Bulgaria, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of
STAMENKA E. ANTONOVA
The Bulgarian state was established in 681 CE by Khan Asparuch (681–700) on the territory of the Roman imperial provinces of Thrace and Illyria to the south of the Danube river. Khan Asparuch was the leader of the Bulgars, who were Turanian nomads originating from Central Asia, who first led his people across the Danube into territory of the Roman Empire, and then established a long line of successors. In addition to the Bulgars, who possessed warlike tendencies and initiated later expeditions and territorial expansions, there were also Slavs who had been gradually immigrating and settling in the same region from the beginning of the 6th century. In spite of the fact that the Slavs were more numerous than the Bulgars, the latter gained hegemony due to their more aggressive policies. In 681 the Byzantine Empire was compelled to negotiate a peace treaty with Khan Asparuch and to legitimize the claims to power and territory by the immigrant population. In spite of the fact that a peace treaty was made, however, the Bulgars continued to pose a challenge to Byzantine authority. In 811 Khan Krum (803–14) defeated and killed the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus I (802–11), after an unsuccessful attempt on the part of the emperor to vanquish the new state. In 813 Khan Krum defeated Emperor Michael I, in addition to sacking the city of Adrianople and advancing as far as the walls of the city of Constantinople. After the sudden death of Kahn Krum, his successors Khan Omurtag (814–31) and Khan Malamir (831–52) agreed terms with the Byzantine Empire, and stopped the expansion of the Bulgar state to the east, turning instead to Macedonia and territories westward.
Although there were pockets of Christians in the new Bulgar state from its inception, they were not only marginal in number but were also suspected by the political leaders as having allegiance to the emperor at Constantinople. In addition to the local Christians (who were indeed under the influence of Byzantine Christian civilization at the time), the Bulgars and the Slavs followed ancestral religious practices and worshipped the sky-god Tengri. Most of the hostile attitude toward Christianity in this era was primarily due to the Bulgars’ fear of Byzantine imperialism and the possibility of strengthening Byzantine influence among the more numerous Slavs. As a result, when Khan Omurtag’s son Enravotas converted to Christianity, he was executed publicly along with others in 833. In order to protect the political and religious integrity of the Bulgar state, Khan Omurtag also formed an alliance with the Frankish Kingdom against Byzantium.
In the 9th century the problem of conversion to Christianity became more pronounced, as a greater number of the Khan’s subjects, including members of the ruling elite, decided to accept the Christian religion. Furthermore, internal divisions along ethnic and religious lines undermined the centralizing efforts of the Bulgars, as well as their ability to conduct diplomatic relations with other states. Although the nominal date of 865 for the conversion of Khan Boris is taken as the marker of the acceptance of Christianity by the Bulgar state, it is clear that long before that time Christian influence was both present and significant among the Bulgars. During the official process of Christianization initiated in 865, Khan Boris faced not merely external problems and challenges, but also internal ones with regard to the ethnic and religious diversity within the state. In spite of concerted efforts to bring about a greater unity, ethnic and cultural divisions between the Slavs and Bulgars persisted and prevented any complete integration of the population. In the unifying force of the Christian religion, Khan Boris perceived the possibility of bringing together the different ethnic groups constituting the population, in order to consolidate and to strengthen the nation. He perceived that in order to achieve diplomatic acceptance and legitimation of the Bulgar state, as well as to convince the majority Slav population to accept Bulgar authority, the best way forward was to introduce Christianity as the official state religion.
With the baptism and conversion of Khan Boris and the Christianization of the Bulgar state, however, the problem of political dependency on the Byzantine Empire came to the fore, as the (feared) Byzantinization process seemed inevitable. Khan Boris and the Bulgarian royal family wanted to maintain the independence of the state from the political and religious hegemony of the Byzantine Empire after the fact of the Christianization of the people. In order to accomplish this purpose, Khan Boris met in 862 with Louis, King of the Franks, with whom Khan Omurtag had formed a political alliance earlier, to discuss military and religious collaboration and to ask for Latin clergy to be sent to teach and convert the Bulgarian people. As a reaction against Khan Boris’s attempt to accept Latin Christianity, Byzantium urged its Christian sympathizers in the state to vanquish the state leader. After being pressed on three sides and stricken with natural disasters of earthquake and famine at the same time, Khan Boris decided to sign a peace treaty. The terms of the agreement stipulated that Bulgaria would terminate its relations with the Franks and accept only Orthodox Christianity from Constantinople. As a result of this treaty, Khan Boris was compelled to accept the faith of the Byzantines and to affirm the overall suzerainty of the Byzantine emperor. Yet, even after this agreement, Khan Boris attempted to appeal to the West, as he feared the political and religious hegemony of the Byzantines, and thus a fierce battle for ecclesiastical jurisdiction ensued for many years afterwards, between Rome and Constantinople, the two greatest, yet competing, centers of Christian evangelization at the time. For a considerable time Khan Boris tried to maneuver between Rome and Constantinople in order to obtain ecclesiastic independence for his nation, but these attempts were denied independently by both Patriarch Photius and Pope Nicholas I. Khan Boris was finally satisfied when the question of Bulgarian ecclesiastic allegiance was formally discussed at a council in 869–70 and it was determined that its jurisdiction should lie with the patriarchate of Constantinople; when it was then also granted an archbishop of its own.
