STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY VOL. I. MATTHEW SPINKA ROBERT HASTINGS NICHOLS Editors a TT- , H »80-6 A H istory of CHRISTIANITY IN THE BALKANS "Y. ^ \ A STUDY IN THE SPREAD OF BYZANTINE CULTURE \ X # 0% \ AMONG THE SLAVS • pi- . ':'H, \ - ■ V V"\ \ By MATTHEW SPINKA THE CHICAGO THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY a y THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CHURCH HISTORY CHICAGO, ILL. Copyright 1933 by The American Society of Church History All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America DNU072 TABLE OF CONTENTS ❖ ♦> ❖ ❖ The Ruin of Graeco-Roman and the Rise of Slavic Balkan Christianity........................ 1 Bulgarian Christianity after the Conversion of Boris................. 37 Bulgarian Patriarchate of the First Bulgarian Empire............. 57 Serbian Christianity Before the Time of St. Sava....... ............. 73 The Bulgarian Church of the Second Empire.............................. 91 The Rise and Fall of the Serbian Church..................................129 Bogomilism in Bosnia and Hum................... 157 Epilogue ............... 185 Selected Bibliography .....................................................................189 Index .................................................................................................193 t PREFACE No one can be more conscious of the limitations of this work than the author himself. He was constantly impressed with the fact that all too little attention has been paid hither­ to to the subject even by scholars of the Balkan nations, not to speak of non-Slavic historians; consequently, much preliminary pioneering work had to be done. Much yet remains to be accomplished; but the restricted scope of this undertaking as well as the paucity of source material per­ taining to the early history of the Balkan peninsula com­ bined to make the treatment actually adopted expedient. In gathering his material, the author spent some time during the summer of 1931 in the Balkans. When he came to write the work, he concluded that he must be content with a more modest delimitation of his task than as originally conceived, as a necessary preliminary to further and more detailed studies of the field to be carried on either by himself or others. It was because of the unsatisfactory state of the sources for the Turkish period that he decided to terminate this study with the Turkish conquest of the Balkans. Special thanks are due, in this connection, to Professors Wilhelm Pauck of the Chicago Theological Seminary, Harold R. Willoughby of the University of Chicago, Ken­ neth S. Latourette of Yale University, and Robert Hastings Nichols of Auburn Theological Seminary, who read the work in manuscript and made valuable suggestions toward its improvement. MATTHEW SPINKA THE RUIN OF GRAECO-ROMAN AND THE RISE OF SLAVIC CHRISTIANITY It is a matter of no mean pride to the Balkan Christian churches that the beginning’s of Christianity in the Balkan peninsula can indubitably be traced to the earliest apostolic times, and that it was none other than the great Apostle of the Gentiles himself who labored there. When St. Paul saw his vision of the man who besought him “to come over into Macedonia and help us”1 and resolved not to be dis­ obedient to that heavenly vision, the evangelization of Eu­ rope, so far as history preserves a record of it, had its incep­ tion. Paul himself informs us that he preached the gospel “even unto Illyricum”2 and that Titus left him to go to Dalmatia, while Demas went to Thessalonica3. The apostle did not foresee the development of his labors as we view it in retrospect, or else that knowledge would have given him much sorrow. Who can balance the wrongs and injustice, the crass cupidity, the hunger for land and power which, parading under the fair name of Christianity, again and again submerged the scenes of Paul’s missionary zeal in sorrow and misery, against the spiritual blessings of Christianity enjoyed by humble and learned alike, and pro­ nounce with confidence which side tips the scale ? But it is probably well that Paul, in his confident belief that the Lord’s parousia was near and with his appearance the end of the present age would come, did not dream of the stupen­ dous and far-reaching results consequent upon his hearking to that Macedonian call! The humble laborers who entered upon Paul’s work and carried it on remain nameless as far as history is concerned. Yet it was due to them that the spread of Christianity among the Illyrian, Thracian, and Hellenic population, although slow, was not entirely neg­ ligible. The new message early penetrated the cities of the southern and western littoral, and such centers as Corinth 1. A cts 16:9. 2. Som. 15:19. 3. I I Tim. 4:10. 