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Bulgarian Orthodox Church

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church has its origin in the flourishing Christian communities and churches, set up in the Balkan Peninsula as early as the first centuries of the Christian era. The incursions of the Slavs and Proto-Bulgarian in the Balkan lands (6th-7th century) damaged considerably the ecclesiastical organization and created difficulties for the mission of christianization, but were not of a decisive significance for its further development. Byzantine writers testify to many contacts of the Eastern Empire with the new settlers-Slavs and Proto-Bulgarians, as well as to the relations of the conquerors with the christianized native populations. The Christian religion infiltrated the population of Bulgarian Slavs (the ancestors of the Bulgarian people) as early as the 6th and 7th century.

In AD 870 the Fourth Council of Constantinople considered the question of jurisdiction over the Bulgarians. The embassadors perfidiously asked to what Church (i. e., patriarchal) the church of their nation should be subject? The Orientals replied that, "since Bulgaria had formerly formed part of the Greek Empire, and since the Bulgarians, on taking possession of the territory, found there Greek and not Latin priests, it seemed quite clear that the Church of Bulgaria should recognize the jurisdiction of the patriarchate of Constantinople." The papal legates answered to this, that "the jurisdiction of the Church is not circumscribed by territorial limits; that the bishops of the two provinces of Epirus, and those of Thessaly and Dardania (Bulgaria), had been consecrated, either directly by the Roman Church or by her vicars, until these countries were withdrawn from her jurisdiction by the violence of Leo the Isaurian; that the King of Bulgaria and his people had voluntarily passed to the obedience of Rome, and recognized in its bishop the successor of St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles; and that it was still their desire to receive from the Roman Pontiff their doctrine, their bishops, and their priests." The legates finally appealed to the superior jurisdiction of the Church of Rome, which could not accept the decision of another.

With the introduction of Christianity into Bulgaria as a state religion, in the second half of the ninth century, a Bulgarian church organization under an archbishop, sent from Byzantium, was instituted. As the Bulgarian state grew in political importance and territorial expansion, and the rulers of Bulgaria laid claim to the title of "tsar" or king, the head of the Bulgarian Church also assumed the title of patriarch, as the chief of an autonomous organization.

This title was formally recognized by the Patriarch of Constantinople, with the consent of the Patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, at a local church council held in the town of Lampsacus, on the Hellespont, in 1235, and was borne by the subsequent heads of the Bulgarian Church up to 1394, when Bulgaria lost her political independence to the Turks and her ecclesiastical autonomy to the Greeks. But in Macedonia, at the town of Ohrida, an archbishopric, founded in the latter part of the tenth century under the name of "Bulgarian Archbishopric of Ohrida," subsisted until 1767, when it also was abolished by a decree of the Turkish Sultan and its dioceses were incorporated with those of the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople. Thus all the Bulgarians living in the Turkish Empire were placed under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Greek Patriarch, and, owing to the identity of religion, were classed as Greeks.

The first movement of the Bulgarians to secure recognition of their ecclesiastical rights as a national unit, distinct from the Greeks, started in 1859, when the demand was made that all dioceses or districts where the Bulgarians were in the majority should have Bulgarian bishops, that church services should be conducted in Slavic and not in Greek, and that in the schools the Bulgarian language should be the medium of instruction. On the refusal of the Greek Patriarch to meet these demands, on the ground that they were contrary to the canons of the church, the Bulgarian people, through duly appointed delegates, pleaded their cause for more than 10 years with the Turkish Government.

Finally, in 1870, the Sultan issued a decree or charter instituting a Bulgarian church organization under the name of "Exarchate," and in 1872 the first Bulgarian Exarch was chosen by a National Council. In the same year the Greek Patriarch called together a local church council in Constantinople, composed exclusively of Greek clericals, which declared the newly instituted Bulgarian church schismatic, on the ground that it introduced racial distinction as an innovation into the church.

The Patriarch of Jerusalem alone, of those present at the council, refused to sign the decision, considering it unjust. As the Bulgarian Church organization was merely a question of administration, implying no change in dogmas, doctrines, rites, or ceremonies, the Russian, Serbian, and Rumanian Churches likewise declined to accept the charge of schism as legal or valid. The Bulgarian Exarchate, therefore, is not a separatist body that has seceded from the Eastern Orthodox Church, to which the Russian, Rumanian, and Serbian Churches also belong, for it has not changed in its beliefs, tenets, creed, and form of polity, which remain exactly what they always have been and what they were when the Bulgarians were under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Greek Patriarch.

Prior to the Macedonian insurrection of 1903 there was very little Bulgarian immigration to the United States. Those who did come, however, sent back such attractive stories of the situation and the opportunities in this country that, when the conditions in Macedonia became intolerable, large numbers from that section found homes in the United States. These in turn were followed by considerable immigration from Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia. No figures are available, as the immigration report gives all these as coming from European Turkey, but it has been claimed that as many as 20,000 a year came over, until the total exceeded 100,000 by around 1910. For some time there was very little done for their spiritual or ecclesiastical care, but a few churches have been organized, with priests from Bulgaria belonging to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

Before the Great War the state religion of Bulgaria was that of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, but all other denominations were allowed free exercise. According to statistics for 1910, furnished by the Bulgarian Legation at Washington, the whole population was 4,306,329; and of these, 3,643,136 belonged to the Eastern Orthodox Church; 32,149 were Roman Catholics, and 6,254 Protestants. The rest were distributed among other bodies, Mohammedans numbering 602,084.

The Bulgarian Church is governed by a Synod of which the Exarch, as primus inter pares, is the president. The religious affairs of non-Orthodox Christians (that is, not belonging to the Eastern Orthodox Church), and of adherents of other faiths were managed by their own spiritual heads, under the supervision of the Ministry of Public Worship.

As national education was provided by the state, the Bulgarian Church had nothing to do with it, except that it maintains two seminaries or theological schools for the preparation of priests. It has no missionary enterprises either inside or outside of the country, and its attitude toward other creeds is that of complete toleration. Under the initiative of Dr. John R. Mott, a movement for Christian work among students was started. The church, in the person of its highest dignitaries, met the movement with favor and sympathy, and Dr. Mott, and those of his coworkers who have visited Bulgaria at different times, have been invariably asked to address the young men who were preparing for the ministry in the seminary of Sofia. The same tolerant attitude is maintained toward missionary enterprise in the country.