The first major task undertaken by Khan Boris was the baptism of his subjects and for this purpose he appealed for help to Byzantine priests between 864 and 866, after which point he also turned for assistance to Latin priests. Even so, the process of the conversion of the population took much longer than he had imagined. In 885 when the disciples of Cyril and Methodios were expelled from Moravia, they were welcomed in the Bulgarian Khanate and put to the task of baptizing Macedonian Slavs. Although Khan Boris’s efforts were concentrated on the gradual baptism and conversion of the people, he also faced the major problem of educating his subjects and informing them about the basic tenets and the outward forms of Christian faith and worship. Realizing eventually that the complete independence of the Bulgarian Church was out of the question, Khan Boris took steps to increase the number of indigenous clergy towards the end of his rule by sending large numbers of Bulgarians to Constantinople for education. Khan Boris’s own son Simeon was also sent to Constantinople to become a monk in 878 in order to obtain a solid monastic training.
Regardless of the religio-political conflicts, it is clear that by the 9th century Christianity had penetrated to the very center of the Bulgarian state and even into Khan Boris’s own family. Boris’s sister became a convert to Christianity, as did his cousin Khavkhan Petur, who was sent later as an envoy to Rome and to Constantinople. Khan Boris himself abdicated in 889 in order to enter a monastery. It should also be noted that at the same time when Christianity had become more visible and significant, there was also fierce opposition from the upholders of the indigenous religious traditions, some of whom saw conversion to Christianity as a sign of national treason. Khan Boris vanquished a revolt of the boyars in 865 by brutally crushing the rebels in a battle near the capital Pliska and killing fifty-two members of the pagan aristocracy, who were the leaders of the rebellion. Furthermore, with the introduction of the new religion, the khan no longer was content to be primus inter pares among the boyars, but accepted the Byzantine title of prince (tsar/caesar) over them.
MISSIONARY ACTIVITY OF
ST. CONSTANTINE-CYRIL
(CA. 826–869) AND ST. METHODIOS
(815–885)
These two brothers were born in Thessa- lonica and came from a family that was part of the highly educated Byzantine elite. Methodios held a high administrative post of an archon in one of the Slav provinces and later became a monk and an abbot on Mount Olympus. Constantine, the younger brother, who excelled as a scholar, held a chair of philosophy at the University of Constantinople during the 850s. He left his academic post and became ordained as a deacon before joining his brother Constantine on Mount Olympus. Upon the request of the Moravian Prince Rostislav, who expressed the need for teachers to explain to the people the tenets of the Christian faith in their own language, Cyril and Methodios embarked on lengthy missionary activity among the Slavic population. Before departing for Moravia in the autumn of 863, the brothers created an alphabet suitable for the Slavonic language. The success of their mission among the Slavic population in Moravia and elsewhere was due to the fact that they were able to communicate in the Slavonic language and provide written Slavonic translations of the Scriptures and of the liturgy that were instrumental in the training of local clergy. They were sent to Moravia with the blessing of the Byzantine patriarch, but they were supported during their activity there mainly by the Latin Church and only to a limited degree. In fact, the two brothers were ordained by the Latin Church in 868, Cyril as a monk and Methodios as an archbishop of Pannonia. After the death of Cyril in 869, the mission to the Moravian people led by Methodios encountered increasing opposition at the hands of Frankish priests and by the Latin-German clergy, which claimed that only three languages were worthy of expressing God’s word, namely Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. In the course of this struggle between the Byzantine and the Frankish clergy, the activity of the two brothers and their disciples was eventually suppressed and marginalized. After the death of Methodios in 885, their disciples were finally driven out of Moravia and forced to cease their missionary activity to the Slavic people in that territory.
THE SLAVONIC MISSION IN BULGARIA
Kliment, Naum, and Angelarius, three of Cyril and Methodios’ closest disciples, consequently fled from Moravia down the Danube river to Bulgarian territory and were warmly welcomed by Khan Boris. The khan, who had been seeking ways to oppose Byzantine supremacy, perceived the importance of the mission to the Slavonicspeaking population by the followers of Cyril and Methodios. In order to bring the Macedonian Slavs under his rule, who were the most recent converts to Christianity, Khan Boris was at last able to offer to them a Slavonic version of Christianity, thereby being able to unite his subjects by a common Christian faith and a common religious language. The missionaries were instrumental in the conversion and the education of indigenous clergy, as they were able to train many individuals and to multiply greatly the number of Slavonic liturgical and other religious texts. Kliment was especially commissioned by Khan Boris to become the mission leader and teacher of the Slavs and he dedicated the remainder of his life teaching, preaching, and writing in Macedonia. Kliment’s activity as a teacher was both successful and influential in the process of conversion and education of the elite. At this same time, Khan Boris decided to replace Greek with Slavonic as the official language of both the state and the church. By the end of Khan Boris’s rule in 894, when he abdicated his throne and designated his son Simeon as his successor, the mission of Cyril and Methodios’ disciples had produced a large body of Slavonic literature and a considerable number of indigenously trained clergy, thereby strengthening the position of the Christian Church in the Bulgar tsardom and increasing its independence from Byzantium. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the first act of Khan Simeon was to promote Kliment to the rank of metropolitan of the Ohrid diocese in keeping with the political and religious trajectory of his father. By the time of Boris’s death in 907, the Bulgarian Church had clearly evolved substantially from its inception and reflected the agenda for unification and independence that the khan had pursued from the very beginning.
