Chapter 59
The "Chronicle" of Zacharias of Zographou
By Atanas Angelov and Anton Stoichev
INTRODUCTION
Zacharias's "Chronicle" as a Historical Document
Despite its famously frustrating incompleteness, the Zacharias "Chronicle," with the embedded "Tale of Stefan the Wanderer," is an important source of confirmation of Christian pilgrimage routes in the fifteenth-century Balkans, as well as information about the fate of the body of Vlad III "Tepes" of Wallachia, long believed to have been buried at the monastery on Lake Snagov (in present-day Romania). It also provides us with a rare account of Wallachian neomartyrs (although we cannot know for certain the national origins of the monks from Snagov, with the exception of Stefan, the subject of the "Chronicle"). Only seven other neomartyrs of Wallachian origin are recorded, and none of these is known to have been martyred in Bulgaria.
The untitled "Chronicle," as it has come to be called, was written in Slavonic in 1479 or 1480 by a monk named Zacharias at the Bulgarian monastery on Mount Athos, Zographou. Zographou, "the monastery of the painter," originally founded in the tenth century and acquired by the Bulgarian church in the 1220s, is located near the center of the Athonite peninsula. As with the Serbian monastery Hilandar, and the Russian Panteleimon, the population of Zographou was not limited to its sponsoring nationality; this and the lack of any other information about Zacharias make it impossible to determine his origins: he could have been Bulgarian, Serbian, Russian, or perhaps Greek, although the fact that he wrote in Slavonic argues for a Slavic origin. The "Chronicle" tells us only that he was born sometime in the fifteenth century and that his skills were held in esteem by Zographou's abbot, since the abbot chose him to hear the confession of Stefan the Wanderer in person and record it for an important bureaucratic and perhaps theological purpose.
The travel routes mentioned by Stefan in his tale correspond to several well-known pilgrimage routes. Constantinople was the ultimate destination for Wallachian pilgrims, as it was for all of the eastern Christian world. Wallachia, and particularly the monastery of Snagov, was also a pilgrimage site, and it was not unknown for the route of a pilgrim to touch both Snagov and Athos at its extremes. That the monks passed through Haskovo on their way to the Bachkovo region indicates that they probably took a land route from Constantinople, traveling through Edirne (present-day Turkey) into southeastern Bulgaria; the usual ports on the Black Sea coast would have put them too far north for a stop in Haskovo.
The appearance of traditional pilgrimage destinations in Zacharias's "Chronicle" raises the question of whether Stefan's tale is a pilgrimage document. However, the two purported reasons for Stefan's wanderings - exile from the fallen city of Constantinople after 1453 and the transport of relics and search for a "treasure" in Bulgaria after 1476 - make this at least a variation on the classic pilgrim's chronicle. Furthermore, only Stefan's departure from Constantinople as a young monk seems to have been motivated primarily by the desire to seek out holy sites abroad.
A second topic on which the "Chronicle" sheds light is the final days of Vlad III of Wallachia (1428?¨C76), popularly known as Vlad Tepes - the Impaler - or Dracula. Although several historians who were his contemporaries give descriptions of his campaigns against the Ottomans and his struggles to capture and retain the Wallachian throne, none address in detail the matter of his death and burial. Vlad III made generous contributions to the monastery at Snagov, as Stefan's tale asserts, rebuilding its church. It is likely that he also requested burial there, in keeping with the tradition of founders of and major donors to foundations throughout the Orthodox world.
The "Chronicle" has Stefan asserting that Vlad visited the monastery in 1476, the last year of his life, perhaps a few months before his death. In 1476, Vlad III's throne was under tremendous pressure from the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II, with whom Vlad had been at war intermittently since around 1460. At the same time, his hold on the Wallachian throne was threatened by a contingent of his boyars that was prepared to side with Mehmed should he stage a new invasion of Wallachia.
If Zacharias's "Chronicle" is accurate, Vlad III paid a visit to Snagov that is otherwise unrecorded and must have been extremely dangerous to him personally. The "Chronicle" reports Vlad's bringing treasure to the monastery; that he did so at great personal risk indicates the importance to him of his tie with Snagov. He must have been well aware of the constant threats to his life, both from the Ottomans and from his primary Wallachian rival during that period, Basarab Laiota, who held the Wallachian throne briefly after Vlad's death. Since little political gain could come from his visiting Snagov, it seems reasonable to speculate that Snagov was important to Vlad III for spiritual or personal reasons, perhaps because he planned to make it his last resting place. In any case, Zacharias's "Chronicle" confirms that he gave Snagov particular attention near the end of his life.
