Border rites

Okay, there is the Latin or Roman Church in western Europe and the Orthodox Church in eastern Europe. Easy to remember! But what happens at the boundaries?

For years my mental map of Europe nicely included religion as a boundary marker: Orthodox Christianity held sway in the east, while the Church of Rome generally had the upper hand in the west. Of course that was too simplistic; it neglected a dozen flavours of Protestant belief, not to mention Judaism, Islam and other faiths. But somewhere around the western boundaries of the former Soviet Union, the alphabet seemed to change into exotic Cyrillic, and at about the same point Catholicism gave way to the onion domes, soulful chant and Slavonic rites of the Orthodox Church.

The real world turns out to be a shade more complicated.

This is just an excerpt. If you are a subscriber to hidden europe magazine, you can log in to read the full text online. Access for non-subscribers will be offered slightly later. Of course you can also read the full article in the print edition of hidden europe 19.

print this page

Print edition in which the article appeared. Click to purchase:

deliciousdiggfacebookgooglelinkedinpingstumbleupontwitter

This article was published in hidden europe 19.