15. The Roumanian Church (1885).
The Vlachs, too, have the memory of an old independent Church afterwards destroyed by the Phanar and the Porte. In the 12th century, long after the Emperor Basil II (976–1025) had destroyed the original Bulgarian kingdom, an alliance of Bulgars and Vlachs rose against the Empire under two brothers, Hassan and Peter, and founded a joint Bulgaro-Roumanian State in 1186. In the 13th century under King John Asan (1218–1241), this kingdom reached its greatest extent, stretching from the Danube to Salonike, and from the Black Sea to Prizrend. It was the rise of Dushan's great Servian kingdom (p. 306) that broke the power of these Bulgaro-Vlachs. The Empire conquered back part of their land, too, and at last the Turk came and swept them all away (after the battle of Kossovo, 1388, p. 306).[1] While their kingdom lasted, as usual they set up an autocephalous Church independent of Constantinople. At first they were Catholics, and it was Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) who granted them their autonomy. But they went into schism soon after the fourth Crusade (1204). Their State never included Achrida, so they made Tirnovo (Trnovo, now in Bulgaria) the centre of their Church and the seat of their Primate. We have then a Vlach Church (for it was chiefly Vlach) of Tirnovo to match Servian Ipek and Bulgarian Achrida. After the Turkish conquest, this body was also reunited to the patriarchate,[2] and the only thing that was left of it was the vague memory of the Vlachs that they, too, had once had a Church and been a nation. The Phanar treated the Orthodox Vlachs just as badly as the Bulgars and Serbs, when they had them in their Rum millet. But there was this difference: the Vlachs have always been a feeble folk, afraid to fight against their stronger neighbours, but rather glad to take shelter under some one else's wing. So the Hellenizing policy of the Phanar, that altogether failed with Bulgars and Serbs, seemed to succeed with the Vlachs. When
