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The
Archbishopric of Ohrid
and The Macedonian Orthodox Church |
Clement became the first Macedonian bishop |
There is no data available whether
representatives from Macedonia attended the First
Ecumenical Synod of Nicea in 325. However, the Second
Synod at Serdica in 343 was attended by Parigorius, the
first Metropolitan of Skopje, and his suffragan the Bishop
of Ulpiana (present-day Liplyan); both supported
Orthodoxy. The presence of Parigorius proves that there
were organized bishoprics in Macedonia headed by
metropolitans and bishops since the first decades of the
4th century. In the 5th century the church in Macedonia
was well-organized. Of the two metropolitan's dioceses in
Thessaloniki and Skopje, the diocese in Thessaloniki was
more influential due to its foundation by the Apostle
Paul.
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....And
a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a man
of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, "Come over into
Macedonia, and help us".
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St. Jovan Church in Ohrid |
The settlement of Slavs in the Balkans,
their Christianization and the development of Slavic
liturgy and literacy gave a completely new quality to the
development of the church in Macedonia. Prince Boris,
after the establishment of the Bulgarian state
incorporating a part of Macedonia, ordained Clement as
Bishop of Dremvica and Velika (893) with a residence in
Ohrid, wherein Clement became the first Macedonian-Slavic
bishop. The religious service in his bishopric was, of
course, held in the language of the Macedonian Slavs, and
Ohrid became an educational, literary and a church center. |
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With the
establishment of Samuil's state, the necessity for an
independent Macedonian church became imperative. Until the
time of Samuil, the church in Macedonia had been under the
jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Patriarchate founded by Tsar
Symeon without the approval of the Ecumenical Patriarch of
Constantinople. At that time eparchies are recorded as
existing in the Macedonian towns of Voden, Meglen, Serres,
Ohrid and Skopje. The success of the komitopulis' uprising
and the wresting of Macedonia away from Byzantine rule
(the Bulgarian Empire had fallen in the meantime) demanded
that ecclesiastical authority be independent of Byzantine
authority and lie close to the secular authority of Samuil,
both geographically and ideologically. The center of the
church moved to Prespa on the island of Achilles, where
Samuil built a magnificent church to house it. The relics
of St. Achilles were brought from Larissa, which Samuil
conquered in 985.
There is no concrete data as to when Samuil created an
autonomous Macedonian archbishopric. Logically, it is most
likely that he would begin such immediately after
proclaiming himself tsar, which suggests the late 10th
century.When he transferred his capital from Prespa to
Ohrid, he likewise moved the residence of the
archbishopric, known hereafter as the Archbishopric of
Ohrid.As Samuil's empire expanded, the jurisdiction of his
church was extended as well. The first archbishop of the
Archbishopric of Ohrid was Philip, who retained this
position from its foundation until the murder of Gavril
Radomir in 1015. When Ivan Vladislav took the throne,
Philip was dismissed from his post.
The Macedonian people has re-established its church as one
of the fundamental features of its national identity on
the foundations of the Archbishopric of Ohrid. This
autocephalous church has existed, first at Prespa and then
in Ohrid, since the time of Czar Samuil and his
descendants as the spiritual institution of that empire.
It was legally strengthened by the Byzantine Emperor Basil
II as an ecumenical Christian institution immediately
after his defeat of Samuil's state in 1018.In the 13th
century at the time of the Bulgarian Emperor Ivan Asen II,
in addition to the church at Trnovo, the older Ohrid
Church was also an object of respect. This was also the
case under the rule of the Serbian sovereign, Stefan
Dushan: in addition to his church at Pec, he treated the
Archbishopric of Ohrid with equal respect. After the
proclamation of the Serbian Patriarchate in 1346 and its
expulsion from the ecumenical body, the Patriarchate in
Constantinople, the archbishops of Ohrid were engaged in a
process of reconciliation for the return of Serbia into
the orthodox community.
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St. Naum Church in Ohrid |
With the fall of Ohrid under Ottoman
rule at the close of the 14th century the Archbishopric of
Ohrid was legalized before the Turkish authorities and
strengthened its rights, as had the Patriarchate of
Constantinople after 1453, and for a period in the 15th
century both the territory of Serbia and a part of
Bulgaria came under its ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
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In the
Ottoman state the archbishops of Ohrid, particularly in
the 17th and 18th centuries, took on the role of popular
leaders in the movement for liberation, carrying on talks,
predominantly with Austria, concerning the formation of a
state for the captive Christians, primarily the
Macedonians.Throughout the long life of this extremely
distinguished institution, lasting nearly eight centuries,
the Archbishopric of Ohrid had not lost its autocephalous
status, regardless of changes in the political situation
under Byzantine, Bulgarian and Serbian rule or during the
lengthy period of Ottoman Turkish rule. Other peoples and
their parts of the Balkans had come under the diocese of
the Archbishopric of Ohrid, which was extremely large, up
to the 13th century and under Ottoman rule (15th and 16th
centuries), but throughout the whole of its existence the
Macedonians formed the basic zone of its eparchies and the
main body of the faithful. The guardian and patron saint
of the Church was the first pupil of Ss. Cyril and
Methodius, St. Clement of Ohrid, one of the founders of
Slavonic culture and literacy. His work was celebrated by
distinguished Greek archbishops (e.g. Theophilact and
Homatian), who respected the traditions of their flock,
during the Byzantine period. The language of this
institution of public worship was Slavonic, established by
Ss. Cyril, Methodius and Clement and also ancient Greek
which, together with Latin, was treated as a language of
the entire Christian world.In the cultural traditions of
the Ohrid School, especially in its art, portraits of the
first Slavonic educators from the 9th and 10th centuries
have been created over a period of a thousand years, and
many hundreds of representations of them have been
preserved in churches. Macedonia was a center of the
iconography of the old Slavonic period right up to the end
of the 19th century.
In the 20th
century, during the period of the Second World War and the
course of the military actions of the struggle for
Macedonian statehood, the Macedonians put the question of
an autocephalous church. In 1943, when the national
liberation movement became a massive uprising and when the
first liberated territory was established in the village
of Izdeglavje in the Debar district of the Ohrid region,
the First Assembly of Macedonian Clergy was held on 21st
October and a decision was taken to form an Archpriests'
Governership with the aim of its developing into an
autocephalous Macedonian church.
The
Macedonian Orthodox Church is administered by an assembly
and consists of the Eparchies of Skopje, Prespa and Bitola,
Debar and Kicevo, Bregalnica, Polog and Kumanovo, Vardar,
Strumica, the American and Canadian Eparchy and the
Australian Eparchy, while a European Macedonian Eparchy is
in the process of formation.
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