BULGARIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

BULGARIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH. The modern state of Bulgaria is located north of Greece, east of Yugoslavian Macedonia, and south of Romania. Its capital is Sofia, the primatial see of the church, and its population of seven to eight million is more than 80 percent nominally Orthodox. The medieval kingdoms of Bulgaria were, from the original Bulgar invasion in 681 until the country’s temporary absorption into Byzantium (q.v.) in 1018, and again from 1188 to 1373, the major rival to the Byzantine Empire (q.v.) for dominance of the latter’s European territories. Originally of Turkic stock and language, the invaders had been largely absorbed into the local Slavs by the time of the country’s conversion to Orthodox Christianity under Tsar Boris in 864. During the reign of Tsar Simeon (893–927) the Bulgarian Church became autocephalous (q.v.) with its patriarchal see at Preslav and then Ochrid (971). Medieval Bulgaria subsequently became a major center of translation work from Greek into Church Slavic through the work of Constantine-Cyril, Methodius, Clement of Ochrid, and Naum (qq.v.). Its missionaries and translations were thus poised to play a significant role in the conversion of Russia in the late 10th c. and following.

Although the patriarchate was suppressed by the Byzantines in 1018, it was restored from 1235 to 1393 at Trnovo. During its Turkish period the church was dominated by Constantinople (q.v.) and eventually lost its independence in 1767. After gaining political freedom it reasserted itself in 1870, and in 1953 the Metropolitan of Sofia again took the title of patriarch and is recognized as such throughout the Orthodox world.