There is no data available whether representatives from Macedonia attended the
First Ecumenical Synod of Nicea in 325. However, the Second Synod at Serdica in
343 was attended by Parigorius, the first Metropolitan of Skopje, and his
suffragan the Bishop of Ulpiana (present-day Liplyan); both supported Orthodoxy.
The presence of Parigorius proves that there were organized bishoprics in
Macedonia headed by metropolitans and bishops since the first decades of the 4th
century. In the 5th century the church
in Macedonia was well-organized. Of the two metropolitan's dioceses in Salonika
(Thessaloniki) and Skopje, the diocese in Thessaloniki was more influential due
to its foundation by the Apostle Paul.
The settlement of Slavs in the Balkans, their Christianization and the
development of Slavic liturgy and literacy gave a completely new quality to the
development of the church in Macedonia. Prince Boris, after the establishment of
the Bulgarian state incorporating a part of Macedonia, ordained Clement as
Bishop of Dremvica and Velika (893) with a residence in Ohrid, wherein Clement
became the first Macedonian-Slavic bishop. The religious service in his
bishopric was, of course, held in the language of the Macedonian Slavs, and
Ohrid became an educational, literary and a church center. Branko Panov is of
the opinion that, nevertheless, the center of Clement's bishopric was located at
some distance from Ohrid, because in his Extensive Hagiography Theophylact of
Ohrid writes "Clement used to return from Velika to Ohrid to see for himself
whether the inhabitants on earth are strong in spirit and whether they resist
the fear of God... being at peace in his communication with God in the
monastery, the beauty of which he loved and longed for when he was away from
it."
With the establishment of Samoil's state, the necessity for an independent
Macedonian church became imperative. Until the time of Samoil, the church in
Macedonia had been under the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Patriarchate founded
by Tsar Symeon without the approval of the Ecumenical Patriarch of
Constantinople. At that time eparchies are recorded as existing in the
Macedonian towns of Voden, Meglen, Serres,
Ohrid and
Skopje. The success of the komitopulis' uprising and the wresting of Macedonia away from Byzantine rule
(the Bulgarian Empire had fallen in the meantime) demanded that ecclesiastical
authority be independent of Byzantine authority and lie close to the secular
authority of
Samoil, both geographically and ideologically. The center of the church
moved to Prespa on the island of Achilles, where Samoil built a magnificent
church to house it. The relics of St. Achilles were brought from Larissa, which
Samoil conquered in 985.
There is no concrete data as to when Samoil
created an autonomous Macedonian archbishopric. Logically, it is most likely
that he would begin such immediately after proclaiming himself tsar, which
suggests the late 10th century. When he transferred his capital from Prespa to
Ohrid, he likewise moved the residence of the archbishopric, known hereafter as
the Archbishopric of Ohrid.
Durnovo, in his study Do the Bulgarians have Historical Rights over Macedonian
Thrace and Old Serbia? writes that it should be recognized that Ohrid was the
capital of Samoil's Slavic-Macedonian empire, and although the empire was
labeled as Bulgarian it had nothing in common with the former Bulgarian Empire
on the other side of the Danube River. The Macedonian Empire was established
"... after the Bulgarians were expelled from Macedonia and it possessed its own
separate dynasty and bishops". As Samoil's empire expanded, the jurisdiction of
his church was extended as well. The first archbishop of the Archbishopric of
Ohrid was Philip, who retained this position from its foundation until the
murder of Gavrilo Radomir in 1015. When Ivan Vladislav took the throne, Philip
was dismissed from his post.
Samoil's church
did not differ from other eastern churches-it enjoyed all the typical feudal
privileges, with estates at its disposal, pareikos (serfs) to cultivate its land
and exemption from various dues and taxes. Samoil favored the high clergy to a
greater and more pronounced degree than other secular feudal lords. "The
independent Macedonian Orthodox Church in
Samoil's Macedonian State had the
final say in the whole of spiritual and educational life, it regulated legal and
family relations and united the people under the symbol of its name, in the
spirit of the widely-accepted medieval principle of unity between church and
state, in accordance with the apostolic theory that there is no power other than
that of God", emphasizes Lidija Slaveska. Secular rights, courts and legislation
were the three basic functions of the state, but these were effected by the
church as well, as it was organized as an independent social community.
In the history of the Macedonian people, Samoil's state and the Archbishopric of
Ohrid played another crucial role. Samoil introduced the language of the
Macedonian Slavs to state administration, while the church acknowledged
Macedonian as well-not surprising, considering it was the language of
Sts.
