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’sHistory 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 inBalkanski 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 fromTsarigrad. 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.