Lifeline of the monasteries” “

The cultural and civil life of a people through the centuries intersects with its religious life, with mutual influences. The point was emphasized at the 27th European Studies Week at Gazzada (Varese), sponsored by the Paul VI Ambrosian Foundation. This year it focused on the “religious history of Serbia e Bulgaria”. From 30 August to 3 September experts from many countries analysed the question, seeking to define what it is that is specific about that history and points of contact in the origins and history of the faith, or rather faiths, in the Central and Southern Balkans. FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE POST-COLD WAR. GERHARD PODSKALSKY, of the University of Frankfurt am Main, pointed out that the “birth and rebirth of the Balkan churches are due to a national development that involved a re-foundation and a revaluation of the church”, thus precluding a schism between “spiritual history and secular development”. The many speakers at the meeting proposed a journey through time, marked by monasteries, sacred art and the witness of saints, including Cyril and Methodius, co-patrons of Europe. In these areas of the Balkans, with a large Orthodox majority, though with a strong Muslim presence and significant Catholic minorities, religion has been forced over the last millennium to come to terms both with the Turkish conquest, and with the divisions between Christians of different confessions. More recent times have seen the recrudescence of nationalism, which has often used religion as an offensive weapon and a justification for violence; Communism, by contrast, denied the existence of God and sought to confine the experience of transcendence to private life. Lastly, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, inter-ethnic hatred powerfully re-emerged, and once again appropriated religion to arm one people against the other. THE “PEACEMAKING ROLE” OF THE CHURCHES. According to SANTE GRACIOTTI, of the Accademia dei Lincei and scientific coordinator of the European week, Serbia and Bulgaria present an arduous task in the international field today: that of “finding a congenial role of mediation between Constantinople”, i.e. the East, “Moscow and the Western powers, at the same time in which the two countries are having to tackle the problem of ever more secularised secular models”. The two countries “now have a common denominator – said Graciotti -, deriving from the prospect of EU accession”. But they also reveal two similar problems: “the relation with Islam”, rooted in various Balkan regions, and “the inter-religious and inter-ethnic conflict between Catholics and Orthodox, though this most affects Serbia”. The Balkans are still suffering from the grievous wounds inflicted in the Nineties. They need to be pacified, and that’s why “the churches are called to make possible an apparently impossible role: that of peacemaking”. It is an effort that the local communities are trying to fulfil, not without suffering and delays. MONASTERIES: FAITH AND CULTURAL IDENTITY. “The place of the ‘sacred mountain’ in the history of the Orthodox churches of Bulgaria and Serbia is very specific and also very different for the two Balkan nations. The first signs of the presence of Slav monks on Mount Athos appear before the end of the 10th century”, explained KYRILL PAVLIKIANOV, professor at the University of Sofia, who spoke of the “millennial tradition of monasteries” that profoundly characterises the religious life of Serbia and Bulgaria. Pavlikianov started out from the life of the first monk of whom we have any records, Paul of Stogoretsi, who “in 982 put his signature to a document of the citizens of Hierissos, a small town close to Mount Athos”. The analysis of the Bulgarian expert then followed the path of monasticism through the centuries: according to Pavlikianov, the evangelization of the southern Balkans owes a lot to the spiritual and liturgical presence of monasteries and the role of their cultural activity in forming national identities. “A genuine lifeline exists – he said – between the Orthodox churches of Bulgaria and Serbia and Mount Athos”. “ORDEALS” THAT REINFORCE SPIRITUALITY. WILLIAM VEDER, historian at the University of Chicago (USA), was asked to give a report on the relations and reciprocal cultural and religious influences between the Slav and Russian areas. According to Veder, “it is an area bigger than all the other European cultural regions put together”. “Slavonic language and the Cyrillic script of its books and inscriptions are the unifying features of the area”: a cultural continuum that forms the background to the process of evangelization begun in the Middle Ages; that was cruelly put to the test by the dispute between Rome and Byzantium; that was subjected to Turkish rule and bedevilled by numerous wars down to the Communist regime: “ordeals” that failed to uproot the faith.