The circumstances of Vlad III's death are very unclear, and have been further clouded by conflicting folk legends and shoddy scholarship. In late December 1476 or early January 1477, he was ambushed, probably by part of the Turkish army in Wallachia, and killed in the skirmish that followed. Some traditions have held that he was actually killed by his own men, who mistook him for a Turkish officer when he climbed a hill to get a better view of an ongoing battle. A variant of this legend asserts that some of his men had been looking for a chance to assassinate him, in punishment for his infamous cruelty. Most sources that discuss his death agree that Vlad's corpse was decapitated and his head taken to Sultan Mehmed in Constantinople as proof that a great enemy had fallen.
In either case, according to Stefan's tale, some of Vlad III's men must still have been loyal to him, since they risked bringing his corpse to Snagov. The headless corpse was long believed to have been buried in the Snagov church, in front of the altar.
If the tale of Stefan the Wanderer is to be trusted, Vlad III's corpse was secretly transported from Snagov to Constantinople, and from there to a monastery called Sveti Georgi, in Bulgaria. The purpose of this deportation, and what the "treasure" was that the monks were seeking first in Constantinople and then in Bulgaria, is unclear. Stefan's tale asserts that the treasure would "hasten the salvation of the soul of this prince," which indicates that the abbot must have thought this theologically necessary. Possibly they sought some holy Constantinopolitan relic spared by both the Latin and Ottoman conquests. He might also not have wanted to take on the responsibility for destroying the corpse at Snagov, or mutilating it in accordance with beliefs about vampire prevention, or to take the risk that this might be carried out by local villagers. This would have been a natural reluctance, given Vlad's status and the fact that members of the Orthodox clergy were discouraged from participating in corpse mutilation.
Unfortunately, no likely burial site for Vlad III's remains has ever been found in Bulgaria, and even the location of the foundation called Sveti Georgi, like that of the Bulgarian monastery Paroria, is unknown; it was probably abandoned or destroyed during the Ottoman era, and the "Chronicle" is the only document that sheds light on even a general location. The "Chronicle" claims that they traveled only a short distance - "not much farther" - from the monastery at Bachkovo, located about thirty-five kilometers south of Asenovgrad on the Chepelarska River. Clearly, Sveti Georgi was situated somewhere in south central Bulgaria. This area, which includes much of the Rhodope Mountains, was among the last Bulgarian regions to be conquered by the Ottomans; some particularly rugged terrain in the area was never brought under full Ottoman domination. If Sveti Georgi was located in the mountains, this might have accounted in part for its selection as a relatively safe resting place for the remains of Vlad III.
Despite the claim of the "Chronicle" that it became a pilgrimage site after the Snagov monks settled there, Sveti Georgi does not appear in other primary sources of the period, or in any later sources, which could indicate that it vanished or was deserted relatively soon after Stefan's departure from it. We do know something of the founding of Sveti Georgi, however, from a single copy of its typikon preserved in the library at Bachkovo Monastery. According to this document, Sveti Georgi was founded by Georgios Komnenos, a distant cousin of the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos, in 1101. Zacharias's "Chronicle" asserts that the monks there were "old and few" when the group from Snagov arrived; presumably those few monks had preserved the regime outlined by the typikon and were joined in it by the Wallachian monks.
It is worth noting that the "Chronicle" emphasizes the journey of the Wallachians through Bulgaria in two different ways: by describing the martyrdom of two of them at the hands of Ottoman officials in some detail and by recording the attention given by the Bulgarian population to their progress through the country. There is no way to know what provoked the Ottomans in Bulgaria, with their general toleration of Christian religious activities, to see the Wallachian monks as a threat. Stefan reports through Zacharias that his friends were "interrogated" in the town of Haskovo before being tortured and killed, which suggests that Ottoman authorities believed they possessed politically sensitive information of some sort. Haskovo is located in southeast Bulgaria, a region that was securely under Ottoman command by the fifteenth century. Strangely, the martyred monks were given the traditional Ottoman punishments for stealing (amputation of the hands) and for running away (amputation of the feet). Most neomartyrs under the Ottomans were tortured and killed through other methods. These forms of punishment, as well as the search of the monks' wagon described by Stefan in his tale, make clear the Haskovo officials' accusation of thievery, although they were apparently unable to prove the charge.
