Around Lake Ohrid

Church of St. John the Evangelist at Kaneo, Ohrid

I have been based at Ochrid for the last day, another grand ancient city full of Byzantine monuments, this time built on the hillside overlooking a deep lake of the purest blue. The lake is one of Europe’s oldest and very deep (945 feet at its deepest point), and is shared by Macedonia and Albania.

As Lychidnos, the city’s origins are very ancient, and legend says that it was founded by Cadmus the King of Thebes, after went in search of his sister, Europa, who had been abducted by Zeus. There is a small theatre here, a relic of ancient times, but most of the city’s great monuments are medieval, and associated with the mission of St. Clement and St. Naum (Nahum), who brought the faith to the Slavic peoples here in the ninth century, as associates of Sts. Cyril and Methodius.

The extensive schools set up here by St. Clement (excavations around his church show just what a project it was) are reckoned by some as Europe’s first university. The city is crowned by a grand castellated fortress built by Tsar Samuel at the turn of the 11th century, when this was the capital of Bulgaria and the seat of its patriarchate. Many of the walls survive, and the old city remains as it always was, a mostly pedestrian zone, with some streets as stairs. Most of the houses are nineteenth century, but built in the local style, with first floors of stone topped by white stucco walls with dark wood trim. The old city juts out into the lake at Kaneo, where a picturesque church, dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, is perfectly positioned on a rise just before the tip of the peninsula.

The cathedral is Saint Sophia, named, of course, for its Constantinopolitan inspiration, and adorned with some remarkable frescoes. These are contemporaneous with those at Gorno Nerezi, and have the same kind of elegance and grandeur, though with more emotional reserve. The color is also less vivid, probably because they were plastered over during the Ottoman period, when the building served as Ochrid’s principal mosque.

The frescoes date from just after the city was reclaimed by the Byzantine Empire under the leadership of Basil II (the Bulgar-slayer), and the bishop who commissioned the work, Leo of Ochrid, had artists sent up from the imperial city for the task. He was also the principal advocate for the Eastern Church in the disputes with the papacy that led to the Great Schism in 1054 (the one that has never been healed). There are some signs of Leo’s enthusiasms in the frescoes—an extensive gallery of ancient bishops on the bottom range, which are intended to emphasize the equal significance of all five of the ancient patriarchates (contra Rome’s focus on the pope’s preeminence). In the depiction of the Communion of the Apostles, a common scene in the Altar area seen also at Gorno Nerezi, Christ holds a very large loaf of obviously yeast-risen bread—thereby taking a side against Rome about what kind of bread should be used in the Eucharist.

I also visited the beautiful Church of St. Clement, where his relics are kept, which was beautifully reconstructed in the modern period in the now-extensively excavated grounds of earlier churches and monastic buildings here. The excavated baptistry (with an impressive font and mosaiced floor) was quite striking. I also visited the 13th century Blessed Mother of God Church, which was frescoed in the late Byzantine style, at about the same time as King Marko’s monastery.

A dizzying number of Biblical stories are recounted in the paintings. I was struck by the uncharacteristically serene Transfiguration scene in the transept. The artist economically had the same hand of God the Father sending down his blessing on the Transfiguration and the Baptism of Christ, which face each other across the space.

I also drove around the lake, making my first (and—hopefully—not last) venture into Albania. I saw the ruins of the early Christian basilica at Lin, on a peninsula jutting out into the lake. Lin, they say, was a place of settlement from at least 6000 BC, making it the oldest of its kind in Europe. The basilica was a very unusual building, with lots of small rooms with particular purposes (treasury, catechumenate, baptistry, chancel), connected by long hallways. The strange design may have been dictated by the irregularities of the site, but it make one wonder if our common image of the early Christian basilica, with its plain lines, is really very accurate. Plus, I don’t know where all the people would have stood.

The other thing I noticed in Albania were at least a dozen concrete pillbox bunkers, remnants of the 750,000 built around the country in the 1960’s and 70’s under the rule of Communist dictator Enver Hoxha (15 per square mile, apparently). Hoxha’s idea was that the Albanians would defend themselves from them in groups of two should Yugoslavia ever invade, a massive waste of money and energy, in the end. It was also interesting to see old-fashioned haystacks and shocks of corn in the fields here, as well as hand-harvested tobacco, hung out for drying in open barns. These kinds of techniques may be owing to the tiny plots in the land around the lake. It would be interesting to travel inland to see if these old ways survive on a larger scale as they still do (just barely) in Romania and Georgia.

I also visited the Monastery of St. Naum, about 15 miles south of Ochrid, one of Macedonia’s most popular tourist attractions. On a Sunday evening in perfect weather, the place was buzzing. It was founded by St. Naum in his old age in the early 10th century, as a retreat from the busy crowds of Ochrid. But he placed it on an absolutely beautiful site, near the spring which feeds the lake. Today the crowds come, partly to venerate St. Naum, in the cozy little monastic church, but also to feed the peacocks who roam the ground, to take little boats to the spring, to swim in the lake at the sandy beaches and to eat ice cream.

I think it’s in keeping with the Eastern Christian notion of the monastery as a place for joy and devotion for the whole church, not just the pious few. I saw this especially in Egypt, where the Coptic monasteries are holiday places for the whole Christian population. I trust that Naum wouldn’t be too disappointed with the crowds, as lots of prayers were also being said in the church on this fine day.