Cyril and Methodius and their disciples
St. Clement and St. Naum. The raising of Macedonian to the level of an
administrative and ecclesiastic language encouraged the standardization of
dialectal forms.
As Samoil's state shrank in
later years, the eparchies in areas now outside its borders broke their ties to
Ohrid. Consequently, towards the end of Samoil's empire the Archbishopric of
Ohrid exercised its power only in Macedonia, where both the clergy and the
people belonged to the same ethnos-the Macedonian. The formation of the
Macedonian Slavs as a nation was accelerated by the fact that Macedonia was the
basic core of Samoil's state and the Macedonian Slavs its core population.
Therefore, Archbishop of Ohrid and Skopje and Metropolitan of Macedonia, his
Holiness Dositey, was correct in stating that "There is no need to put a
particular emphasis on the fact that the Archbishopric of Ohrid, and later the
memory of it, was the only source of Macedonian national awareness."
It is significant that Basil II, after the destruction of Samoil's state,
allowed Samoil's church to remain autocephalous-separating the archbishopric
from the authority of the Bulgarians. In 1142, on the subject of the five
eastern patriarchal thrones Nil Doxopatria wrote that the Bulgarian church, like
the one in Cyprus, was autocephalous and had never been subordinated to any of
the patriarchies. It was an independent church administered by its own
archbishops. He also added: "In the distant past this church was not Bulgarian,
but it became so later on, when it was taken over by the Bulgarians and when it
was named Bulgarian." But Basil II did not subjugate the archbishopric to the
Constantinople Patriarchate. Byzantine sources prove that an instrument was
thereby created for cultural and ideological influence on the Slavic population
in the conquered areas while at the same time the emperor avoided increasing the
power of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Branko Panov holds a similar view. Panov, in studying the life of Archbishop
Theophylact, the most passionate of the preachers of Graecism on Macedonian
territory, arrives at the conclusion that the role of the Archbishopric of Ohrid
under Byzantine rule-from the 12th century to the 15th-states that "The essence
of the autocephaly of the Archbishopric of Ohrid lay in the fact that the
Archbishop of Ohrid was entitled to govern the subordinated eparchies himself
[at the time of Samoil there were 32, later 25, with a continual reduction in
the number], where he implemented Byzantine ecclesiastic and state policy. All
this proves that the Archbishop of Ohrid was independent in respect the
governance of subordinated churches of the Ohrid archbishopric; but this did not
imply in respect to Byzantine state and church authorities."
Panov's thesis is part of a more comprehensive and accepted scholarly school
arguing that, in addition to Theophylact, many of his Greek predecessors and
successors linked the independence of the Archbishopric of Ohrid to the
independence of the Archbishopric of Justiniana Prima, established in 535.
Emperor Justinian I (527-565) was born in the village of Taurision near
Scupi.
At his birthplace he built the town of Justiniana Prima, and by a law enacted
April 14, 535, divided the region of Eastern Illyricum into two ecclesiastic
regions: he left the southern part to the Archbishop of Salonica (Thessaloniki), while
establishing the northern region as an independent archbishopric and raising the
Metropolitan of Scupi to the level of an autocephalous archbishop. The
Archbishopric of Justiniana Prima included the provinces of Dacia Prima
(present-day Serbia) including the town of Vidin; Mediterranean Dacia including
the town of Serdica (Sofia); Dardania and Praevalitana including the town of
Skadar (Skutari); the northern part of Macedonia Secundus including the town of
Vilazar (Veles) and part of Pannonia Prima including Sirmium (Sremska
Mitrovica) and Taurunum (Zemun). In 545, Justinian I subjugated Justiniana Prima
to the Pope of Rome and from that time forward its archbishops were subordinate
to Rome, as noted by Slavko Dimevski. The Greeks archbishops defended the
autocephaly of the Archbishopric of Ohrid not because they wished to preserve it
as a Slavic church, but to have a free hand in their broadly conceived program
of Hellenizing its Slavic congregation.
In the beginning, the relationship between the Ohrid archbishopric and
Patriarchate of Constantinople were cordial enough Archbishop of Ohrid Paisius
even conducted the Synod in Constantinople in 1565, when Patriarch Joasaph was
accused of immonia. One sign of mutual respect was the act passed at the Edirne
(a city in European Turkey)
Council of May 1697, whereby the leading officials of the Archbishopric of Ohrid,
the Patriarchate of Pech and the Bishopric of Cyprus were proclaimed "the
respected three", equal by law to "God's proclaimed four patriarchates."
