Warm Days and Blue Knights

A remote monastery tells a story of times ancient and present.

Bob Garfield spent his summer in Serbia, the beginning of a self-imposed semi-exile from the United States, which, to hear him tell it, has broken his heart. While there, he’s writing a book tentatively titled Republic of Neverland: My Curious Travels Through the Historic, Dysphoric, Astounding, Confounding, Least Understood Country on Earth. This final dispatch is drawn from one of his encounters there.

Manasija orthodox monastery near Despotovac, Serbia.

DESPOTOVAC, Serbia – Odd name for a town, this, at least to foreign ears. Loosely translated, it means “Dictatorville.”

Not the sort of circumstance you’d think was begging to be preserved for posterity. In all of Serbia, for example, irrespective of the immense historical significance of the Bubonic Plague, there is no town called Blackdeathovac.

But such is the nature of a national history that for centuries has reflected the ever-shifting hegemony, in varying degrees of tyranny, of foreign powers. Despotovac is named for the monumental medieval Despot Stefan Lazarevic, son of the martyred Knez Lazar, who died in 1389 on the battlefield of Kosovo. The defeat was the beginning of the end for so-called Moravian Serbia, the largest remnant of the collapsed Serbian Empire, itself a mere 25 years in existence. But a period of autonomy remained. After the losing battle, Stefan was invited by Ottomans to rule the kingdom under the title of Despot — with the obvious deference (and tributes) to Constantinople. He did so gloriously. If ever there were an “enlightened despot,” Stefan was he.

First, he won an alliance with Hungary, which rewarded him with swaths of territory including Belgrade. He modernized the army, cultivated the arts and organized, developed and codified the administration of mines to form an industry that was the backbone of the Despotate’s economy. He championed and helped underwrite the Morava school of architecture, exemplified by the famous Manasija Monastery. And he dragged a medieval state kicking and screaming toward the Renaissance. Not only was his Resava School a center for the production of literary work foreign and domestic, he himself was a consequential author, including the heroic epitaph The Grave Sobbing for Prince Lazar, The Inscription on the Kosovo Marble Column, and, most famously, A Homage to Love. (No, I don’t understand the grammar, either. But that’s how it’s translated.) Herewith the second verse:

The Lord hath made both
Spring and summer,
As also the Psalmist sang,
And all their delights:
The birds their swift and joyous flight,
The hills their peaks,
The groves their length,
The fields their breadth,
The air its beauteous and soft sounds,
And the soil its gifts
Of fragrant flowers and grass,
And for man’s being itself
It’s renewal and joy;
But who is worthy enough
To recount all this?

Maybe the poetry is not to your taste, but can you imagine its like from, I dunno, Angela Merkel? I cannot. And during his reign, Serbia flourished.

Stefan the Tall is not to be confused with Stefan Brankovic — aka Stefan the Blind — a subsequent despot whose brief reign and cruel abuse at the hands of the Ottoman sultan was a frightful melodrama of misfortune. No, Stefan Lazarevic’s reign was transcendent. Ruler, theologian, poet, he was a proto-Renaissance man and the sponsor of that stunning monastery — Manasija — I visit today. Commissioned in 1406 and completed 12 years later, it is a historic treasure of great beauty, as famous for its remoteness as for its magnificent frescoes. Surrounded by an 11-tower fortress for defense from inevitable Ottoman attack, Manasija is for the same reason secreted in the stubborn, forested hills of central Serbia 120 kilometers from Belgrade. Perhaps that’s why it was overlooked by Rebecca West. Sorry, Becky. You may be the name-brand Balkans diarist, but Black Lamb and Grey Falcon was 80 years ago. There’s a new sheriff in town.

I’ve traveled here with my dear friends and sometimes guides the Goncic family: Svetislav, Gordana, Isidora and Aleksandra, who have graciously plied me with a breakfast of burek and pita to prepare for the expedition. Speaking of Renaissance men, Svetislav — a famous actor, known throughout ex-Yugoslavia as “Bule” — is also director of the National Theater and host of a television series called Monuments of Serbia. Manasija is one such. Not only is he a knowledgeable and gracious host, Bule is a spectacular noticer. As we motor along the main street of Despotovac, he calls my attention to a sign posted outside of the local funeral home:

Give us your pension check and we will give you full funeral services for free.

In a country today nearly as overrun by gambling parlors as it once was by foreign invaders, that may be the safest bet of all. Bule, who is still very angry about the 40-year Communist flim-flam, seems as bemused by the market-based valuation of the proposition as he is depressed about the moral and fiscal poverty it reveals.

“An economical way to die,” he says, and then something about the “delusional matrix of post-socialist society.” He has some issues with the trajectory of the country, which he sees as clinging to an unsustainable socialistic sense of entitlement while paying lip service to independence. Just another conflict of values on a continent that is awash in them. In fact, we're en route to another one.

The destination does not disappoint; Manasija is imposing. Apart from the 45,000 cubic meters of stone and notched parapets five stories high in the turreted surrounding fortress, the church itself is almost impossibly gorgeous, a repository of priceless frescoes — some well preserved, some faded remnants — that are dazzling artifacts of artistry and faith. Or so I’ve been promised. We begin in the narthex, on the western side of the church, where an archway reveals the sanctuary eastward. We can see the  nave and altar — and a tantalizing glimpse of the frescoes decorating pillar and wall — but for the moment they remain mostly out of view.