RISE OF BOGOMILISM
After the conversion of the Slavs and Bulgars and the acceptance of Byzantine Christianity by the state, the rise of the dualistic Christian movement known as Bogomilism in the 10th century became important for the development of the Bulgarian Church. This movement gained a wide popular currency and stood in stark opposition to the official church’s hierarchical institutional structures. This dualistic heterodox movement preached the value of poverty, simplicity, and asceticism and came to challenge directly the claims to worldly power and wealth advanced by the church establishment. The Bulgarian priest, Father Bogomil, who is considered to be the originator of the movement, encouraged his disciples to live as monks, to meet for prayer at regular times, to remain celibate, and to abstain from eating meat and drinking alcohol in order to achieve Christian perfection. While other Christians would give up the same things as a temporary ascetic practice of self-discipline, the Bogomils rejected them as being inherently and ontologically evil and therefore incompatible with the Christian life. In contrast to the church’s teaching that God was the creator of the world and the source of perfection and goodness, the Bogomils believed that moral evil, physical suffering, cruelty, decay, and death were the creation of the “Evil One” rather than God, who cannot be the source of any evil. The spread and the success of Bogomilism was also due to the fact that the Cyrillic alphabet was used to great effect for the propagation and popularization of their ideas.
Given the political, economic, and religious circumstances of the 10th century, as is exemplified by the reign of the Bulgarian Tsar Peter (927–69), who made an alliance with the Byzantine Emperor Romanos I Lecapenos and was granted the title of Basileus (King), the heterodox teachings of the Bogomils gained the attention and support of many of the ordinary people. In 925 Tsar Peter was successful in gaining the grant of autocephaly for the Bulgarian Church, after his marriage to Maria Lecapena, the emperor’s granddaughter, and he thereafter followed a strong policy of the Byzantinization of the Bulgarian Kingdom. Byzantine influence was present not only in Peter’s court but also in the Bulgarian Church with respect to music, literature, church architecture and decoration. As the church grew rapidly in wealth and prosperity, there was increasing alienation of the general populace from the expanding power of the ruling elite, which also gave rise to a revolt in the 10th century. In the midst of these new socioeconomic and religio-political circumstances in the Bulgarian state, the popular appeal of Bogomilism as an oppositional movement against the growing authority and prosperity of the Byzantine Church has to be contextualized. In his treatise Against the Bogomils the Bulgarian priest Cosmas suggests that the rise of the heresy can be attributed to the fact that the clergy had not only turned into greedy and wealthy landowners, oppressing the peasantry, but had also exhibited a corruption of morals by widespread vices, such as drunkenness and sloth.
Cosmas criticized the clergy and the monks, complaining that the latter lived worldly lives, reneged on their monastic vows, engaged in financial transactions, and traveled freely under the guise of pilgrimages. From the writings of Cosmas the Presbyter, it seems that the Bulgarian Church had ceased to meet the spiritual and practical aspirations of the population, thus leaving a vacuum in which the Bogomil movement flourished very successfully. In spite of repeated attempts to rid the territory of the Bogomils, the state leaders and the church encountered a strongly rooted following of Bogomilism and were unable to exterminate it. There were periods when it grew or subsided, in accordance with the levels of toleration or opposition shown by the authorities. It was only in 1211, however, that the Council of Turnovo was convened by Tsar Boril in order to legislate officially against Bogomilism, although this movement had already been anathematized long before by both the Byzantine and the Latin churches.
OTTOMAN PERIOD
Bulgaria experienced one of its richest cultural periods during the reign of Tsar Ivan Alexander (1331–71), when numerous churches and monasteries were built, and literary production and religious art flourished in the forms of illuminated manuscripts, icons, and frescoes. Nonetheless, the kingdom devolved, as it was divided into three regional states governed by Tsar Ivan Shishman (1371–93), Ivan Stratismir, the tsar’s half-brother, and Ivanko, a rebel boyar. Unfortunately, the political division and disunity in Bulgaria, coupled with the inability of the other Balkan states to form an alliance against the Ottoman expansion, led to the easy conquest of the Balkan territories. After an unsuccessful attempt by Shishman to check the advance of the Ottomans in the battle of Chernomen, close to Adrianople, in 1371, the Ottomans started a process of the gradual subjugation of all the Bulgarian territories. The Bulgarian Patriarch Evtimi and the ecclesiastic leadership in Turnovo attempted to resist the Ottoman onslaught even after Tsar Ivan Shishman fled from the city, but they were forced to surrender on July 17, 1393. The expulsion of the Bulgarian patriarch from Turnovo marked the end of an independent Bulgarian Church, as well as the complete collapse of the Bulgarian Kingdom. In 1394 Patriarch Anthony IV of Constantinople appointed Metropolitan Jeremias of Moldavia as patriarchal exarch over Turnovo, thus marking the dissolution of the independent Bulgarian patriarchate of Turnovo. By 1369 Bulgaria had succumbed completely to the rule of the Ottoman Empire and lost its political and religious independence for the next five centuries. During the time of Ottoman rule in the Bulgarian territories, the Muslim population increased as a result of (often) coercive conversion to Islam. Although the historical evidence regarding the mass conversion of Christians is inconclusive and complex with respect to the numbers, it is beyond any doubt that the years immediately following the conquest were characterized by the use of violence and torture as methods of Islamicization.