Stefan reports widespread attention from the Bulgarian people along the route, which could have accounted for Ottoman curiosity. However, only eight years earlier, in 1469, the relics of Sveti Ivan Rilski, the hermit founder of Rila Monastery, had been translated from Veliko Trnovo to a chapel at Rila, a procession witnessed and described by Vladislav Gramatik in his "Narrative of the Transportation of the Remains of Sveti Ivan." During this translation, Ottoman officials tolerated the attention given by local Bulgarians to the relics, and the journey served as an important unifying event and symbol for Bulgarian Christians. Both Zacharias and Stefan would probably have been aware of the famous journey of Ivan Rilski's bones, and some written account of it may have been available to Zacharias at Zographou by 1479.
This earlier - and very recent - toleration of a similar religious procession through Bulgaria makes Ottoman concern about the journey of the Wallachian monks particularly significant. The search of their wagon - probably carried out by officers of the guard of a local pasha - indicates that some knowledge of the purpose of their journey had perhaps reached Ottoman officials in Bulgaria. Certainly the Ottoman authorities would not have been eager to house in Bulgaria the remains of one of their greatest political enemies, or to tolerate the veneration of those remains. More puzzling, however, is the fact that on searching the wagon they must have found nothing, since Stefan's tale later mentions the interment of the body at Sveti Georgi. We can only speculate on how they would have hidden an entire (if headless) corpse, if they were indeed carrying one.
Finally, a point of interest for both historians and anthropologists is the reference in the "Chronicle" to the beliefs of the monks at Snagov vis-¨¤-vis their visions in the church there. They could not agree about what had transpired with Vlad III's corpse during their vigil for him, and they named several of the methods traditionally cited as the basis for the transformation of a corpse into the living dead - a vampire - indicating a general belief among them that he was at risk of such an outcome. Some of them believed they had seen an animal jumping over the corpse and others that a supernatural force in the form of fog or wind had entered the church and caused the body to sit up. The case of an animal is widely documented in Balkan folklore about vampire genesis, as is the belief that vampires can turn into fog or mist. Vlad III's notorious bloodletting, and his conversion to Catholicism in the household of the Hungarian king M¨¢ty¨¢s Corvinus, would probably have been known to the monks, the former since it was common knowledge in Wallachia and the latter because it must have been a concern in the Orthodox community there (and particularly in Vlad's favored monastery, where the abbot was probably his confessor).
The Manuscripts
The "Chronicle" of Zacharias is known through two manuscripts, Athos 1480 and R.VII.132; the latter is also referred to as the "Patriarchal Version." Athos 1480, a quarto manuscript in a single semiuncial hand, is housed in the library at Rila Monastery in Bulgaria, where it was discovered in 1923. This, the earlier of the two versions of the "Chronicle," was almost certainly penned by Zacharias himself at Zographou, probably from notes made at Stefan's deathbed. Despite his claim that he "took down every word," Zacharias must have made this copy after considerable composition; it reflects a polish he could not have achieved on the spot, and contains only one correction. This original manuscript was probably housed in the Zographou library until at least 1814, since it is mentioned by title in a bibliography of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century manuscripts at Zographou dating from that year. It resurfaced in Bulgaria in 1923, when the Bulgarian historian Atanas Angelov discovered it hidden in the cover of an eighteenth-century folio treatise on the life of Saint George (Georgi 1364.21) in the library at Rila Monastery. Angelov ascertained in 1924 that no copy was extant at Zographou. It is unclear exactly when or how this original made its way from Athos to Rila, although the threat of pirate raids on Athos during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries may have played a part in its removal (and that of numerous other precious documents and artifacts) from the Holy Mountain.
The second and only other known copy or version of the Zacharias "Chronicle" - R.VII.132or the "Patriarchal Version" - is housed at the library of the Oecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople and has been paleographically dated to the mid- or late sixteenth century. It is probably a later version of a copy sent to the patriarch by the abbot of Zographou in Zacharias's time. The original of this version presumably accompanied a letter from the abbot to the patriarch, alerting the patriarch to the possibility of a heresy in the Bulgarian monastery Sveti Georgi. The letter is no longer extant, but it is probable that for reasons of efficiency and discretion the abbot of Zographou requested Zacharias to recopy his chronicle for delivery to Constantinople, keeping the original for the Zographou library. Between fifty and a hundred years after its receipt, the "Chronicle" was still considered important enough to the patriarchal library to be preserved by recopying.
