Bulgarian Exarchate - Bulgarian Schism

Bulgarian Schism

The first (after Ilarion Lovchansky had to resign before being confirmed by the government) Bulgarian Exarch was Antim I who was elected by the Holy Synod of the Exarchate on February 28 1872.

On May 23 1872, in the Bulgarian St. Stephen Church in Constantinople, which had been closed by the Ecumenical Patriarch's order, Antim I, along with other Bulgarian hierarchs who were then restricted from all priestly ministries, celebrated a liturgy, whereafter he declared autocephaly of the Bulgarian Church.

The Patriarchal Synod reacted by defrocking Antim I and excommunicating others, including Ilarion Stoyanov.

The decision on the unilateral declaration of autocephaly by the Bulgarian Church was not accepted by the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

The subsequent Council in Constantinople, chaired by Ecumenical Patriarch Anthimus VI, in September 1872, wherein the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem (the latter declined to sign the Council's decisions) also participated, declared on September 18 (September 30) the Bulgarian Exarchate schismatic and declared its adherents excommunicated. The latter were accused of having “surrendered Orthodoxy to ethnic nationalism”, which had been qualified as a heresy - "ethnophyletism" (εθνοφυλετισμός). The Slavic Orthodox Churches did not support the Council's decisions; Russia's Most Holy Synod and the Russian government, while claiming neutrality, were actively assisting the Bulgarians' cause with Count Nikolai Ignatiev, then the Russian Ambassador in Constantinople, having been instrumental in securing the 1870 firman.

Exarch Antim I was discharged by the Ottoman government immediately after the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78 on April 24, 1877, and was sent into exile in Ankara. Under the guidance of his successor, Joseph I, the Exarchate managed to develop and considerably extend its church and school network in the Bulgarian Principality, Eastern Rumelia, Macedonia and the Adrianople Vilayet. In 1895, the Tarnovo Constitution formally established the Bulgarian Orthodox Church as the national religion of the nation. On the eve of the Balkan Wars in 1912, in the Ottoman Macedonian vilayets and the Adrianople Vilayet alone, the Bulgarian Exarchate had seven dioceses with prelates and eight more with acting chairmen in charge and 38 vicariates, 1,218 parishes and 1,310 parish priests, 1331 churches, 73 monasteries and 234 chapels, as well as 1,373 schools with 2,266 teachers and 78,854 pupils. Almost all of the schoolmasters had been born in Macedonia and Adrianople Thrace.

The immediate effect of the partition of the Ottoman empire during the Balkan Wars was the anti-Bulgarian campaign in areas under Serbian and Greek rule. The Serbians expelled Exarchist churchmen and teachers and closed Bulgarian schools and churches (affecting the standing of as many as 641 schools and 761 churches). Thousands of Bulgarian refugees left for Bulgaria, joining an even larger stream from the devastated Aegean Macedonia, where the Greeks burned Kukush, the center of Bulgarian politics and culture. Bulgarian language (including the Macedonian dialects) was prohibited, and its surreptitious use, whenever detected, was ridiculed or punished. The Ottomans managed to keep the Adrianople region, where the whole Thracian Bulgarian population was put to total ethnic cleansing by the Young Turks' army.

After World War I, by virtue of the peace treaties, the Bulgarian Exarchate was deprived of its dioceses in Macedonia and Aegean Thrace. Exarch Joseph I transferred his offices from Constantinople to Sofia as early as 1913. After the death of Joseph I in 1915, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was not in a position to elect its regular head for a total of three decades.

Conditions for the restoration of the Bulgarian Patriarchate and the election of head of the Bulgarian Church were created after World War II. In 1945 the schism was lifted and the Patriarch of Constantinople recognised the autocephaly of the Bulgarian Church. In 1950, the Holy Synod adopted a new Statute which paved the way for the restoration of the Patriarchate and in 1953, it elected the Metropolitan of Plovdiv, Cyril, Bulgarian Patriarch.