Alongside the political and cultural domination of the Ottomans and the weakening of the Bulgarian Church, the authority of the Greek Church grew ever stronger in the Bulgarian territories during this time. After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Byzantine political influence was effectively ended, but the prerogatives of the Greek Church remained and were amalgamated by the sultans. What this meant for the
Bulgarian Church was that it was directly subjugated to the authority of the patriarch of Constantinople. In 1454 Sultan Mehmet II officially recognized the patriarch of Constantinople as the representative leader (ethnarch) of all Christians in the Ottoman Empire, realizing that offering toleration and limited (heavily taxed) support to the Orthodox Church would serve as a means of opposition to the West and could ensure the loyalty of the Christian populations. In his attempt to demonstrate his support for the Greek Orthodox Church, Sultan Mehmet II granted it jurisdictional powers that it had not possessed even under Byzantine rule. As a result, the patriarch of Constantinople was granted authority in both civil and spiritual matters throughout the entire Christian population of the Ottoman Empire. He assumed a position equivalent to that of an Ottoman vizier. From this time onwards Orthodox Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, and Romanians were all under the jurisdiction of the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, in spite of their differences in language, culture, and tradition. The period of Ottoman rule in Bulgaria, therefore, brought about not merely political and social subjugation by the Ottoman Empire, but also a process of Byzantinization of the Christian Church by the introduction of Greek clergy and Greek language in the church services. It was the time of the great ascendancy of the Phanariots. This systematic campaign of Hellenization undertaken by the Ottoman-era Greek patriarchate, in both ecclesiastical and secular matters, led to the progressive erosion of Bulgarian identity and culture. The Bulgarian populace was subjected to a regime of double taxation by the Ottoman state, on the one hand, and the Greek clergy, on the other, and was increasingly alienated from both hegemonic structures of its foreign domination.
In spite of the strong forces of domination and control, there were a number of attempts to resist the double yoke imposed upon the Bulgarian people during the Ottoman period, especially in the era of the national revival in the 18th and 19th centuries. Paisii of Hilandar (1722–98), a monk on Mount Athos, was the first Bulgarian to write a history during the centuries of Islamic rule and Phanariot dominance. In 1762 he wrote his celebrated work Slavo- Bulgarian History. Paisii was born in Bansko and he entered Hilandar Monastery in 1745, remaining there until 1761, when he moved to the Bulgarian Zographou Monastery on Mount Athos for a period of thirty years. In 1791 he returned to Hilandar Monastery, where he stayed until the end of his life. On Mount Athos Paisii was exposed to new educational and cultural ideas that influenced and shaped him. The Athonite monasteries had virtually become the only independently surviving centers of Balkan Christian spirituality and intellectual formation. In 1753 the Greek reformer Eugenius Bulgaris founded the Athonite Academy where students were able to study secular philosophy and science and become exposed to western ideas. As a result of its establishment, new ideals were propagated among the monastic communities which gave rise in turn to a renewal of national sentiments. Paisii most likely began to work on his book when he became a deputy abbot of Hilandar Monastery in 1760 and was allowed to travel freely and collect information necessary for his research. In his narrative Paisii highlighted major events in Bulgarian history and especially moments of cultural accomplishment and military glory. As he remembered the times of national grandeur, he also pointed to the fact that such acts ofnational self-determination might be possible to achieve in the future as well. Paisii’s patriotic voice not only exposed the fact of the spiritual enslavement of the Bulgarian people, along with their loss of cultural memory, but also provided hope for future generations that a change was indeed not to be ruled out. In his history Paisii identifies both the Greek patriarchate and the Ottoman government as oppressors and as enemies of the Bulgarian people and the idea of national freedom. He provides an intellectual map for future struggle and for the overthrow of the political and religious authorities, rather than hoping for a peaceful conciliation with existing structures. According to Paisii, by getting to know their history and their past, the Bulgarian people could regain their sense of cultural identity and national dignity, and must eventually strive to achieve freedom from foreign oppression. As a result of achieving self-knowledge and acquiring a new-found self-esteem, the Bulgarian intelligentsia and the people at large would be emboldened to believe that they could govern themselves, as they had done in centuries past, and would be able ultimately to achieve independence and self-governance once more. Due to the limited financial resources of the Bulgarian population, Paisii’s book was often copied manually, rather than published in print in the Cyrillic alphabet. His work was circulated widely in manuscript form for more than a century afterwards and became profoundly influential on the Bulgarian national liberation movement of the 19th century.