Bule has arranged for an even more expert guide, his brother-in-law, Bojan Ivanovic, who briefs me on the history as I scribble in my notebook. Somehow, my mad jotting arrests the attention of a monk a few steps away, who is himself being a docent for a small group of visitors gathered around him. He turns from them to address me: “I hope you are not a stoic professional paying attention only to history.”

He speaks in Serbian, of course. Bule translates as I steal a glance at the people stealing a glance at me. It’s awkward, approximately like being caught passing a note in sixth grade. At least he didn’t say, “Young man, would you like to share that with the rest of us?”

But he is definitely glaring, leaving me a bit confused. On one hand, I had expected to live my entire life without ever being the public target of opprobrium from a monastic cleric. And I’d been doing well in that regard. Not to boast, but my record with monks was basically unblemished. So there goes that. On the other hand … “stoic”? With that characteristic I’ve never been previously associated (Alert: my knees hurt, details to follow), so his accusation actually sounds flattering. Still, I meekly slip out of the narthex into the nave, where maybe nobody will chastise me and where treasures await.

There are many. I wish I had Becky’s gift for description, but maybe the most riveting are the images of Holy Warriors, a pantheon of saints of Christianity centuries past. The knights Areta, Nestor and Nikita stand side by side, bearing spears and swords and clad in armor, their heads encircled by divine golden halos. They are costumed, though, like Byzantine nobles of Stefan’s own time, long dead but — within this fortress of faith — resplendent in red, gold and blue, ever alive. 

Another depicts Despot Stefan himself, majestic in his gold-embroidered robe and bathed, too, in the light of a golden halo, three angels hovering above him. In his right hand he brandishes a scepter. In his left hand — in an unexpected  touch of ancient postmodernism — he’s bearing a model of the very Manasija the fresco adorns. Wait, are their frescoes inside of the model? And is one of them this? And, if so, does it show the model? And inside of that …?

As a whole, these walls display an illustrated saga of Christianity: its prophets, its apostles, its saints, its soldiers, its liturgy, its sacraments, its creed. To gape at them is to marvel at the beauty, the complexity, the virtuosity, the egg-tempera technology, the devout faith and the incalculable 15th-century treasure that underwrote their creation.

Not to mention the color. Many of the frescoes are rich with a fetching shade of blue — lighter than cobalt, darker than aquamarine — that simply seduces you. Once again, words are unsuited to conjure the stirring depth of this color, never mind surviving in its radiance for more than 600 years. But there are no human eyes, no sea or sky or even emotion remotely its seductive equal. It all but devours you. Boyan identifies the hue as “Byzantine blue,” made from a rare coral indigenous to Turkey’s Marmara Sea. He quotes Pablo Picasso as declaring, “One square centimeter of Byzantine blue is worth all the painted blues of the world.”

Forgive Picasso’s stoicism, or whatever.

Actually, I’m at this point still a little baffled about the monk’s earlier concern — until Bule tells me about a conflict between the monastic order and the state authorities in charge of historical preservation. From the government’s perspective, Manasija is a “monument of culture of exceptional importance” and must be forever pristine, untouched by any renovation that might compromise its medieval authenticity. The monks, however, are stewards of a living church. They bridle at Manasija being treated like excavated dinosaur bones, sterilely sealed behind glass, a lifeless exhibit for the bland amusement or even voyeuristic thrill of mere history lovers. Not that the monks plan to drywall over the frescoes or install a drop ceiling under the cupola, but they see their first obligation as serving the Orthodox faith of the community, which is about the birth, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, not the fetishizing of antiquity. If that means adding whatever is required for best fulfilling their sacred ecclesiastical mission, so be it. We can only hope it isn’t a Jumbotron.

This tension reminds me of the earlier free-funeral conversation with Bule about the “delusional matrix.” Among these friars, secular priorities are of scant concern. It’s an irreconcilable conflict of values, not unlike a society that, 43 years after the death of Tito, still cannot quite navigate the resurrection of capitalism.

But at Manasija, there is another dimension of earthly wishes impinging on — or at least intertwining with — ecclesiastical purity. It bears noting that Despot Stefan built the place not just as a shrine to the Holy Trinity and tribute to the majesty of God, but as his own mausoleum. Sort of a rent-to-own for an eternal resting place. And so it is. Stefan’s father died in the fall of Kosovo, Stefan in a fall from a horse. Their tragic fates may diverge in degree of epic grandeur, but the bottom line was the same. And thus did the mausoleum plan kick in.

As I make my way toward the altar, I’m a bit taken aback to see a coffin, intricately decorated in hammered silver and gold. It is an open casket, displaying not a dino’s bones but Stefan’s, draped in a richly embroidered royal vestment. As I peer through the protective glass inside, I have two thoughts. One is about the miracle of seeing the actual 640-year-old remains of the Despot, who within these walls breathed, and prayed and most likely laughed and cried. Here, right here, lies a once flesh-and-blood king. Come to think about it, I am indeed caught in the act of fetishizing antiquity. And, yes, so be it.

That’s the first thing on my mind. The second is: “Tall? This little fellow was not tall. These are the bones of a bantam Despot.” Makes you wonder just how bad, really, was the vision of Stefan the Blind.

I point out the coffin to Bule. “Hard to believe he is here in front of us,” I observe.

In solemn silence, my friend just nods. Then he says, “Because he gave his pension check to those guys in Despotovac.”