Christian legacy

Christianity’s legacy may be similarly fascinating. South-west from Matochina, a drive of a few km up to a hill, into a region bordered by wire that used to be a no man’s land at the Bulgarian-Turkish border (and which continues to be patrolled by roaming Border Police teams, so it is advisable to have valid identification with you), leads up to a stone church said to date from the 10th century and which remained in use more or less continuously for another 10 centuries.

It is abandoned now, its entrance barred by a rusty metal door and cagework that was open while we there, admitting us into the gloom of the rectangular church, which is about 10m wide and five m high, a size testimony to the faith of those who carved it out, although I wondered whether what they did was to expand an already existing cave.

Named for the Epiphany, there is little evidence to suggest its former use, but another legend continues, one not unlike other carved-out places and caves throughout Sakar and the Eastern Rhodope – that, once upon a time, those in the know would have been able to find a secret passage or passages that would take one even as far as Edirne.

To Mihalich, where a stone church sits on the slopes above the ever-quiet village, where in the still summer air the distant tinkling of cow bells reaches up to those at the narrow entrance to the church. Inside, the light of early afternoon illuminates the evidence that the faithful of the village still make use of the space created by their predecessors 1000 years ago. The simple narrow altar has small icons, and more recently, the red eggs placed there just a couple of months before in accordance with Bulgarian Orthodox Christian Easter tradition.

Scored into the walls, a hand-carved cross and, interestingly, glued next to the cross, two latter-day coins, one of 20 stotinki and another of 10 stotinki. Which may intrigue archeologists on a summer’s day 1000 years from this writing.