What Paisii expressed in theory was to a great extent expressed by the life of his contemporary Sofroni of Vratsa (1739–1814), who visited Mount Athos in 1759 and acquainted himself with Paisii’s ideas and writings. Three years later, in 1762, Stoiko Vladislavov of Kotel was ordained as a priest and met with Paisii during the latter’s visit to Kotel. Stoiko
Vladislavov was deeply impressed by Paisii’s Slavo-Bulgarian History and he copied it and made it available at his church. In addition to being under the influence of Paisii’s work, Stoiko Vladislavov was also exposed to Russian ideas that spread in the wake of the Russo-Turkish War (1768–74) encouraging the cause of Bulgarian liberation from Ottoman rule. Many Bulgarians, including members of Stoiko Vladislavov’s parish, decided to volunteer in the Russo-Turkish War, as a result of the promise that Russia made that it would liberate Bulgaria from foreign domination. Yet, after the surrender of the Ottomans in 1774, Russian troops simply withdrew from Bulgarian territory, leaving the Christian population to the mercy of the Turkish Army, who thereafter inflicted a cruel retribution for their insur- gence. During this period of massive devastation of villages in the region, Stoiko left Kotel to visit Mount Athos. His stay on Mount Athos and his communication with Paisii affected him profoundly and inspired him to return to Kotel and to initiate a reform within the church. After going back to Kotel, he began an educational program, whereby he started to teach students to read and write in the vernacular Slavic rather than the standard Greek. His educational activity, social work, and patriotic preaching made him a target for the local Ottoman officials and for the Greek clergy who wanted to punish him for his insubordination. He was sentenced to a period of imprisonment and endured harsh conditions, which he later described in his autobiography. In 1794 Stoiko Vladislavov was ordained as a bishop in the diocese of Vratsa and he took the name Sofroni. The choice of a Bulgarian bishop for this diocese was unusual and was due to the fact that it was unsafe for any Greek, as it was then terrorized by the armed bandits known as kurdzhali, who were disaffected Ottoman troops who had taken over control of many parts of the wilder Ottoman territory. Both Bulgarian and Ottoman sources from the period between 1792 and 1815 attest to the fact that kurdzhali inflicted enormous cruelties on the population and were virtually free to act in any way that they saw fit. In his autobiography Sofroni of Vratsa described the many hardships the kurdzhali inflicted upon his own life, as well as that of others. The lawlessness spoke eloquently of the waning of Ottoman power and served as the spur for the Bulgarian liberation movement. The effect of the Russo-Turkish War and of the kurdzhaliistvo were also such that a wave of emigration occurred in the 1790s and 1820s, when nearly half a million Bulgarians left in order to settle in Romania, Ukraine, and Russia. Sofroni of Vratsa was among those emigrants, after being subject to repeated persecution and imprisonment and being forced to flee Bulgarian territory. Sofroni found security in Bucharest, where he was welcomed by the Bulgarian emigre community. In exile, he composed his autobiographical work entitled The Life and Sufferings of the Sinful Sofroni, where he described in great detail the lived realities of political, economic, and religious oppression in the Bulgarian territories. His autobiography was published in 1806 and was the first printed Bulgarian book, sponsored by Bulgarian merchants living in Bucharest. Between 1806 and 1809 Sofroni of Vratsa continued his educational activity by translating and publishing a number of works into Bulgarian. He also insisted on the importance of publishing books in the vernacular language, rather than only in the old Church Slavonic or Greek, which were accessible to very few. For instance, he not only copied Paisii’s history but also cast the original into a vernacular Bulgarian edition, allowing it to be read more widely. In addition to his literary projects, Sofroni of Vratsa contacted the Russian authorities on the issue of cooperation between the two peoples. After the third Russo-Turkish War (1806–12) broke out, Sofroni sent a letter to the Russian government pleading for the liberation of Bulgaria by the Russian Army. The role of Sofroni of Vratsa in the actualization of the ideas for national self-determination and independence articulated by Paisii of Hilandar cannot be overestimated.
BULGARIAN CULTURAL RENAISSANCE
After the abolition of the Bulgarian patriarchate, in the period between the 14th and the 18th centuries, there were significant changes that occurred in the church as a result of the Ottoman conquest. In the 14th century there was a massive loss of monastic institutions, which had served as centers of intellectual and educational activity, and scholars were either killed or deported abroad. In the second half of the 15th century, however, there was a gradual revival of Bulgarian education in the form of “cell schools” throughout the Balkans. This was the only kind of education offered to Bulgarian Christians and they were primarily found in monasteries and churches, as well as private homes, and the teachers were usually monks or priests. The existence of cell schools for the best part of three centuries contributed to the continuation of Christian religious education among the people and it is not surprising, therefore, that the number and popularity of such schools increased over time. The curriculum was based on religious texts, such as the Psalter, the gospels, and the Book of Hours, along with other church literature. Fundamentally, the cell schools, which were small in size, followed a medieval model of religious and scholastic training and most of the students were prepared to become priests or monks.
Additionally, they served as centers of both social activity and spiritual restoration during this era. With the expansion of cell schools in the 18th century, there began to be a felt need for higher and for secular education, which could be obtained only in other parts of the Ottoman Empire and was accessible to only very few Bulgarians. It was precisely in the context of secular schools abroad, however, that new western ideas of the European Enlightenment were introduced among the Bulgarian intellectuals and where the national revival movement began in the second half of the 18th century. The educational model of secular schools inspired many Bulgarians, as it offered an alternative to the Greek versions which propagated the idea of Hellenic superiority and suppressed local nationalist ideas. In the beginning of the 19th century new schools began to be created that affected a reform in the Bulgarian educational system and were instrumental for the deeper cultural and spiritual revival of Bulgaria. The existence of these schools was partly due to the rise of a patriotic class of wealthy businessmen and merchants who supported the reform of traditional education and also sponsored the creation of new buildings. In the midst of this educational reform emerged individuals such as Vassil Aprilov, Ilarion Makariopolski, Georgy Rakovski, and Peter Beron, among many others, who also became the leaders of the movement for Bulgarian religious and political independence.
