As we were planning our Turkish trip, we knew that the
offerings were so rich that we would have to make a list of priorities; and we
quickly agreed on a few destinations that we regarded as musts. The first of these was Cappadocia,
though in retrospect I realize I didn’t know the half of it. I wanted to see the ancient Christian
remains there. The three great
“Cappadocian fathers” of the fourth century (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of
Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa) are famous figures in late antique intellectual
history, and each played an important role in the efflorescence of
monasticism. I wanted to see where
they hung out. With the help of
some of Joan’s splendid photographs, and one or two others, you can see too.
For
one of the central subjects of my life’s work as a scholar is the cultural
significance of Christian asceticism in pre-Reformation Christendom. For something like a thousand years
monks and nuns had a near monopoly on the means of literary and artistic
production. For example, there is
but one writer of Anglo-Saxon whom we can name who was not a monk, and that
one, King Alfred, was the lavish patron of monks and monasteries. The monastic vision naturally left a
spiritual imprint on all they did.
Medieval women in particular would have practically no artistic history were it not
for the religious houses that, in confining them, gave them a protected arena
for the exercise of their talents.
Monastic
life in the ancient Near East was rigorous, dramatic, and to the later European
imagination lurid. The Egyptian
anchorite Anthony, whose biography remained a bestseller for several centuries,
inspired generations of desert-dwellers (the meaning of the word hermits) who competed with each other in
physical austerities, living among the rocks, in caves, in the abandoned lairs of
wild animals, atop the pillars of ruined temples. Hundreds, thousands followed his example. The old monks had a motto: The desert a city! That was not a bad description of the Thebaid in Egypt, of
parts of the Palestinian desert, or of Cappadocia. There is in the Uffizi in Florence a charming painting by Gerardo di Jacopo Starnina (ca. 1400)
imagining the busy desert of the Thebaid.
The desert a city (Starnina's "Thebaid")
We like to see our world in terms of
sharp distinctions and differences.
So-and-so, we hear said “must be living on a different planet.” In fact, from a historical-cultural
point of view the differences between Rush Limbaugh and Paul Krugman are minute
and those between Barak Obama and Mitt Romney nonexistent. Historians and anthropologists have had
to shape a technical term to talk about real
cultural difference. It is alterity (differentness), based in the
Latin alter, something really other,
so other that it’s hard to imagine: the religious troglodytes of ancient
Cappadocia, perhaps.
The
ancient monks thought of their enterprise as a quest for moral perfection, but
so other was their way of thinking
that the great nineteenth-century historian W. E. H. Lecky (high on my list of
Victorian sages) could write thus concerning Antonine eremitism in his History of European Morals:
There
is, perhaps, no phase in the moral history of mankind, of a deeper or more
painful interest than this ascetic epidemic. A hideous, sordid, and emaciated
maniac, without knowledge, without patriotism, without natural affection,
passing his life in a long routine of useless and atrocious self-torture, and quailing
before the ghastly phantoms of his delirious brain, had become the ideal of the
nations which had known the writings of Plato and Cicero and the lives of
Socrates or Cato. For about two centuries, the hideous maceration of the body
was regarded as the highest proof of excellence. St. Jerome declares, with a
thrill of admiration, how he had seen a monk, who for thirty years had lived
exclusively on a small portion of barley bread and of muddy water; another, who
lived in a hole and never eat more than five figs for his daily repast; a
third, who cut his hair only on Easter Sunday, who never washed his clothes,
who never changed his tunic till it fell to pieces, who starved himself till
his eyes grew dim, and his skin "like a pumice stone," and whose merits,
shown by these austerities, Homer himself would be unable to recount.
What Homer cannot
recount it would be unwise of Fleming to attempt. But I can tell you that in my experience internal Turkish
air travel is inexpensive and efficient.
The flight from Izmir to Kayseri, where we arrived in the dusk, was
brief but pleasurable. Kayseri
(ex-Caesarea, Basil’s hometown) is from what I could see in the gathering dark
a large, dingy, modern city. We
were met by a driver, who immediately took off for Göreme, the “cave” city that
is the tourist heart of Cappadocia.
It’s called a “cave” city because it is set among about a thousand caves
carved out in ancient times from the geologically weird pinnacles and pillars
that give the place its lunar appearance.
Everything in this place is cave-like. There are “cave houses,” “cave restaurants,” and “cave
hotels”. Some of these actually once were, at
least partially, caves; others were the products of cave-envy. This proved problematical, since we
were theoretically booked in something called the “Göreme Cave House Hotel”.
The driver could not find it, because it did not exist. There was a “Göreme Cave” Hotel, and
there was a “Cave House” Hotel.
After quite a bit of increasingly spooky driving around inthe dark we
found the “Göreme House Hotel” where the proprietor, having been rousted by
loud bells, cheerfully explained that (a) we were indeed expected, and (b) only
a fool would confuse his handsome Ottoman mansion with a cave.
Bloguiste caving
The
village of Göreme is practically overwhelmed by its touristic vocation. There is a superfluity of souvenir
shops, travel agencies, balloon agents (I’ll explain in a minute), Internet
cafés, restauranteurs, and rug salesmen.
The latter two categories are pretty aggressive, though mere pikers by
Istanbul standards. The streets
are clogged with backpacking youth and rented motorcycles. It nonetheless was not without its
charm, and the hotel breakfasts were to die for—probably literally, could I
have stayed longer. But the great
thing about Göreme is its situation, at the center of the surrounding cave
churches and monastic remains. The
place is rightly a UNESCO World Heritage Site. At the “Open Air Museum”—a short walk from the town, though
everybody seems to travel by minivan—one can visualize what the motto “the
desert a city” really meant.
Karanlik Church: Give 'em a fish, or teach 'em to fish?
Many
of the churches have preserved at least some of their wall paintings--the
guides invariably call them “frescoes,” which some indeed seem to be--and in a
couple they are spectacular. In
general I was surprised by evidence of the comparative moderation of Muslim
vandalism in the post-Christian centuries. Yet more interesting for me than the ecclesiastic art was
the evidence of the intimacy of the “domestic” and the “sacred” parts of the
desert city, an intimacy so marked as in essence to negate the
distinction. How long this
treasure can be preserved is anybody’s guess. The crowds are huge and oppressive—a kind of “national parks
syndrome” in an acute form. I may
be generalizing on the basis of insufficient evidence, but I did get the
impression wherever we went that the Turkish government was more interested in
the maximization of the tourist revenue stream than in protection and
preservation of the monuments. The
“Open Air Museum” is gradually being worn away by its admirers.
In
a brief blog essay I can barely touch upon the cultural richness of the place,
or give an account of our truly heroic hike, at risk to septuagenarian life and
limb, through some volcanic wilderness; but I must mention one other
highlight. I earlier alluded to
“balloon agents”. In fact
ballooning is another great tourist activity in Cappadocia. On our final full day there, a
Saturday, we got up at the crack of dawn to join many dozens of other
enthusiasts in a great balloon flotilla that sailed out at rooftop height over
the strange “chimneys” of the Göreme plain. For about an hour we enjoyed a perspective on the old desert
city that its original inhabitants never could have had. The balloons are so large and sturdy
that my normal fear of heights was easily contained. Each gondola held sixteen people, four in each of four
separate compartments. Our travel
companions were a couple of young Bulgarians who seemed less into monastic
rubbernecking than necking of the more conventional, adolescent sort, but to
each his own. I found myself
thinking with renewed admiration of old Saint Basil, and a scriptural verse
from the Basilian liturgy: “They will soar on wings like eagles; they
will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” Poor old Lecky, for all his brilliance
and erudition, missed that part.