1 2 THE RUIN OF GRAECO-ROMAN AN] in Achaia, Thessalonica in Macedonia, Larissa in Thessal) Salona in Dalmatia, Sardica in Dacia, Heraclea and An chialus in Thracia, and Sirmium in Pannonia Secunda, be came important foci of missionary activity which soon pene trated the interior of the peninsula. Nevertheless, th growth of the new religion was confined generally to urba communities. The strength of Christianity in the Roman Danubia: provinces may be judged from the number of martyrs wh fell victim during the Diocletian persecution at the be ginning of the fourth century. This outburst of zeal i: behalf of moribund paganism claimed the lives of a grou of devoted Christians in Sirmium (modern Mitrovitsa where bishop Irenaeus suffered martyrdom, in Singidunur (modern Belgrade), and in other cities of the Danubia: provinces. A serious persecution likewise wrought havo among the Christians of Salona in Dalmatia, those martyre< including even the local bishop, Domnio, and probably hi predecessor, Venantius. A similar persecution raged i: Durostorum in Moesia Inferior. Also the fact that thre councils of the fourth century were held in these regions- that of Sardica (343-44), and the Arian councils of Sirmiur (358) and of Singidunum (366)—bears witness to th strength and importance of these sees. Besides, the Balka: provinces produced a number of outstanding Christia: leaders, such as Jerome who was born on the confines o Dalmatia and Pannonia, Bishop Nicetas of Remesiana i: Dacia Mediterraneum, and the Arian bishops Auxentius o Durostorum, Palladius of Ratiara in Dacia Ripensis, an> Ursacius of Singidunum. It must not be forgotten tha Emperors Constantine the Great, Jovian, Gratian, and th Valentinians were likewise natives of the Danubian prov inces. But Balkan Christianity was not destined to enjoy peaceful development. In the first place, its territory wa to become the battle-ground between the various invadin; barbarian hordes and the Roman armies. Had the Danub been retained as the boundary of the Pannonian-Moesia: provinces, the western half would have most likely de veloped a civilization not unlike that of Italy, while the east ern half would have possibly been predominantly Hellen ized. But in the struggles between the Romans and th THE RISE OF SLAVIC CHRISTIANITY 3 barbarians the latter were ultimately victorious, and after having all but ruined the civilization they had found in the newly won territories, they were in turn conquered by its superior force. In the second place, when the new masters of the peninsula began to feel the seductive influence of the civilization of the Empire, the conflict between the Latin and the Hellenistic cultures for the dominant sway over them proved by no means helpful to the spread of Christian­ ity among them, but rather greatly retarded it. That strug­ gle produced lasting effects upon the cultural history of the Balkan Slavs from that time to the present day, inasmuch as it divided the essentially homogeneous Slavic tribes which settled there into two cultural groups, the westernized Croatians-Slovenes, and the Byzantinized Serbo-Bulgarians. The ruin of the Graeco-Roman civilization in the Bal­ kans began with the invasion of a million Visigoths who, with the permission of Emperor Valens, settled south of the Danube (376). But in consequence of the galling and op­ pressive treatment they had received at the hands of impe­ rial officials, they rose up in revolt, and in 378 gained a crush­ ing victory over Valens’ army in the battle of Hadrianople. The emperor himself perished in the struggle. Despite the fact that afterwards Emperor Theodosius I had taken them into the service of the Roman army, the Visigoths, dissatis­ fied with the treatment they had received and seeking new homes, overran the peninsula as far south as Achaia, pillag­ ing the cities and murdering the inhabitants. The greater part of the Balkans was soon in the hands of their leader Alaric. Four years later, they were induced to leave the country and to invade Italy. The Dalmatian littoral with its hinterland was con­ quered, in 493, by the Ostrogoths under Theodoric, and was held by them for the next forty years. But in spite of their Arianism, they left the social and religious organizations largely as they had found them. The archbishopric of Salona continued to exercise authority over the territory, and during the Ostrogothic rule two new bishoprics were organized, bringing the total up to six. But in 535 Emperor Justinian determined to reassert the imperial authority over these regions, and for the next twenty years waged battle with the Ostrogoths, who in 548 apparently allied them­ selves with the barbarian tribes of Slavs, living beyond the 4 THE RUIN OF GRAECO-ROMAN AND Danube, in an effort to withstand Justinian’s armies. Never­ theless, the latter were victorious and the Roman sway was temporarily reestablished. Besides, new and more formidable enemies loomed up­ on the horizon. The wild and cruel Huns who had organ­ ized their state in the plains of Hungary during the fifth century (it was dissolved in 454), and the no less destructive Turkish Avars who had appeared in Pannonia in 568 and from there dominated extensive regions, wrought havoc by their periodic plundering expeditions into the Balkans.