SECOND BULGARIAN ECCLESIASTIC INDEPENDENCE
The struggle for an independent Bulgarian Church became particularly acute in the 19th century as a result of the activity of the new intelligentsia which had been exposed to both western, non-Greek, educational models and to Russian ideas of a pan-Slavic alliance. In 1844 Neofit Bozveli, who had been exiled from the Greek patriarchate at Turnovo and forced to go back to Mount Athos, along with Ilarion Makariopolski, who was ordained in the Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos, presented an official petition to the Ottoman authorities demanding that the Bulgarian Christians be given rights to elect Bulgarian bishops to their eparchies, as well as asking for permission to publish newspapers in the Bulgarian language and to extend the Bulgarian network of schools. Furthermore, the petition stipulated, there must be established a mixed system of law courts in Bulgaria, so as to protect Bulgarians from Greek hegemony. In addition, the petition requested permission to form a purely Bulgarian delegation which would henceforth represent Bulgarian interests to the Sublime Porte, altogether independently of the Greek patriarchate. In spite of the initial interest of the Ottoman authorities to consider these demands, the pressure from the patriarchate and the fear of the anti-Greek activities of Bozveli and Makariopolski annulled their early efforts for gaining independence.
The Bulgarian movement for ecclesiastic independence was also supported by Russia, especially as it expanded its economic, territorial, and political foothold in the Ottoman Empire with the victory of the fourth Russo-Turkish War (1828–9). Russia signed treaties with the Ottomans and was recognized officially as the protector of Christians within the Ottoman Empire. Imperial Russia emphasized its kinship with the old Byzantium and argued its right to oversee and protect all Christians, not only Slavs, who lay under the yoke of Ottoman dominion. In 1865, with the intervention of the Russian ambassador Nikolai Ignatiev, Patriarch Sophronius III (1863–6) promised the leaders of the Bulgarian Church movement that he would henceforward strive to replace Greek bishops with Bulgarian ones, even though he refused the demand for a permanent representation on the patriarchal synod. After the resignation of Sophronius III, Patriarch Gregory VI (1867–71) was more open to negotiate with the Russian ambassador and the Bulgarian Church leadership, and he approved the proposal for the creation of an independent Bulgarian exarchate in the Danube Vilayet. This proposal, however, was met with strong opposition both by Greek Phanariots and the Ottoman authorities, on the one hand, and, on the other, by some Bulgarian leaders who considered Ohrid to be the proper center of the Bulgarian Church and caused a division within the Bulgarian community on this significant issue. As a result of consultations that were arranged by Ambassador Ignatiev between the moderate Bulgarian faction and Patriarch Gregory VI, a compromise was finally reached in 1868. On March 12, 1870 the Ottoman government issued a Firman authorizing the establishment of a separate Bulgarian Church, which would not be completely autocephalous, but which was recognized as an exarchate subordinated to the ecumenical patriarch in spiritual matters, while being fully independent in matters of internal administration. The establishment of a Bulgarian exarchate necessitated the creation of a church synod and an administrative council. On March 13, 1870, therefore, the bishops and the most eminent Bulgarians in Constantinople decided to elect ten lay people and five bishops to the Temporary Council, without making a formal distinction (in terms of membership) between lay people and clergy, as the two groups were equally influential in shaping the reformed Bulgarian Church. The National Church Council opened in 1871 under the leadership of
Bishop Ilarion of Lovech and was composed of fifty Bulgarians (eleven clergy and thirty- nine laity), who represented every Bulgarian community. In 1872 the National Council elected as Exarch Antim I, the former metropolitan of Vidin, who soon afterwards obtained official recognition from the sultan in Constantinople. The exarchate constituted a legal institution which allowed the first official representation of the Bulgarian people at the Sublime Porte. Nonetheless, the new Constantinopolitan Patriarch Anthimus refused to approve of the appointment of Antim I as exarch, and went on to denounce the exarchate as schismatic on September 16, 1872. The pronouncement of schism by the ecumenical patriarch actually confirmed to all the Bulgarians involved that church independence could only be achieved as a result of political independence gained by means of revolutionary uprising. The Bulgarian revolutionary movement had already been underway with the activity of prominent figures such as Georgy Rakovski (1821–67) and Vassil Levski (1837–73). The April Uprising of 1876 was one of the more significant attempts to overthrow the Ottoman rule, although it was devastatingly crushed. Exarch Antim I intervened in the revolt, instructing the clergy to be loyal to the sultan and to preach cooperation with the Ottoman government. The brutal suppression of the uprising, however, drew international attention to the predicament of the Bulgarian Orthodox and made it clear to all observers that peaceful coexistence under Ottoman rule was impossible to maintain. Compelled to rethink their strategy, the church’s exarchate made changes to its policies between the time following the April Uprising (1876) and the War of Liberation (1878), chiefly as a result of seeing the massive destruction inflicted on the people after the revolt. In 1877 the new Exarch Josef I was elected after the retirement of Antim I. When the Russian Army crossed the Danube on June 15, 1878, the actual liberation of Bulgaria had effectively begun, and the continuing anxiety of the exarchate to appease the sultans was rendered obsolete. After the Russian Army marched through San Stefano, a town less than 7 miles from Constantinople, the Sublime Porte pleaded for peace, resulting in the signing of the San Stefano Peace Treaty on February 19, 1878. The treaty between the Ottomans and the Russian Tsar Alexander II was viewed very unfavorably by the European powers, who perceived the expansion of a Russian sphere of influence in the Balkans and the creation of a Bulgarian independent state as a potential threat to the stability of the region. All interested parties met at the Congress of Berlin in June 1878 and agreed to reduce drastically the territory given to the Bulgarian state (from 176,000 to 96,000 sq. km.) in order to decrease its dominance in the Balkan peninsula. This agreement forced on them by the Great Powers came as a deep disappointment to the newly liberated Bulgarian people.
BULGARIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH, 1878–1948
The creation of the Bulgarian state in 1878 started a process of a highly complex relationship between the church and the state. It was decided that the exarchate and the holy synod would operate as two independent entities, the former remaining in Constantinople and the latter based in Sofia, where there was established a representation of the exarchate. An added complication was the fact that after the Berlin settlement, the Bulgarian synod lost ecclesiastic jurisdiction over Bulgarians outside the principality and it lamented that more Bulgarian Christians were living outside the borders of the state than within. The exarch ruled the remaining church territories with the help of a separate synod of metropolitans from Rumelia, Macedonia, and Thrace appointed in accordance with Ottoman law. Consequently, the leadership of the Bulgarian Church was divided into two different political regions and functioned under two systems of laws.
In 1879 the Bulgarian National Assembly conferred the title Prince of Bulgaria upon Alexander, who had served as an officer in the Russian Army during the War of Liberation. He accepted the title, even though he considered the newly drafted Bulgarian constitution to be too liberal and to grant him too little power. This choice of Alexander was opposed by the Russian Tsar Alexander III, who had political ambitions of his own in Bulgaria; a stand-off that resulted in a deteriorating relationship between the two states. The fault lines of this reflected internal divisions within Bulgarian society between Russophiles, who embraced pro-Russian, pro-Slavic, and anti-western ideology maintaining that Russia was the protector of Eastern Orthodoxy, and Russophobes, who saw the Russian religious and political system as backward feudalism. Even so, the longstanding connections with Russia that had been strengthened by the missionary activity of the Moscow Slavonic Charitable Committee in the years before the liberation, from 1858 to 1876, as well as by the military assistance the Russian Army gave in the Liberation War itself, persisted and remained influential in Bulgarian society.
In spite of later efforts to overthrow Ottoman rule and to reunify the Bulgarian territories in Macedonia and Thrace during the Serbian-Bulgarian War in 1885 and the Ilinden Uprising in 1903, the integrity of the state as outlined in the San Stefano Peace agreement was not achieved. Furthermore, in the period between 1912 and 1945, Bulgaria was involved in three Balkan wars and two world wars, all of which did not end favorably for the country and came at a high cost for the Bulgarian population. Whereas the separation of church and state was firmly established and the secular government had complete control over internal affairs and military alliances, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was granted a preferential position and exerted significant influence in the larger society. For example, when the Bulgarian government signed a treaty with Hitler’s regime and allowed access to German troops in Bulgaria proper and in the newly annexed territories in Macedonia, the deportation of Jews from the Bulgarian territories was opposed by the church authorities, whereas the deportation of Jews from Thrace and Macedonia went on unchecked. The metropolitan of Sofia, at this time, solemnly warned the Bulgarian king that God was observing his every action, while the metropolitan of Plovdiv directly contacted the Bulgarian government in order to intercede for the Bulgarian Jews targeted in Plovdiv, threatening that he would lie down on the railway track in front of the trains attempting to deport any Jews. On the major Christian holiday of Sts. Cyril and Methodios on May 24, 1943, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church organized a large public demonstration against the government’s anti-Jewish policies. No similar attempts were made to save the Jews of Macedonia and Thrace, which involved the death of over 20,000 people.
COMMUNIST REGIME, 1944–1989
The Soviet Red Army entered Bulgaria on September 8, 1944 in order to crush the German forces there and to inaugurate a new political regime, which further distanced the Bulgarian Orthodox Church from the state and undermined its position in Bulgarian society dramatically. The new
Bulgarian government which was established with the help of the Soviets embraced atheistic and materialistic ideology and opposed claims for any public expression or societal influence by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. In the aftermath of the successful communist coup d’etat on September 9, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and its clergy were accused of being fascist sympathizers and enemies of the new state regime. Many members of the clergy, as well as of the intellectual elite, were imprisoned and killed during the process of purging the state. They were charged with collaboration with the fascists and a great number of church buildings and monasteries were destroyed outright.
After the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty in 1947, a totalitarian one-party communist system was solidified in the country under the leadership of Georgy Dimitrov, who was inspired by the Stalinist model of political regime marked by the radical separation of church and state. In 1945 Exarch Stefan was elected as the new leader of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church with the approval of the Russian Orthodox Church and was later appointed as the chair of the holy synod, after the resignation of Metropolitan Neofit of Vidin. In the years following 1949, when members of the clergy were legally required to pledge allegiance to the communist regime, relations between the Bulgarian and Russian Orthodox Church became much more pronounced. In 1944 religious instruction was legally banned from the Bulgarian school system by an act of the ministry of education, despite the opposition expressed by Exarch Stefan in an official letter to the prime minister. There were several subsequent waves of repression initiated against the clergy between 1944 and 1953, when anti-fascist purges were undertaken and public trials were staged by Dimitrov’s government for the sake offurther marginalizing the church and spreading communist propaganda. Following an increased and intrusive surveillance of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Exarch Stefan was forced to “retire” in 1948, after being classed as an enemy of the Communist Party.