The "Patriarchal Version," in addition to being a probable later copy of a missive from Zographou, differs from Athos 1480 in another important way: it eliminates part of the story of what the monks in the vigil at the church of Snagov claimed to have witnessed there, namely from the line "One monk saw an animal" to the line "the headless body of the prince stirred and tried to rise." This passage may have been eliminated in the later copy in an attempt to keep users of the patriarchal library from unnecessary exposure to information about the heresy described by Stefan, or perhaps to minimize their exposure to superstitions about the origins of the walking dead, a set of beliefs the church administration generally opposed. The "Patriarchal Version" is difficult to date, although it is almost certainly the copy listed in a Patriarchal library catalog from 1605.
A final similarity - a striking and perplexing one - exists between the two extant manuscripts of the "Chronicle." Both were torn off by hand at more or less the same point in the story. Athos 1480 ends with "I learned," while the "Patriarchal Version" continues "that it was no ordinary plague, but instead," each having been neatly sundered after a complete line, presumably removing the part of Stefan's tale that gave evidence of a possible heresy or other evil at the monastery of Sveti Georgi.
A clue to the dating of this damage may be found in the library catalog mentioned above, which lists the "Patriarchal Version" as "incomplete." We can therefore assume that the end of this version was torn off before 1605. There is no way to know, however, whether the two acts of vandalism occurred during the same period, or whether one inspired the other in a much later reader, or how similar the two endings of the document actually were. The fidelity of the "Patriarchal Version" to the Zographou manuscript, with the exception of the vigil passage noted above, indicates that the story probably ended identically or at least very similarly in the two versions. Furthermore, the fact that the "Patriarchal Version" was torn off despite its elimination of the passage about the supernatural events in the church at Snagov supports the idea that it still concluded with a description of heresy or evil at Sveti Georgi. There is to date no other example, among medieval Balkan manuscripts, of systematic tampering with two copies of the same document hundreds of miles distant from each other.
Editions and Translations
The "Chronicle" of Zacharias of Zographou has been published twice before. The first edition of it was a Greek translation with limited commentary included in Xanthos Constantinos's History of the Byzantine Churches, 1849. In 1931 the Oecumenical Patriarchate printed a pamphlet of it in the original Slavonic. Atanas Angelov, who discovered the Zographou version in 1923, planned to publish it with extensive commentary but was prevented from fulfilling this project by his death in 1924. Some of his notes were published posthumously in Balkanski istoricheski pregled in 1927.
The "Chronicle" of Zacharias of Zographou
This tale was told to me, Zacharias the penitent, by my Brother in Christ, Stefan the Wanderer from Tsarigrad. He came to our monastery of Zographou in the year 6987 [1479]. Here he related to us the strange and wonderful events of his life. Stefan the Wanderer was fifty-three years of age when he arrived among us, a wise and pious man who had seen many countries. Thanks be to the Holy Mother who guided him to us from Bulgaria, whence he had wandered with a company of monks from Wallachia and endured many sufferings at the hands of the infidel Turk and seen two of his friends martyred in the town of Haskovo. He and his brothers carried with them through the infidel lands some relics of marvelous power. With these relics they made a procession deep into the country of the Bulgarians and were famous throughout the countryside, so that Christian men and women came out along all the roadsides as the procession passed them, to bow to them or kiss the sides of the wagon. And these holy relics were taken thus to the monastery called Sveti Georgi and there enshrined. So that although the monastery was a small and quiet place many pilgrims came to it thereafter on their way from the monasteries at Rila and Bachkovo or from holy Athos. But Stefan the Wanderer was the first we knew here who had been in Sveti Georgi.
When he had lived with us some months, it was remarked that he did not speak freely of this monastery of Sveti Georgi, although he told many tales of the other blessed places he had visited, sharing them with us from his pious nature that we who had lived always in one country might gain some knowledge of the wonders of Christ's church in different lands. Thus he told us once about an island chapel in the Bay of Maria, in the sea of the Venetians, on an isle so small that the waves lap each of its four walls and about the island monastery of Sveti Stefan two days' journey south of it along the coast, where he took the name of its patron and gave up his own. This much he told us, and many other things besides, including the sighting of fearsome monsters in the Marble Sea.
