraim called
his conditional release "a miracle of the Virgin."
http://euobserver.com/economic/116962
Talk about dignity and sainthood.
