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Essays in Balkan Orthodoxy

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Essays in Balkan Orthodoxy ESSAYS IN BALKAN ORTHODOXY Vladimir Moss © Copyright: Vladimir Moss, 2013. All Rights Reserved. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................................3 1. THE FIRST BULGARIAN EMPIRE ............................................................................................4 2. THE SERBIAN SYMPHONY OF POWERS ..............................................................................7 3. TSAR DUŠAN AND THE SERBIAN EMPIRE........................................................................10 4. TSAR LAZAR AND KOSOVO POLJE .....................................................................................14 5. SERBIAN ORTHODOXY UNDER THE TURKISH YOKE....................................................19 6. THE SERBS GAIN INDEPENDENCE......................................................................................28 7. THE ROMANIANS GAIN INDEPENDENCE.........................................................................36 8. ROMANIA AND THE JEWS.....................................................................................................41 9. SOUTH SLAVIC STATEHOOD................................................................................................45 10. SERBIA CHANGES COURSE.................................................................................................51 11. THE FIRST AND SECOND BALKAN WARS .......................................................................54 12. SARAJEVO ................................................................................................................................62 13. FROM SERBIA TO YUGOSLAVIA ........................................................................................73 14. THE ROMANIAN CHURCH AND THE NEW CALENDAR ..............................................78 15. THE DICTATORSHIP OF KING ALEXANDER I.................................................................87 16. PERSECUTION IN ROMANIA ............................................................................................101 17. THE LEGION OF THE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL ..............................................................104 18. THE SERBS AND THE CONCORDAT................................................................................108 19. THE SERBIAN GENOCIDE IN CROATIA ..........................................................................115 20. THE SERBIAN CHURCH UNDER THE COMMUNISTS .................................................122 21. THE FALL OF THE SERBIAN CHURCH ............................................................................135 22. THE FALL OF THE BULGARIAN CHURCH......................................................................146 23. THE SERBIAN WARS............................................................................................................148 24. THE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION OF THE ROMANIAN OLD CALENDARIST CHURCHES...................................................................................................................................156 25. IS THE SERBIAN TRUE ORTHODOX CHURCH SCHISMATIC?..................................165 INTRODUCTION This collection of essays, written over a period of several years, discusses various events in the religious and political history of the Balkans, excluding Greece. The longest and most recent essays are devoted to the True Orthodox Churches of Serbia and Romania in particular. It is hoped that they will contribute to a deeper understanding of a little-known but very important segment of Orthodox Church history. February 7/20, 2013. East House, Beech Hill, Mayford, Woking, Surrey. GU22 0SB. United Kingdom. [email protected] 1. THE FIRST BULGARIAN EMPIRE Early in the 860s Khan Boris of Bulgaria was converted to the Orthodox faith by the famous Greek bishop St. Methodius. Methodius with his brother St. Cyril had originally been invited to the court of Prince Rostislav of Moravia, but the German bishops of Passau and Salzburg persuaded Pope Stephen V to ban Slavonic as a liturgical language (reversing the decision of his predecessor, John VIII), and so St. Methodius and his disciples had been forced to flee to Bulgaria. In 865 Boris was baptized, probably by St. Photius, and took the name Michael after his godfather, the Emperor Michael. In this way the foundation was laid, not only of the Christianization of Bulgaria, but also of the unification of its two constituent peoples, the Bulgar ruling class and the Slavic peasants, who had been at loggerheads up to that time. However, Tsar Boris-Michael wanted the Bulgarian Church to be autonomous, a request that the Mother Church of Constantinople denied. So, taking advantage of the rift that was opening up between the Eastern and Western Churches and empires, he turned to Pope Nicholas I with a series of questions on the faith and a request that Bulgaria be given a patriarch. The Pope did not grant the latter request, but in other respects (for example, in relation to permissible food and clothing) he showed greater flexibility than the Byzantines , and Boris was sufficiently encouraged by his reply to expel the Greek clergy and allow Roman missionaries – with the new Frankish heresy of the Filioque - into his land. Since the Bulgarian Church was clearly within the jurisdiction of Constantinople, the Pope’s mission to Bulgaria was already a canonical transgression and a first manifestation of his claim to universal dominion in the Church. It would never have happened if the West had recognised the authority of the East Roman Emperor, as the Popes had done in earlier centuries. The same could be said of the later expulsion of Saints Cyril and Methodius from Moravia by jealous German bishops – these were all fruits, in the ecclesiastical sphere, of that division that had first begun in the political sphere, when the Pope crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the Romans. After some turmoil, the Bulgarian Church was firmly re-established within the Eastern Church and Empire with its see in Ohrid. A pagan reaction was crushed, the Scriptures and services were translated into Slavonic by the disciples of St. Methodius, Saints Clement and Nahum, and a vast programme of training native clergy was initiated. The conversion of the Slavs to Orthodoxy began in earnest… However, the virus of national self-assertion had been sown in Bulgaria almost simultaneously with the Christian faith, and during the reign of St. Boris’ youngest son, Symeon, Bulgaria was almost continuously at war with the Empire. Autonomy for a native Bulgarian Church was now no longer the issue: the Bulgarian khans now wanted to take the place of the Byzantine emperors. Thus Symeon assumed the title of “tsar of the Bulgarians and the Romans” and tried to capture Tsargrad (Constantinople). St. Nicholas the Mystic vigorously defended the authority of the East Roman Emperor. “The power of the Emperor,” he said, “which extends over the whole earth, is the only power established by the Lord of the world upon the earth.” Again, he wrote to Tsar Symeon in 913: “God has submitted the other sceptres of the world to the heritage of the Lord and Master, that is, the Universal Emperor in Constantinople, and does not allow his will to be despised. He who tries by force to acquire for himself the Imperial dignity is no longer a Christian”. However, Symeon continued to act like a new Constantine, transferring the capital of the new Christian kingdom from Pliska, with its pagan associations, to Preslav on the model of St. Constantine’s moving his capital from Rome to Constantinople. And during the reign of his more peaceful son Peter (927-969) the Byzantines conceded both the title of “basileus” to the Bulgarian tsar (so there were now three officially recognised Christian emperors of the one Christian empire, with capitals at Constantinople, Aachen and Preslav!) and (in 932) the title “patriarch” to the first-hierarch of the Bulgarian Church, Damian. Peter’s legitimacy was also recognised by the greatest of the Bulgarian saints, John of Rila. However, after the death of Peter, in about 971, the Bulgarian kingdom was conquered by the Byzantines, as a consequence of which the local Bulgarian dioceses were again subjected to the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate. There was a resurgence of Bulgarian power in Macedonia under Tsar Samuel, who established his capital and patriarchate in Ohrid. But this did not last long either. In 1014 the Bulgarian armies were decisively defeated by Emperor Basil “the Bulgar-slayer”, leading to the end of the Bulgarian empire and its re-absorption into the Roman Empire. The Ohrid diocese’s autocephaly was still recognised, but it was demoted from a patriarchate to an archbishopric.1 And so Bulgarian nationalism was dealt a decisive blow in both Church and State… Now it has been claimed that the task assigned to Bulgaria and King Boris by God “could be realized only by an independent, autonomous church, since, if the nation were to be dependent on another people in church matters, it could easily lose its political independence along with its religious independence and disappear from the face of the earth.”2 Perhaps; and yet the idea that each nation-state has to have its own independent church was a new one in the history of Christianity. De facto, as a result of the conquest of certain parts of the Roman Empire by barbarian leaders, 1 However, the autonomy of the Bulgarian Church was vigorously defended by its archbishops, including also its Greek archbishops. Thus
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