Skip to main content

A happy landing

Perast, as a UNESCO designated village in Montenegro, proved a perfect spot for a holiday, it was of a size to offer 'life' (and the all important wi fi enabled cafe) and yet spared either 60s 'Yugoslav' or 00s 'find a second home' 'development; and, perched beautifully on Kotor's fjord, surrounded by mountains, it embodied picturesque.



One of the unsolved questions of being there is the proliferation of churches.

This coast is where Venice met the Byzantine world (and its Slavic inheritors) so you get buildings reflecting both Catholic and Orthodox strands but the multiplicity is astonishing. Perast now has a population of a little over 500 and even allowing for a medieval doubling or even tripling of population, it was tremendously well-endowed with places to pray - two main churches were accompanied by at least seven smaller chapels (to my last day wandering count), nestling within the houses, often now shut, disused. This was replicated elsewhere.

Was it simply competition, denominational rivalry expressed in stone? A common medieval trait here happily architecturally preserved. Or in an historical vulnerable location - conflicted, shifting geo-politics and pirates too - that people fell back on the comforts of religion here more than elsewhere? Or simply that it was de rigueur of every private merchant family to have a chapel as a necessary symbol of wealth - the medieval equivalent of a suitably endowed yacht (of which we saw several)!

In any case days of swimming, reading and cooking (mostly fish) sailed by happily - and it rained seriously only as I started the car to return to the airport!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Buddha meets Christ in embrace

Reading Lama Anagarika Govinda is proving nostalgic on a number of fronts. I recall my first reading of it in my first year at university, bought at Watkins, the famous 'esoteric' bookshop in Cecil Court in London. I sat in my hall of residence room transfixed by a world made familiar; and, it was deepening of a commitment to contemplation (which has been observed fitfully)! I remember returning, at the time, to my school to give a talk to the combined fifth form on Buddhism and using Govinda as the backbone of my delivery (both this book, and his equally wonderful, the Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism). I was voted (I immodestly remember) their best invited speaker of the year. I had even bought a recording of Tibetan music as opener and closer! He reminded me of how important Buddhism was (and is) to my own thinking and comprehension of my experience. The Buddha's First Sermon in the Deer Park was the first religious text I read (of my own volition) at the tender age...
13 comments
Read more

Luminous Spaces - the poetry of Olav H. Hauge

Don't give me the whole truth, don't give me the sea for my thirst, don't give me the sky when I ask for light, but give me a glint, a dewy wisp, a mote as the birds bear water-drops from their bathing and the wind a grain of salt. It began with a poem, this poem, in Mark Oakley's 'The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry' - a wonderful series of meditations on particular poems, one each chapter. The poet is the Norwegian, Olav H. Hague (1908-1994). I immediately ordered, 'Luminous Spaces: Selected Poems & Journals' and was enjoying dipping until, at the weekend, recovering from a stomach bug, I decided to read them through and fell wholeheartedly for a new friend. Hague was born on a farm. His formal education was brought short by a combination of restricted means, an inability to conquer mathematics: and, a voracious diet of reading ranging beyond the confines of any confining curriculum. He went to a horticultural college instead an...
1 comment
Read more

Richard Hauser and the evils of Marx

Richard was a distinguished Austrian sociologist who had contributed to the Wolfenden report that led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England, Wales and Scotland in the late 1960's. I was remembering him on the plane today because I saw a reference to his wife, Hephzibah Menuhin, pianist sister of the violinist Yehudi and human rights activist. I met him after responding to an advertisement in the New Society. He lived in a house in Pimlico, a widower, with a clutch of young people, running an ill-defined (for me) social research/action institute, that I visited several times and to which Richard wanted to recruit me. I was never clear as to what my responsibilities might be and resisted co-option. He was, however, extraordinarily charismatic and as a Jew had fled Austria in 1938 not without receiving permanent damage to his hearing, courtesy of Gestapo interrogation. I vividly remember one story he told me that gives you an idea of his character. He was invit...
17 comments
Read more