foundation of this Church was one of the chief causes of dispute between Rome and Constantinople at the time of Photius (p. 151). Eventually, Constantinople, helped by the Emperors, succeeded in joining the Bulgars to her own patriarchate, sending them the Holy Chrism, and making them use her liturgy. Since then the Bulgars have always belonged to the Eastern half of Christendom. In spite of the old rights of Rome over Illyricum, no one has thought of making them Latins. But they did not remain obedient children of Constantinople either. From the 9th to the nth centuries the Bulgars also managed to set up a great independent kingdom.[1] In this kingdom was an independent Church, which both the Pope and the Œcumenical Patriarch recognized.[2] Its head, the Bulgarian Primate, reigned first at Preslau (Prjeslau, now in Bulgaria, between Tirnovo and Varna), and then, when the Emperor had conquered that city back (c. 970), at Achrida (now Ochrida), in Macedonia. When Basil II had destroyed the Bulgarian kingdom, he allowed the Church of Achrida to go on, but he brought it into some sort of submission to the Patriarch. The election of the Bulgarian Primate had to be confirmed at Constantinople. After the Turkish conquest the Church of Achrida met the same fate as that of Ipek. The Phanar persuaded the Porte that the best way of keeping the Bulgars in submission was to destroy any sort of Bulgarian organization; so, in 1767, the Church of Achrida was entirely suppressed, all Bulgars were made members of the Roman nation under the Œcumenical Patriarch, just like Greeks, Serbs, and Vlachs. From that time began the persecution of which the Bulgars so bitterly complained. Of all the rivalries between the Balkan Christians, that between the Greeks and the Bulgars has always been by far the most bitter. The Greeks hate a Serb, a Vlach, an Albanian—any one
- ↑ Its greatest extent was from the Danube to Epirus, and from the Black Sea above Thrace to the Adriatic. Simeon, the Bulgarian King (923–934), was their chief conqueror, the Emperor Basil II, the Bulgar-slayer (991–1022), their destroyer. This Bulgarian kingdom covered much of the same land as the later Servian kingdom (p. 306). See Freeman's Historical Geography (ed. Bury, 1903), p. 376, seq., and map xxxiv.
- ↑ King Simeon asked the Pope to make his chief bishop an extra-patriarchal primate. Pope Formosus (891–896) did so.
