Triumph of translation

This is the medieval church of St. John at Kaneo located in the town of Ohrid in modern Macedon (F.Y.R.O.M.). The church was once part of an Orthodox monastery which belonged to a group of monastic foundations located on the south-eastern shores of the lake Ohrid. Since the late 9th C. Ohrid was a an important religious and cultural centre serving as Bulgrian archbishopric or patriarchate depending on the period. It was here where St. Clement of Ohrid and other disciples of St. Cyril and St. Methodius settled and developed a new alphabet invented especially for the Christianised Slavs such as Bulgars (or Rus later) and popularised it by translating the Bible and numerous other Greek and Latin texts into it.

Inventing a new alphabet for the Slavic language in the 9th C.. which could be used during the Christian liturgy by the converted Slavs was a great achievement of the Byzantine culture and was highly controversial because at the time, many religious authorities argued that there are only two languages worthy of praising God and these were Latin and Greek. From this perspective, Byzantine scholars were some 700 years ahead of Western Europe as in the west, using languages other than Greek and Latin during the liturgy was promoted only after Martin Luter and reformation while in Islam even today Arabic is the dominant language in which Muslims should pray. By accepting such a high degree of diversity, Byantines have created a type of Orthodox Commonwealth or Oikoumene in Greek, which exceeded the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire into Armenia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Rus and even Palestine and Arabia where Orthodox Christians, known as Melkites (meaning Emperors Men in Greek) where encouraged to pray in Syriac and Arabic. Despite Catholic and Islamic aggression, remnants of this Commonwealth survive to this day and Ohrid, to me at least, it one of its true pearls.