The Bulgarian Exarchate

Bulgarians were known as " Rum Millet ",i.e. Greek people, in the Ottoman Nations System. Symbolically, the orthodox christians were gathered under the name of " Rum Millet " as a whole, since in the Ottoman Empire different nations were separeted from each other by their religious belief ; orthodox christians such as Greeks, Slavs etc. were "Rum Millet ", catholic Armenians were "Katolik Ermeni Milleti " (Catholic Armenian Nation ),so on and Fener Orthodox Patriarchate was the highest religious authority of Rum Millet, i.e. orthodox christians. In fact, the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate was closely connected to the power of the Fener Patriarchate over the orthodox christians in the Ottoman Empire. Since, in the beginning of the 17 th century AD, and especially in the 1 8 th century AD, Bulgarians were exposed to a heavy pressure of Ottoman Greeks in all aspects,in order to hellenize them, especially by the Patriarchate. These activities were intensified after the abolishment of Bulgarian Archbishopric in Ohrid in 1767. Therefore, the first movements of Bulgarian nationalists were started as a reaction to the Fener Patriarchate, not against the Ottoman Empire; and the first step in the path to the Bulgarian independence was to get rid of the yoke of the Fener Patriarchate. The idea of establishing an independent Bulgarian church, which paralelly developed with Bulgarian nationalism, reached its peak by announcing that they refused the Fener Patriarchate on 3 April 1860. Since then, the steps, which aims to exterminate the separation between the Bulgarians and the Patriarchate, did not result. Moreover, Bulgarians complainst related to the Patriarchate were getting increased every other day, and also it was understood that Russia will exploit the situation if the problem would not be solved. For this reason, Ottoman government, wishing to strengthen the ties with the Bulgarians and hoping to end the struggle between the Fener Patriarchate and the Bulgarians, announced the Bulgarian Exarchate Firman on 11 March 1870. However, Patriarchate did not acknowledge this firman and announced the Bulgarian Exarchate and its community as "Schismatic". For this reason, the firman could not prevent the struggle, but gave rise to increasing the struggle.IV The firman of the Bulgarian Exarchate had administrative articles. In other words, it aimed to determinate the administrative statute of the religious institution of the group, which is the subject to the Ottoman Empire.The most important article of the firman was 10 th. While it was defining the territorial boundaries of the Bulgarian Exarchate's jurisdiction, in fact it was determining the ethnic boundaries of Bulgarian nation. Moreover, this article provided that if two-thirds of inhabitants of a district desired to join the Exarchate, their wishes would be fulfilled. This provision caused a power struggle between the Patriarchate and the Exarchate, especially over Macedonia. At this point, while the Bulgarian Exarchate,depending on this article, was trying to enlarge its boundaries; the Patriarchate was trying to prevent the spread of the Exarchate into its influence area. The ecclesiastical struggle between the Bulgarians and the Ottoman Greeks can be classified as the bishops issue, churches and schools conflicts and to force people to change their churches. However, the desire to dominate Macedonia of Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia converted the ecclesiastical struggle between the Bulgarian Exarchate and the Fener Patriarchate to the rivalry of the nationality. Therefore, this struggle formed one of main causes for Macedonian Question. The Ottoman Empire took great care in being impartial in this struggle. Head-quarters of the Bulgarian Exarchate was moved to Sofia in 1913 and in 1945 the Patriarchate removed its schismatic decision. The Bulgarian Exarchate was changed into the Bulgarian Patriarchate in 1953.