This book might be described as a light-house rising above the ocean of recent Balkan books, warning navigators (military, political, humanitarian) of hidden dangers. Not that the Orthodox Church is ever concealed from view, as an institution, in those lands where it predominates; but the extent and nature of its present influence is not always obvious to commentators from a secular background. To many it seems essentially irrelevant - a quaint, colourful relic of times past which, having somehow survived the Communist era, is to be vaguely admired despite its funny superstitions and unfunny displays of bigotry.
In contrast, Victoria Clark views Orthodoxy, at the beginning of Christianity's third millennium, as a potent force for good or evil - the good flowing from Hesychasm, the evil from Phyletism. She defines Hesychasm (from the Greek "hesychia", meaning inner silence) as a mystic tradition which encourages "true believers to struggle to experience the energies of God by seeing the Light . . . by a form of meditation with breathing exercise". Phyletism, she explains, also has its roots in Greece - "The Greeks, grown fearfully nationalist in their doomed Byzantine Empire after 1204, had been the first to fall into that heresy. They had shown the Balkan Orthodox peoples how to mix their ethnic politics with religion in that lethal way. But then the Greeks might never have grown so defensively exclusive had the Fourth Crusaders never paid their capital a visit." (Victoria Clark's anachronisms will grate on some readers.)
Why Angels Fall was inspired by the author's experiences as an Observer reporter (1990-96) in Romania, the former Yugoslavia and Russia. When a Russian monk wondered why she was writing a book about a religion she did not believe in, she told him: "I like all these countries very much and, after living in three of them for the best part of a decade, I am convinced that they cannot be properly appreciated or understood without taking Orthodoxy and all that it entails into account."
Much of this book is breezily-written pop history; each chapter provides entertaining information about the evolution of Orthodoxy in Byzantium, Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Cyprus, Romania, Russia and modern Greece - all regions visited by Victoria Clark during 1998-99. Also, by recording the opinions and attitudes of various nuns, priests and monks met en route, she conveys some of the spiritual, emotional and mental confusion of post-Cold War Orthodoxy. In general, however, she seems less at ease when writing about the present. While touring Cypriot monasteries during the 1999 Eastertide she was taken aback by the Greeks' anti-NATO stance. Yet here one doesn't have to dwell on any ancient Orthodox "persecution complex" or "1054 scar"; the West's political meddling in 20th-century Greece sufficiently explains that stance. In 1944 the British occupied Athens, and during the subsequent civil war (1946-49) a ruthless far-right monarchy received lavish support from Anglo-American sources. In 1967 Washington smiled on the infamous Colonels' seizure of power. And in 1974 Turkey's partition of Cyprus was accepted by the West.
The light-house value of Why Angels Fall is limited by Clark's deference to Samuel P. Huntington. This emerges in the section on Greece, when she tells us: "I had been interested to find that Professor Samuel Huntingon seemed to have rationalised my hunch that Orthodox countries of Europe constitute a world of their own, distinct from our Western one, on account of their Orthodox culture. I had found his argument, that the wars of the near future would be fought over civilisation borders rather than national, ideological or economic ones, very persuasive."
Professor Huntington is an academic Cold Warrior who did his bit for the Pentagon in 1993 when it was urgently necessary to manufacture reasons for NATO's failure to follow the Warsaw Pact into oblivion. The militaristic West craved new enemies and Samuel P. issued a grim warning about imminent "clashes of civilisations", including "the cultural division of Europe between Western Christianity, on the one hand, and Orthodox Christianity and Islam, on the other". Victoria Clark does not quote his ludicrous vision of a Chinese-Iranian anti-Western alliance, a "Confucian-Islamic connection that has emerged to challenge Western interests, values and power." Nor does she mention his more sensible comments - relevant to her thesis - when he sides with those numerous retired American diplomats and politicians who questioned the wisdom of the Albright-led Bomber Boys. In a Foreign Affairs article he pointed out that: "The core state of a civilisation can better maintain order among the members of its extended family than an outsider". In other words, Russia should not have been thwarted in its pre-airwar efforts to negotiate with Belgrade. No wonder the Romanian Metropolitan Daniel told Victoria Clark - "The Russians love Huntington's book because they see a role for themselves as the boss of his so-called Orthodox bloc."
The Gulf between Eastern and Western Christianity, as measured by Victoria Clark (an English non-practising Roman Catholic who believes in God) may seem less wide and deep to readers who come from an Irish Catholic background. (What about all our moving statues?) References to "the West's preference for the rigorous logic of Aristotle and the East's for the more essentially mystical and speculative teachings of Plato" point towards the elevated plateaux inhabited by theologians and philosophers. But down in the valleys, where most of us live, there seems little difference in feeling between a crowd of Orthodox pilgrims gathered in some Moldavian monastery and a crowd of Irish pilgrims drawn to Herzegovina by that lucrative Franciscan-run operation known as Medugorje. There, a Catholic equivalent of Phyletism exacerbates the regional tensions, and the internecine clerical warfare is as disedifying in its way as the recent row between Patriarch Bartholomaios of Constantinople and Patriarch Alexy of Russia - both claiming to lead the Orthodox world.
Let Patriarch Bartholomaios have the last word. When asked by Victoria Clark if he agreed that the wars in former Yugoslavia had "dangerously re-accentuated the division of Europe down the 1054 Schism line, His All Holiness replied: "This perception is not based on a thorough analysis of the facts".
Dervla Murphy has recently returned from a four-month journey through the Balkans and is now writing a Balkan book