Cruising the Three Seas, part 3

Corfu & Kotor, Montenegro

I wasn't sure what to expect of Corfu. I had a preconception of package holiday hotels and concrete beaches. I was not expecting it to be so green and relatively unspoiled. 

Our excursion for the day was "Caves, cliffs and culture" which started with a boat trip from Paleokastritsa, a sheltered cove with glorious white beaches and azure water. 

The boat trip took us to visit three sea caves, including one that included the "blue eye", an effect caused by sunlight going through an underwater rock arch. 

Rock "face" next to St Nicholas's Cave

The blue eye

The local shop had some amusing products on sale. I was tempted to buy some and plant them in my brother's case to see what happened at the airport. 

Our coach then took us up to a restaurant overlooking Paleokastrita. They are big on kumquats on Corfu and we shared a piece of kumquat cake. 

Niamh, the staff member who hosted the introduction to Cymraeg session on our sea day was on our excursion so I asked her if we could take a selfie.

Cymro a Cymraes yn Corfu

The coach wound it's way onward up some very narrow lanes. One village was entirely traffic light controlled, which meant we had a long wait outside. But that was just as well because our bus literally had a few centimetres clearance on either side as we crept through the tight streets. 

We stopped at an Orthodox church that was part of a convent. It was a shrine for healing with it's own well with magical healing properties. However, we were also advised not to drink the water.

The magic healing well - don't drink the water!

The shrine with healing requests

Our guide gave us a brief explanation of the Great Schism between the Roman and Eastern churches. I then had a chat with her about the Cappadocian Fathers, the great saints of the Eastern Church, that I studied back in university. I don't think many tourists name drop St Gregory of Nazianzus while on these tours as she seemed a bit surprised,. 

The gift shop was full of icons. Sarah bought some candied kumquats instead. They have a very strong and lasting bitter orange flavour. It's not unpleasant, but it is persistent. 

Our final stop for the day was Corfu old town. We found a bakery selling amazing doughnuts.

Doughnuts!

There is an impressive solid stump of a castle built by the Venetians when they controlled Corfu. It's another solid-looking fortress. 

Corfu old town is a mix of Venetian, French and Victorian British architecture. Which is why they had a bandstand that reminded me of Grange Gardens!

We didn't have too long in Corfu old town and soon had to head back to our boat, which was now sharing a jetty with three other liners!

Our boat was the small one!

Back on the boat, the evening entertainment was a show called "Forever Country", a medley mix of country songs. I enjoyed it so much I went to watch both showings! (And sang along!)

Our final full day of the cruise was in Kotor, Montenegro. We got up early as we were told that the sail in to Kotor was worth watching. It was impressive as we headed up a very narrow inlet towards the port (it's actually a flooded river valley rather than a true glacier-carved fjord). However, we were up an hour earlier than we needed to be because the ship was delayed after a passenger had to be evacuated to hospital in Albania during the night. (There had been some rough swell at about 2am - it transpired that was the patient transfer.)

Sunrise over Montenegro

Cold enough for a coat!

The delayed arrival meant our boat had been overtaken by another cruise ship that had nicked our anchoring point so we had to anchor further out. This meant the small boat transfer to Kotor was longer than expected, but only a few minutes longer. All the people going on excursions waited in the show lounge auditorium until we were dispatched coachload by coachload. 

Our excursion started at the very new and shiny cable car that goes up over 1,300 metres into Lovcen National Park. 

And in the far distance, our boat!

At the top, Sarah and I rode the alpine coaster, which is like a mini bobsled that swings you over some significant drops. It was great fun.

Victorious alpine coaster riders

We didn't have very long at the top of the mountain before we had to catch the cable car back down. 

The cable car is emblematic of a country that is rapidly modernising. We passed the shiniest petrol station I have ever seen, complete with gleaming banks of post lockers outside. It felt like Kotor Old Town has had some subtle facelift work done too. It was an incredible jumble of buildings and narrow alleys, with history steeped into its stones. But it felt like the patina had been washed off recently giving it a film set feel. I loved it, but I can imagine a few years ago it would have been more grimy and weathered. 

We were hungry and used our tracking skills to follow the trail of people who appeared with large slices of pizza. It turned out there was a little hole in the wall place doing a bustling trade. 

Our return trip to the Marella Explorer 2 was on one of the ship's lifeboats that had been put into service as a shuttle boat. I suppose lifeboats need to be tested occasionally, so it made sense to use them for this purpose. It was another unusual experience to add to an epic day. 

And so that evening we set sail and headed back to where our adventure started, Dubrovnik!

Book review: The Roman Cult of Mithras

I recently made a joyous discovery. As a member of a Cardiff University library in my workplace, I have borrowing rights at any Cardiff University library, including the humanities library. As I am next to that library two evenings a week at the moment for Welsh classes, I've been able to go in for a nostalgic wander.

I've been wanting to read up on Mithraism for a while. So after I had made my lending rights discovery, I had a look to see if there were any books about it. There were several. I avoided any that talked about being a "bold new interpretation" or "exciting theories" in the blurbs because those are usually signs of crank authors, and went for what seemed a fairly solid introduction: The Roman Cult of Mithras by Manfred Clauss.

