I'lmtn by Felix J. Koch 

 one: of THK monks at the great monastery OE RILA, BULGARIA 



land-owners or beys, some of whom were 

 descended from Bulgarian noble fami- 

 lies who renounced Christianity after 

 the Turkish conquest. The proximity 

 of the great centers of Turkish military 

 power, Adrianople and Constantinople, 

 riveted their chains and precluded the 

 possibility of an uprising. 



It is therefore not surprising that the 

 Greek and Servian movements in the 

 earlier decades of the last century found 

 no counterpart in a Bulgarian insurrec- 

 :ion. The national spirit was extinct 

 and national consciousness had ceased to 

 exist. 



But the Turkish temporal power was 

 not the only factor in the effacement of 

 Bulgarian nationality. From the earliest 

 years of Ottoman supremacy all the 

 Christian races, comprised under the 

 designation Rum-milleti. were placed 

 tmder the spiritual domination of the 



Greek Patriarchate, which thus consti- 

 tuted an ecclesiastical imperium in im- 

 perior. The Patriarchate, though styled 

 (Ecumenical or Universal, has always 

 been an essentially Greek institution, and 

 the Greek clergy under its control have 

 never failed to labor for the spread of 

 Hellenism. 



Toward the middle of the i8th cen- 

 tury Greek ecclesiastical ascendancy was 

 at its zenith; the Slavonic patriarchates 

 of Ipek and Ochrida were suppressed, 

 almost all the Bulgarian dioceses were 

 filled by Phanariote prelates, and the 

 schools, in which Greek alone was 

 taught, were controlled by the Greek 

 clergy. The Phanariote ecclesiastics, 

 who, like the Moldavian and Wallachian 

 hospodars and the Turkish governors, 

 paid large sums for their appointments, 

 recouped themselves by heavy dues lev- 

 ied on their flocks, and the peasantry 



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