And he told us most frequently about the churches and monasteries of the city of Constantinople before the infidel troops of the sultan desecrated them. He described to us with reverence their priceless, miracle-working icons, such as the image of the Virgin in the great church of Saint Sophia, and her veiled icon in the sanctuary at Blachernae. He had seen the tomb of Saint John Chrysostom and of the emperors, and the head of the blessed Saint Basil in the church of the Panachrantos, as well as numerous other holy relics. How fortunate for him and for us, the recipients of his tales, that when he was still young he had left the city to wander again, so that he was far distant from it when the devil Muhammad built near it a diabolically strong fortress for the purposes of attacking the city, and soon after broke down the great walls of Constantinople and killed or enslaved its noble people. Then, when Stefan was far away and heard this news, he wept with the rest of Christendom for the martyred city. And he brought with him to our monastery rare and wonderful books in his horse's pack, which he had collected and from which he drew divine inspiration, as he himself was a master of the Greek, Latin, and Slavic languages and probably others besides. He told us these many things and put his books into our library to bring glory to it forever, which, although most of us could read in only one language and some not all, they did. He gave these gifts saying that he too had ended his travels and would remain forever, like his books, at Zographou.
Only I and one other brother remarked that Stefan spoke not of his sojourn in Wallachia, except to say that he had been a novice there, and neither did he speak much of the Bulgarian monastery called Sveti Georgi, until the end of his life. For when he came to us, he was already sick, and suffered much from fevers in his limbs, and after less than a year he told us he hoped soon to bow before the throne of the Savior, if enough of his sins could be overlooked by the One who forgives all true penitents. When he lay in his last illness he asked to make a confession to our abbot, because he had witnessed evils that he must not die in the possession of, and the abbot, being very struck by his confession, asked me to require it of him again and write down all he said, because he, the abbot, wished to send a letter about it to Constantinople. This I did with all speed and without error, sitting by Stefan's bedside and listening with a heart full of terror to the tale he patiently told me, after which he was given holy communion and died in his sleep and was buried at our monastery.
The Tale of Stefan of Snagov,
Faithfully Transcribed by Zacharias the Sinner
I, Stefan, after years of wandering and also after the loss of the beloved and holy city of my birth, Constantinople, went in search of rest north of the great river that divides the Bulgarians from Dacia. I wandered into the plain and then the mountains, and at length I found my way to the monastery that sits on the island in Lake Snagov, a most beautifully secluded and defensible place. There the good abbot welcomed me and I took my seat at table with monks as humble and dedicated to prayer as any I had met in all my journeys. They called me their brother and shared freely with me the food and drink of their meal, and I felt more at peace in the midst of their devout silence than I had in many months. As I worked hard, and followed humbly every direction of the abbot, he soon granted me permission to stay among them. Their church was not large but was of surpassing beauty, with famed bells whose sound rang across the water.
This church and the monastery had received the utmost assistance and fortification from the prince of that region, Vlad son of Vlad Dracul, who was twice chased from his throne by the sultan and other enemies. He was also once long imprisoned by Matthias Corvinus, king of the Magyars. This prince Dracula was very brave, and in reckless battle he plundered or took back from the infidels many of the lands they stole, and of his battle spoils he gave to the monastery, and was constantly desirous that we should pray for him and his family and their safety, which we did. Some of the monks whispered that he had sinned through exceeding cruelty and also had, while prisoner of the Magyar king, allowed himself to be converted to the Latin faith. But the abbot would hear no ill word of him from anyone and had more than once concealed him and his men in the sanctuary of the church when other nobles wished to find and kill him.
In the last year of his life, Dracula came to the monastery, as he had been wont to do more often in earlier times. I did not see him then, because the abbot had sent me and one other monk on an errand to another church, where he had some business. When I returned, I heard that the lord Drakulya had been there and had left new treasures. One brother, who traded for our supplies with the peasants in that region and heard many stories in the countryside, whispered that Dracula was as likely to present a bag of ears and noses as a sack of treasure, but when the abbot heard about this remark he punished the speaker very soundly. Thus I never saw Vlad Dracula in life, but I did see him in death, which I shall report soon enough.
Perhaps four months later there came word that he had been surrounded in a battle and there caught and slain by the infidel soldiers, first killing more than forty of them with his great sword. Upon his death, the sultan's soldiers cut off his head and took it away with them to show their master.