In spite of the fact that the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was constantly targeted by the communist regime, the government decided to support the proposal of the holy synod for the restoration of patriarchal status and title in 1953. The decision to reinstate the Bulgarian patriarchate was a purely political act, which was recognized universally by 1961, for it did not reflect any strengthening of the church’s institutions; indeed, the church remained at this time completely subordinated to its hostile communist government. In the years following the introduction of the patriarchate (at first denounced by Constantinople as canonically illegitimate) and the election of Kiril as the new patriarch in 1953, the cooperation between the Communist Party and the Orthodox Church grew to such an extent that the Bulgarian Orthodox Church virtually became one of the instruments of communist control and propaganda. After the death of Kiril in 1971, Maxim Metropolitan of Lovech was appointed as the patriarch with the approval of the Communist Party and he too followed the model of subservient cooperation adopted by his predecessor. In an effort to ensure the continued existence of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church during the communist period, its leadership and clergy accepted that it was a legitimate role of the church to propound socialist and nationalist ideas in alignment with the official state policy.
DEMOCRATIC PERIOD AFTER 1989
After the demise of the communist system in Bulgaria in 1989, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church gained greater visibility after a long period of marginalization and subordination. The new democratic regime allowed freedom of religious expression, which had been suppressed before, a policy that was at the time met with enthusiasm and which led to a gradual revival of religious life in Bulgaria. However, the major obstacle for the restoration of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church to its previous position of importance as a religious and a cultural force in wider society was its large-scale infiltration during the communist period and its forced collaboration with the Communist Party. The many compromises that generations of church authorities had reached with the communist regime in order to secure its existence (albeit a very peripheral one) had undermined its intellectual credibility and its moral standing in society. Furthermore, the situation was exacerbated when a dissenting faction from within the church led by Christopher Subev, a member of the clergy and a prominent political figure in the coalition of the United Democratic Front, demanded the resignation of the incumbent Bulgarian Patriarch Maxim and initiated a schism within the church. In 1991 a new democratic government was elected and Christopher Subev was appointed as a chairman to the Commission for Religious Affairs. Subev and his supporters sought to eliminate the holy synod and the patriarch as a punishment for their involvement with, and acquiescence to, the communist regime. In 1992 the government released an official statement declaring that the election of Patriarch Maxim in 1971 had been in breach of the statutes of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and thus he had to be removed from his post and replaced by another person. This statement was supported by four Bulgarian metropolitans: Pimen of Nevrokop, Pankrati of Stara Zagora, Kalanik of Vratsa, and Stefan of Veliko Turnovo. Pimen, Pankrati, and Kalanik proclaimed that they now constituted the legitimate holy synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, and were joined by five other bishops and by Christopher Subev. On May 25, 1992 the newly founded holy synod appointed Pimen as the new patriarch and de facto led to the creation of a schism within the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, now with two rival patriarchs and two synods vying for control of the church. The conflict and opposition between the two patriarchs and their followers led to major conflicts over the correct disposition of church funds and property, to violent actions on both sides, and to severe erosion of the authority of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church both domestically and internationally. Later, in 2004, the police, with the sanction of the office of the supreme prosecutor, tried to enforce violently the reunification of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church under Patriarch Maxim and it entered church buildings in order to remove dissident clergy, who were replaced by new priests. In the face of the fierce struggle for legitimation between the two synods, the general public and the laity have become generally disillusioned with the institution of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, as well as the two opponent political parties that came to support the two opposing synods. Instead, the people have tended to focus their efforts on initiatives such as the Pokrov Foundation, that are based primarily on the lay people, rather than relying on the clergy and monastics. To this day, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church is still trying to rid itself of the specter of the communist period and to reenvision its role in a democratic and pluralistic modern society, which poses new challenges for its transition and future development. Of all the Orthodox countries which lay under the communist yoke, Bulgaria has perhaps had the hardest transition, and still struggles to find a new and inspiring role and mission in the wider society.
SEE ALSO: Constantinople, Patriarchate of; Russia, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of
REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Hopkins, J. L. (2009) The Bulgarian Orthodox Church: A Socio-Historical Analysis of the Evolving Relationship Between Church, Nation and State in Bulgaria. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kalakandjieva, D. (2002) The Bulgarian Orthodox Church and “People’s Democracy” 1944–1953. Silistra: Demos Press.
MacDermott, M. (1982) History of Bulgaria 1393–1885. London: Jessica Kingsley.
Obolensky, D. (1971) The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe 500–1453. London: Phoenix Press.
Simeonova, L. (1998) Diplomacy of the Letter and the Cross: Photius, Bulgaria and the Papacy. Amsterdam: A. M. Hakkert.
Todorov, G. (2003) Bulgaria, Orthodoxy, History.
Sofia: Foundation St. Prince Boris Press. Todorov, T. (1999) The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria’s Jews Survived the Holocaust. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Todorova, O. (1987) The Orthodox Church and the Bulgarian Nation through the 15th-third quarter of the 18th Century. Sofia.
Zeiller, J. (1918) Les Origines chretiennes dans les provinces danubienne. Paris: Boccard.