I suppose it is a good thing to aim to be objective in life. It shows wisdom and maturity, and an ability to balance all the arguments. For me however, all objectivity vanishes when I think of Ohrid! The setting of this beautiful city on the edge of the vast and wondrous eponymous lake is simply stunning.
It is said that Ohrid, Macedonia, once had 365 churches although there are now only around twenty five which remain open. Its name means City of Light and it has over 220 days of sunshine each year. The town creeps up the hillside surrounding a central esplanade and harbour dominated by the statue of St Clement, who was the student of Saint Cyril and his brother Methodius. They were the authors of the Cyrillic alphabet (approx 864 AD) which was created by the Byzantines to bring the Slavic nations into the Orthodox Church rather than let them fall under the influence of Rome during the early days of the schism between the two churches.
Ohrid is full of Byzantine history. The influence of the Empire can be seen everywhere from the statues to the fortress but principally in the churches and the ancient Basilica. The original church of St Clement was destroyed by the Ottomans who built a mosque on the site which has a clear view of the Lake. Clement’s relics were secretly moved by the Christian citizens of Ohrid to the smaller and less important Church of St Mary Psychosostria. Over time this church became known as the Church of St Clement, but the confusion is now ended as in 2000 the Macedonian authorities rebuilt the Church of St Clement on the original site. His relics have been moved back there to rest in peace. The site includes the remains of original Baptistry, and there are many mosaics all in very good condition.
The Church of St Mary is a wonder. Built in 1295 by the deputy Progon Zgur who was a relative of the Emperor Andronicus II Paleologus, it has twenty nine scenes from the life of the Virgin around the walls. These frescoes are in generally excellent condition with little of the wear or defacement one often finds elsewhere. The reason for this is that most of the frescoes were obliterated by soot from candles. They were cleaned and restored only since 1960. The have to be seen to be understood. The ‘keeper’ of the frescoes is an amazing Macedonian lady with long black hair, with braided pigtails; the church and the frescoes are her passion, probably the centre of her life. She has produced a long book and the frescoes were the subject of her PhD. She says that the fresco of the Virgin that dominates the Apse is painted from lapis lazuli originating in Afghanistan. That one fresco would have cost something in the order of one kilogramme of gold (at today’s prices that is roughly $56,000).
Opposite the Church is the national Icon museum of Macedonia with over forty masterpieces. All this within just a few yards of each other!
If you ever get the chance to visit you will find all this and more. You will also meet friendly people, find good quality low cost accommodation, and a wealth of Byzantine architecture and art. This CNN video shows many of the places I have written about and I know you will like it. If you do ever visit Ohrid, please contact my friend Katerina Vasileska who runs a tourist business in Ohrid called Lost in Ohrid. She will be happy to arrange good accommodation, local tours, and generally be of assistance during your visit.
Finally, don’t forget that for the intrepid there is an opportunity to walk through Albania to Ohrid in May of 2011 with the Via Egnatia Foundation. See my recent post Walking back to Byzantium along the Via Egnatia where you can find out more and how to register your interest.
Click to play … there is a 30 second ad before the Ohrid movie starts.
Byzantine Blog 
Perhaps this is only a slip in your text, but the news piece is correct to avoid attributing the making of Cyrillic script to SS Cyril and Methodius, as do you here. Methodius’s script survived until two centuries ago in Croatia and is now known as Glagolithic. The later simplification into Cyrillic, which may indeed be down to Clement though we don’t know, seems to be rather later.
Jonathan – thank you. Your link is to a subscriber only area so no use for others. Could you either post an excerpt (acknowledge its source) or link us to a public site?
Tom
Sorry! When inside the university’s IP zone it’s very hard to tell what is and isn’t locked away. How about this? No source, of course, but for those, to be honest, the Wikipedia article on the subject is fairly well-larded, mostly to stuff in languages I can’t read. But, of course, you could have found that yourself, so I assume you wanted something different?
THis from a site called Omniglot, Writing Systems & Languages of the World:
“Cyrillic alphabet (Кириллица)
Origin
The Cyrillic alphabet is named after St. Cyril, a missionary from Byzantium. It was invented sometime during the 10th century AD, possibly by St. Kliment of Ohrid, to write the Old Church Slavonic language. ”
There are many narratives about the origin of this alphabet (not really for Old Church Slavonic at that time but Old Bulgarian, according to a curator of Old Manuscripts at the National Library in Sofia), among them that, following on the death of St Cyril in Rome and the expulsion of the acolytes of Cyril & Methodius from Moravia in favour of German Catholic missionaries, these acolytes were rescued from the Venetian slave market and invited to Bulgaria where they set up shop in Pliska and Ohrid (the Scriptorium of St Panteleimon). Church frescoes in Bulgaria often reproduce the “moment” of the delivery of the alphabet to the Bulgarian people by illustrating Cyril & Methodius, to add to the confusion, as does their national day in honour of C&M which is all about the alphabet and translation. As a Ukrainian-Canadian, I found it illuminating to realize that the new Christians of Rus received the alphabet from the Bulgarians…
The link to CNN video is broken. However, it is available on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyLJm8ppRSg