All this was known by the men of Prince Dracula's camp, and although many hid away after his death, some of them brought this news and also his body to the monastery of Snagov, after which they also fled. The abbot wept when he saw the body lifted from the boat and prayed aloud both for the Lord Dracula's soul and for the protection of God, because the crescent of the infidel was now coming very near. He caused the body to be laid in state in the church.
It was one of the most dreadful sights I have seen, this headless corpse robed in red and purple and surrounded by many flickering candle flames. We sat in watches in the church, keeping the holy vigil, for another three days and nights. I sat in the first vigil, and all was peaceful in the church apart from the sight of the mutilated body. In the second vigil all was peaceful again - so said the brothers who watched that night. But on the third night some of the tired brothers dozed, and something occurred to strike terror into the hearts of the others. What it was they could not later agree, each having seen something different. One monk saw an animal leap from the shadows of the stalls and over the coffin, but could not ascertain what shape the animal had. Others felt a gust of wind or saw a thick fog enter the church, which guttered many of the candles, and they swore by the saints and angels and especially the archangels Mikhail and Gabriel that in the dark the headless body of the prince stirred and tried to rise. There was a great shrieking among the brothers in the church, who lifted their voices in terror, and by this the whole community was roused. These monks, running out, related their visions with bitter disagreement among them.
Then the abbot came forward and I saw in the light of the torch he held that he grew very pale and awed at the stories they related, crossing himself many times. He reminded all who were present that the soul of this nobleman was in our hands and that we must act accordingly. He led us into the church, relighting the candles there, and we saw that the body lay quietly as before in its coffin. The abbot caused the church to be searched, but no animal nor any demon was found in any corner. Then he bid us to compose ourselves and go to our cells, and when the hour for the first service came it was held as usual and all was calm.
But the next evening he called eight monks together, honoring me by inclusion among them, and said that we would only make a pretense of burying the prince's body in the church, but that it must instead be conveyed at once from this place. He said that he would tell only one of us, in secret, where we were to take it and why, that the others might be protected as long as possible by our ignorance, and this he did, selecting a monk who had been with him there for many years but telling the rest [of us] only to follow obediently and ask no questions.
In this way I, who had thought never to wander again, became a traveler once more and crossed a long distance, entering with my companions the city of my birth, which had become the seat of the infidels' kingdom, and I found much that was changed there. The great church of Saint Sophia was taken for a mosque and we could not enter it. Many churches had been destroyed or allowed to fall into ruins, and others turned into houses of worship for the Turks, even the Panachrantos. And there I learned that we were looking for a treasure that might hasten the salvation of the soul of this prince, and that this treasure had already been procured at terrible risk by two holy and brave monks from the monastery of Saint Saviour and taken secretly out of the city. But some of the sultan's Janissaries had become suspicious, and because of this we were placed in danger and forced to wander once more to find it, this time traveling into the old kingdom of the Bulgars.
As we passed through the country, it seemed that some of the Bulgarians knew already of this mission, for more and more of them came out along the roads, bowing silently to our procession, and some followed for many miles, touching our wagon with their hands or kissing the side of it. During this journey a most terrible thing occurred. While we were passing through the town of Haskovo, some of the guards of the town rode out to us and stopped us with force and harsh words. They searched our wagon, declaring they would find whatever we carried, and discovering two bundles, they seized them and opened them. When these proved to be food, the infidels threw them in the road with wrath and arrested two of our number. These good monks, protesting that they knew nothing and thus angering the evil ones, had their hands and feet cut off, salt being put in their wounds before they died. They let the rest of us live but dispatched us with curses and whippings. We were afterward able to secure the bodies and limbs of our dear friends and reunite them for Christian burial in the monastery of Bachkovo, whose monks prayed many days and nights for their devout souls.
After this event, we were very much saddened and terrified, but we traveled on, not much farther and without incident, to the monastery of Sveti Georgi. There the monks, although they were old and few, welcomed us and told us that indeed the treasure we sought had been brought to them by two pilgrims some months previous to this, and all was well. We could not think of returning to Dacia soon through so many dangers, and thus we settled there. The relics we had conveyed thither were secretly enshrined at Sveti Georgi and their fame among Christians brought many to worship there, and they also kept silence. For some time we lived in peace at this place and the monastery was built up greatly by our labors. Soon, however, a plague broke out in the villages near us, although at first it did not infect the monastery. I learned [that it was no ordinary plague, but instead]
[At this point the manuscript is cut or torn off.]