Still 2 Weeķs in Arrears: Sv. Barbara

Despite her prowess as protectress from the lightning bolt, Sv. Barbara  proved a lady throughout our coming and going.   With GPS, an excellent new map which I had downloaded to my tablet, and a clue from the young curator in Skrip, I knew just where she was waiting and I had a good idea how to get there.  We geared up for a moderately long hike, brought along our umbrellas just in case, climbed the highway in our car up and out of Nerezisce heading east, and then surprised ourselves.  Instead of parking farther down the road past the turnoff to Podgazul and then hiking in, as was our plan, we veered onto a side road just before the road to Vidova Gora and drove a rocky way all the way to the church!

We drove the old road from Praznice to Nerezisce, through rustic orchard and through macchia, that Mediterranean scrub so different from the vegetation lower on the island,  passed several dolines,  those sinkholes typical of the karst,  noticed the rams skull and sheep pelt hanging in branches along the way, paused so that Julia could climb out of the car and open a couple of sheep gates, crawled slowly over the rough spots, and pulled into a wide spot in a rough crossroads in the shade next to Sv. Barbara.

She was half-hidden in the copse, flanked by a low stone wall, stone mounds, stone walls, and stoney fields, Ah, she was modest, but not coy, possessed a slightly tallish but not exaggerated aspect, and presented a simple elegance in her full dress of shining white plaster.

In the interests of reporting objectivity, and as inappropriate as it may be perhaps, I feel I must comment upon her square apse.  (Lady, forgive me!)  And also upon the curious crescent shaped flying arch covering her lunette, which almost reminded me if some outlandish medieval hat as seen in a painting by Someone the Elder.  (Again, please forgive me.) 

Peering inside, we could see a plain altar with a small crucifix upon it and no altarpiece behind.  The apse inside was pleasingly rounded.

Saint Barbara, like Sv. Theodore,  was also a favorite of the Eastern church.  Take a fairy tale princess locked away from the world in a tower, add curiosity, conversion and some subsequent grisly torture, nursings by angels in the nightime, steadfastness and a final beheading by her own father, and you have her story.  With the slight addendum, that her father was then killed by a lightningbolt , as would be only proper, as he went home from her execution.

We sat on a crude bench in the sun for a bit, wandered about being generally inquisitive, looked for aesthetically pleasing rocks, drank some water, checked the sky for thunderclouds, and bade her a polite adieu.

My idea that we try to continue on the road and intersect the highway further on brought us into the midst of a flock of milling sheep, to a wild pig hunting stand decaying in a white stone clearing, and then prudently we wheeled about and went out the way we had come in.  Good grief, the whole adventure was so civilised and comfortable my grandmother could have done it.  Oh, wait, we are our grandparents.