Foreword

For many years I have been travelling through the former Yugoslav Republic, usually privately, but occasionally in my twenty-five year long capacity as Secretary of the no longer existing Society Netherlands-Yugoslavia. In particular I wandered through Serbia, Kosovo and Macedonia, visiting almost all their medieval Byzantine churches and monasteries. The civil war of 1990 brought an abrupt end to travelling to these areas. After that period there was a wish to meet my dear friends in Skopje again. Consequently we travelled in our own car to Macedonia, trying to combine business with pleasure. I was asked to prepare a number of lectures about Byzantine wall-paintings and I was aware of the beautiful churches with wall-paintings in Macedonia. At first I did not realise that for taking pictures a licence was required from the respective bishops in their diocese. During the communist/socialist period churches were considered to be public property and stood under the protection of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments. After November 1991 when the Republic of Macedonia became an independent state, churches were no longer considered to be public property and were returned to where they belong: under the responsibility of the Macedonian Orthodox Church.

One of the licences I needed had to be signed by the archbishop. While I was waiting for his signature his secretary returned and informed me that his beatitude would like to talk to me. The now late Gospodin Gospodin Michael was a man with a strongly radiant personality and a serene countenance. During the brief discussion I had with him, he showed interest in my work as an art historian, the lectures I was giving about wall-paintings and why in particular those from the Macedonian churches. As I left him he did not ask the question, but at the door he very softly suggested, speaking more to himself than to me, why not write a book about his churches. When travelling through the country trying to get the other licences his words remained in my head. Coming home again I hesitated for quite some time before starting the first research work.

How to go about it and what to include? A first search in literature brought to light the names of a large number of churches, the greater part still existing in often remote places. It would go beyond the intent of this work to describe their wall-paintings, if any. Mentioning their existence would suffice. Nevertheless some have been described more extensively. During about five years of work in the country I have visited and/or investigated a considerable number of them.

The most important churches have been dealt with in separate chapters. I have tried to explain the theological and/or apocryphal significance of the subjects depicted on the walls. The caesura I have made is to describe only those churches containing wall-paintings made before the year 1453, the year of the fall of Constantinople, which for more than one thousand years had been the inspirational power of the Orthodox Church. Moreover, the wall-paintings should be of sufficient interest and quality to merit description.

For a better understanding of the history of Macedonia in general and the development of Christianity on the Balkan Peninsula I have included some introductory historical chapters. I have long hesitated whether or not to include in this issue a chapter about the development leading to the formulation of dogmas of the church in the first centuries. When reading about early Christian churches in this country, it is useful to understand something of the development of the first Christian communities, and the background to the two main Christian religions: Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Consequently I have inserted this chapter although I am fully aware of its incompleteness. Anyone wishing to know more about this subject will find further information in the literature.

The chapter relating to heretical movements and Bogomilism has been included for two reasons. Firstly Bogomilism originated on the soil of the present day Republic of Macedonia, from where it spread and found fertile soil. Secondly, in the text of some chapters I have sometimes referred to it. Personally I thought it of interest to devote some space to the style of painting that changed during the years.

It is inevitable that in a work of this kind I have drawn on the work of specialists in the field of Byzantine art, among others on the work of Gabriel Millet La Peinture du moyen âge en Yugoslavie (Serbie, Macédoine et Monténégro), published in Paris in 1962, and continued by Tania Velmans; the work of Richard Hamann-Mac Lean and Horst Hallensleben, Die Monumentmalerei in Serbien und Makedonien von 11. bis zum frühen 14. Jahrhundert, Osteuropastudien der Hochschulen des Landes Hessen, issued in Giessen, 1963 and Richard Hamann-Mac Lean’s Grundlegung zu einer Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Monumentmalerei in Serbien und Makedonien, issued in Giessen, 1976; Vojislav J. Durić, Byzantinische Fresken in Jugoslawien, issued in Munich, 1976. All these authors have described the wall-paintings in churches in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. In the course of the past decades a number of books about Byzantine art have been published in the Serbian and Macedonian languages, and a number in Greek. Most of these publications are of a general nature, sometimes dealing with a specific church. Unfortunately, such books have hardly reached interested readers in western countries. Moreover, the languages are not immediately accessible to the public in general, nor even to the more specialist circles.

The intention of this publication is to give the interested reader information regarding a number of churches in the present Republic of Macedonia, with emphasis on the “famous” ones, but also including some of lesser importance, as far as possible in chronological sequence. Buildings dating after 1453 have not been included, not because they do not contain interesting wall-paintings, but because most of them are considered to be post-Byzantine. Many other authors have been consulted, whose names and works can be found in the list of selected literature. Their views and opinions on sometimes very specific subjects have been of great help to me.

I have made frequent use of a number of German standard works about Byzantine and Christian art: Lexicon der christlichen Ikonographie (LCI), the Reallexicon zur byzantinischen Kunst (RbK) and Getrude Schiller’s Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst. In the notes, as far as possible, I have refrained from quoting literature that has been mentioned in one or more of these standard works.

The names of some of the important figures in biblical history are internationally renowned and have become the namesakes of innumerable people, especially in eastern and southern European countries. For this reason I have refrained from referring to Maria, the mother of Christ by the English name Mary. Similarly I refer to Johannes (not John) the Evangelist, except where, in both cases, I quote an English text.