The forgotten Gothic cemetery of Greece (photos)

The truest remnant of Gothic style in Greece is at Nea Chalcedon, near Thessaloniki. The Medieval graveyard of St. Eleoussa church, contains stone Gothic crosses marked with a circle created by the Bogomils, who belonged to a dualist religiopolitical sect that was evident in the Balkans from the 10th-15th centuries. 15-20 Celtic crosses, covered in moss, rise up from the ground to a height of 2 meters. Gaping holes beneath the graveyards are remnants of the looters and gravediggers who passed through the area over previous centuries.

Eleventh-century ecclesiastical writer Euthymius of Acmonia reports of outbreaks of Bogomilism, considered a heresy, in the Greek-speaking lands of Byzantium. Scholars suggest that one of the routes from where Bogomilism entered Greece was through the famous Egnatia road heading from Byzantium through Thrace and Greece to Albania, across the Adriatic Sea to Italy and the West.

Bogomils sent missionaries to western Europe throughout the first half of the twelfth century. These missionaries were an ethnic mixture of Byzantine Greeks and Bulgars.

Bogomils were dualistic and believed that the world was created by the Devil. The term Bogomil is a compound of the Slavid words ofr "god" - Bog amd Mil. They attributed the spiritual part of the world to God and the material part to Satan.

All that remains of them in Greece is this old forgotten cemetery.