However, the weaker the Archbishopric of Ohrid grew, the more intense the
ambition of the Patriarchate of Constantinople to subjugate it and the territory
of its diocese. The intrigues of the patriarchate in time became part of its
relations towards its sister church, and during periods of cool Austro-Ottoman
or Russo-Ottoman relations this was manifested by constant suggestions to the
sultan that the archbishopric was a tool of Rome, Vienna or Moscow.
Disagreements within the archbishopric itself were to the advantage of the
Patriarchate of Constantinople.
The break
between the two came with the appointment of Ananias, protosingel of Patriarch
Ioannikios III the Karatzas, as Archbishop of Ohrid. This was an organized and
unprecedented move made with the sultan's blessing: the patriarchate, despite
the independence of the Ohrid archbishopric, granted the right of appointment of
the Archbishop of Ohrid to a group of six to seven archpriests who, at the time,
were in the Archbishopric of Constantinople and inclined towards Greek
domination of the church. The action of appointing a new archbishop to the
vacant position was, in fact, initiated by Graecophile colonists from the Ohrid
diocese in the Turkish capital. While formal appointment was effected, Ananias
was not accepted by the people of Ohrid and the archbishopric did not recognize
the new appointment. Expelling Ananias from Ohrid was the last success achieved
by church autonomists in Ohrid-by bribing Turkish officials and supporters of
the Greek cause among the high clergy of the archbishopric, the patriarchate
detached diocese after diocese from it. Finally, on January 16, 1767, Archbishop
Arsenius resigned "voluntarily," saying that "...owing to an inability to put in
order and satisfy the needs of the Archbishopric of Ohrid, which arose before us
one after the other..." he would resign. Dismissed from his post as archbishop,
Arsenius was appointed as Metropolitan of the Eparchy of Pelagonia, but on June
24, 1767, he was driven from there as well, "voluntarily" resigning again.
Immediately after deposing Arsenius as archbishop, Patriarch Samoil Chanjeri
obtained from Sultan Mustafa III an irade (decree) whereby the Archbishopric of
Ohrid was abolished and the eparchies included within the patriarchate. The
irade furthermore left the inhabitants of these eparchies with no right of
complaint against such a decision. In order to obliterate the archbishopric
totally, Constantinople abolished the Eparchy of Ohrid itself, transferring the
regional seat of ecclesiastical power to Durres and renaming the eparchy the
Eparchy of Durres. The name of Ohrid itself was changed to
Lychnidos, with the
aim of wiping out anything reminiscent of the Archbishopric of Ohrid. After 800
years Ohrid was abolished both as center of an autocephalous church and as
residence of an archbishop, despite the fact that it had occupied that position
since the first decades after Christianity had come to the Balkans. Expressing
its gratitude to the sultan, on May 15, 1767, the Patriarchal Synod passed an
act where it "explained" the reasons for abolishing the Archbishopric. As with
the Patriarchate of Pech, abolished a year earlier, it was alleged that the
Archbishopric of Ohrid had been illegally established and non-canonically
separated from the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Hence, the sultan's edict, whereby
the archbishopric was eliminated, was both canonical and "just." Slavko Dimevski
notes that even the edict to abolish the archbishopric by the Ottoman Sultan, a
sworn enemy of Christianity, was not as cruel as the decision made by the
patriarchate to obliterate the existence of the Archbishopric of Ohrid.
After achieving its main objective in the abolishment of the Ohrid
archbishopric, the Patriarchate of Constantinople took steps to destroy Slavic
spiritual and ecclesiastic life in Macedonia and to impose the laws and customs
of the Greek church. The first target of course was the Slavonic religious
service; clergy were generally replaced by Greeks and graecomans despite the
resistance of congregations soon emerged in
Bitola,
Ohrid,
Skopje, Kuku, Lerin and
Tetovo. Although the clergy was dominated by Greeks,
the lowest orders remained Slavic-the Greeks eschewed these posts as they
brought negligible incomes. During the time of the darkest spiritual slavery
under the Pharaniots these Slavic clergy, semiliterate and half-educated,
succeeded in preserving the traditions of Clement's church and the Archbishopric
of Ohrid.
Samoil's church
did not differ from other eastern churches-it enjoyed all the typical feudal
privileges, with estates at its disposal, pareikos (serfs) to cultivate its land
and exemption from various dues and taxes. Samoil favored the high clergy to a
greater and more pronounced degree than other secular feudal lords. "The
independent Macedonian Orthodox Church in
