154 years since the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate

On February 27, 1870, the Ottoman Sultan issued a firman giving the Bulgarians the right to establish an independent church in the form of an Exarchate. This act comes as a result of a long struggle, which united broad layers of our Renaissance intelligentsia and led to the restoration of one of the main Bulgarian institutions lost at the end of the Middle Ages - the independent church.

Traditionally, in the Ottoman Empire, the church was the institution representing the Christian communities and defending their rights before the state authorities. In modern times, it is also an instrument of political emancipation and individualization of individual Christian peoples. Against the background of the changing policy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate after the foundation of the independent Kingdom of Greece and the processes of consolidation among the Bulgarian society, the local acts of resistance against the Phanariot bishops grew into a nationwide movement for church independence. The Bulgarian-Greek ecclesiastical dispute took on a political character, and the Ottoman authorities intervened to control the proceedings. For a long time, the High Gate delayed the decision-making and thus inflamed passions, but the radicalizing elements of the conflict caused the moderate Sultan Abdul Aziz to give way, allowing the separation of the Bulgarians from the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Antim I, until then Metropolitan of Vidin, was elected as the first Bulgarian exarch. Born in the town of Lozengrad under the name Atanas Mihailov Chalakov, in 1837 he took the monastic name Antim in the Hilendar monastery. Under his leadership, the Exarchate undertook to defend the rights of the Bulgarians in the decisive years for the future of the nation before the Liberation. After the April Uprising, Antim I made special efforts to acquaint the international public with Turkish arbitrariness and cruelty, but because of this political activity he was dismissed from his post at the insistence of the High Gate and exiled to Ankara. Released as a result of the general amnesty of March 1878, he took over the leadership of the Vidin Metropolis, presided over the Constituent National Assembly and the First Grand National Assembly.

In the renewed exposition in Hall No. 4 of the National History Museum, you can see church vestments - sakos and epitrachil, which belonged to Antimus I, as well as his metropolitan staff. Through these and other exhibits, the conquest of ecclesiastical independence is highlighted as one of the key achievements of the Bulgarians during the Renaissance, with which they received official recognition as an independent community within their historical borders and took a big step towards achieving their political independence.

Text: Antoineta Ivanova