Acknowledgements

I thank Dr. Kosta Balabanov for his advice and support; his work Macedonian Frescoes, issued in Skopje in 1995 has been of great help as well.

Prof. Dr. Claudine Chavannes-Mazel of the University of Amsterdam for her valuable suggestions and moral support in bringing this work to its conclusion.

Moreover, I am grateful to Prof. Dr. Georg Denzler for checking the chapter about the Orthodox Church, the Church of the Seven Councils and for his valuable corrections and suggestions regarding this subject.

I also thank Prof. Dr. Peter Van Deun and his colleague Prof. Dr. Jan Scharpé of Leuven University in Belgium for their kindness in helping me by translating Greek or Old-Slavic texts.

Great thanks I owe to Mr. and Mrs. Robert and Beverly Whitney from Windsor, Ontario, Canada, who have been willing to check and correct my English into the vernacular and to Dr. Peter Loader for his linguistic advice.

In particular I am grateful to my daughter Barbara who has finally prepared all the corrected texts on the computer, including the figures, and produced the final lay-out.

Last but not least I thank my dear friends Mile and Zane Veljanov from Skopje for their hospitality and their willingness to let me make use of their house in Ohrid so many times. Without Mile’s assistance I would not have been able to do all the work. He has opened doors for me which might otherwise have remained closed.

The Hague, April 2003