Mithraism is often described as a competitor with early Christianity. It was widespread across the Roman Empire, with links mainly to military installations. Mithras was worshipped in artificially constructed caves called 'speloa' (presumably where we get the English word 'spelunking' meaning exploring caves from), or now often described as mithraea (singular: mithraeum). They were usually very small temples, with low ceilings, a carved relief showing the god Mithras killing a bull, some statues and some ritual tableware. Mithraea have been found from Hadrian's Wall to Turkey, with lots along the Danube, the outer edge of the Roman Empire where lots of army units were stationed.

We don't know a lot about Mithraism because no writings survive, so the cult has to be recontructed from the carvings and other artefacts. That's what I liked about this book. It was basically a description of archaelogical finds and the reader was left to interpret them. The author mentioned some of the theories that have been put forward but noted that it is all open to interpretation. I quite liked that openness about the lack of firm knowledge.

Information can also be gained from surviving Christian writings that regarded Mithras worshippers as pagan enemies. We have to be a bit careful taking those accounts at face value. But combined with the archaeological evidence, a picture of the cult can be built up.

• Mithras was a religion for men. No women were members of the cult.
• There were several stages that devotees worked through after an initiation ceremony.
• People who joined the cult were given 'secret knowledge' once they had been initiated - that's why it's known as a "mystery cult". 
• Priests were called "Father".
• Devotees had a ritual meal of bread and wine together.
• Mithras was identified as being a version of Sol, the invincible sun god. (Although sometimes not; in some depictions he just got to steer Sol's chariot for him)
• The main motif of the bull-slaying is probably a mythologised way of saying the sun conquers night - the bull, with its crescent-shaped horns represents Luna, the moon, i.e. the night.
• Believers may have thought worshipping Mithras, the Invincible Sun, would make them invincible - which may be why it was so popular with soldiers!

The cult of Mithras was very popular, but worshipping communities were small. There was a lot of variation in practice, and in the types of statue or scenes from Mthras's life depicted in the mithraea. It was a very personal religion, so people tended to carve or commission carvings that meant something specific to them, and place it in their local mithraeum.

Several of the mithraea that have been excavated seems to have been systematically destroyed at the end of the fifth century, with the carved wall reliefs smashed into tiny rubble. It's generally assumed that this was the work of Christian mobs - and there are comments in Christian writings about the destruction of "caves", most likely mithraea. Christianity was, of course, the official religion of the Empire by then, and the Church had become a highly organised centralised power. So it was easy for Christians to suppress the independent, isolated, small communities of Mithras worshippers.

It was really interesting learning more about this forgotten mystery cult. There are quite a few parallels with early Christian practice, and before Christianity became the unstoppable juggernaut of the Empire's official religion, the practices of Christians and Mithraists would have looked quite similar to outsiders. They would have both been bizarre little group meetings with their own peculiar ideas about god-men who were the light of the world. There is even a possible trinitarian version of Mithraism depicted on at least one carved relief.

It would be a stretch to posit a common origin for the similarities between the two religions, but it has made me wonder how much bled over from mystery religions like Mithraism into early Christian practice and teaching. It certainly seems possible.

Rewriting church history to fit your worldview – why some books for kids annoyed me

A while back I was in a Christian bookshop and found a range of children’s books on Heroes of the Faith. Nothing new there, except these were books about the early Church Fathers, many of whom were martyred as the authorities reacted to the spread of Christianity.

What surprised me was the publisher, Banner of Truth, who are better known as a purveyor of ultra-Reformed doctrinal tomes and incredibly long Bible commentaries that torture the grammar of the Greek text until it confesses. I didn’t know they did kids’ books, or that they recognised any church existing before John Calvin published his Institutes.

Intrigued, I started reading the book about Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, who was burnt to death by a mob when he refused to recant his faith. It was reasonably well-written and told the story without glorifying Polycarp’s tragic death, but highlighting his courage in the face of persecution.

There was one thing that really galled though. Good as the book was, and I really wanted to like it because church history is very interesting and I have little people in my life now who I could have bought the book for, I couldn’t get past the way the book referred to Polycarp as the ‘Minister’ of Smyrna.

This is just plain factually wrong. Polycarp was the Bishop of Smyrna, with authority over all the churches in the district. That was how the early Church was set up. That was his title. That was why he was seized and put to death.

I wouldn’t have minded if the book had just called him the ‘leader of the churches in Smyrna’. That would have been right, and I understand that ‘bishop’ is a weird word for kids to relate to. It’s the specific use of the word ‘Minister’ that I’m complaining about here.

To call him a Minister is to impose very narrow ecclesiology, that was developed 1,300 years later, onto the historical situation. I would guess that to the Banner of Truth ultra-evangelicals, ‘bishop’ seems a bit Roman Catholic or Anglican. I know there is a general feeling among the hardline Reformed that those institutions are theologically tainted and irredeemably iffy. But still you can’t just take the title you have chosen as the one you are going to use in your brand of churchianity and then retroactively apply that to someone who was never appointed a ‘Minister’ in the way you appoint Ministers. That just feels dishonest.

At the end of the book there’s a whole bit about how the early heroes of the faith weren’t heroes because they were Ministers but because they courageously stood up for what they believed in. While I understand the point they are trying to make, this is wrong too. The early heroes of the faith weren’t heroes because they were Ministers, simply because they weren’t Ministers. 

A publisher that calls itself the Banner of Truth has chosen a title to live up to. The books it publishes should be true. In this case, relabelling things to fit the terminology you have chosen to describe your world diminishes its truth and presents something that is only partly true at best. 

I'm not sure why I find this so annoying, but I do.