When were the Macedonian Slavs converted to Christianity?

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(a) When were the Macedonian Slavs converted to Christianity? The question of the Christianization of the Macedonian Slavs is undoubtedly one of the most important where Macedonian culture is concerned. The first and rarely categorical answer to this question can be found as early as the end of the 9th or beginning of the 10th century, in the oration of černorizec Hrabar, and the first analysis of this problem among the Macedonians was made a millennium later by Krste P. Misirkov in his book Za makedonckite raboti (On Macedonian Matters, 1903). As these documents are used in the analysis of other components of culture, we shall here quote them in greater detail. černorizec Hrabar writes:

In the past, however, the heathen Slavs had yet no books, but read and told fortunes using lines and notches. And when they received Christianity they had to write Slavonic words with Roman and Greek letters, without a standard. But how could you write dobro, bog or život or dzid or crkva or clovek or širota or edro or žena and other words similar to them? And thus it continued for many years… ^[1] Then man-loving Godhad mercy on the Slav people and sent Saint Constan-tine the Philosopher, called Cyril, a righteous and true man, who created 38 letters for them, some after the example of Greek letters, and others after Slavonic speech. ^[2]

If černorizec Hrabar (St Naum?), as an authority and contemporary, appears as a witness to the emergence of Macedonian literacy and culture, and simultane-ously as the author of its first periodization, Krste Misirkov is its first theoretician, understanding and expounding the laws of this process. Writing about the alphabet and orthography of a new literary standard, he also deals with that initial process when a foreign script may be used for writing in one’s own language, saying: But if his own language contains sounds which are not present in the language from which the alphabet is borrowed, the borrower of the foreign alphabet will make certain modifications and amendments to it to mark the differences in the sounds between the two languages. This borrowed and reconstructed alphabet is handed down from generation to generation and is thus changed and adapted to the features of the borrowers’ language. So, gradually and imperceptibly the alphabets of less cultured peoples are made in the contact with more cultured ones. But this gradual process is justified only if two neighbouring peoples are in politically unequal circumstances, namely if one of them, i.e. the more cultured one, rules, and the other one, the less cultured one, is subjugated, or at least deprived of full political freedomThus Christianity and literacy took root among us, the Macedonians, earlier than among any other Slav people. They spread over the centuries, moving gradually in an upward direction. Hence history says nothing about the conversion of our people to Christianity. But literacy always comes along with Christianity. By hushing up our adoption of Christianity, the process of the formation of our literacy is also hushed up.

Accordingly, our spiritual revival and the enlightenment in this land, and even the development of our literacy, owing to the geographical and historical circum- stances, took a different course in the first millennium AD from that of the other Orthodox Slavs. In this land the process was gradual and imperceptible, while among the others it was swift and comparatively clearly defined.^[3]

These two extensive and very important quotations may successfully lead us to the clarification of the puzzles of that distant age when some process crucial to the development of Macedonian literacy and culture and also to the Macedonian people in general was completed. They illustrate what the process was and how it was carried out, but not when it took place. For instance, they do not mention when the Macedonian Slavs were converted to Christianity.

There is no doubt in Misirkov’s assumption that the adoption of Christianity in Macedonia took place slowly, silently and continually, because the people were subjugated and lived within the frontiers of stronger and culturally more developed rulers. This process, however, could have started sometime in the 6th or 7th century and been completed by the 9th century at the latest. It was certainly aided by the fact that the native Macedonian Christian population in this part of the Balkans continued to develop unhampered in the Slavic environment and in the Byzantine state, thus exerting influence on the Slavs as well. On the other hand, the constant wars and uprisings and the disobedient heathen Slavs made the Byzantine administrators use the strongest means at the time for neutralizing and attracting them: Christianity. That Christianity in Macedonia developed uninterruptedly since the missionary activity of St Paul is also confirmed, in addition to the archaeological finds and the Bible, by some historical sources.

Whereas Christianity was fiercely persecuted in pagan Bulgaria, in the Byzantine province of the Macedonian Slavs there was not only a numerous Byzantine Christian administration, but Christian education was spread among the Slav masses, as a result of which the tribes increasingly melted into each other and mingled with the indigenous Macedonian population; instead of the former tribal princes, regional administrators were instituted. This, in turn, created the preconditions for the establishment of a single ethnic mass which gradually built its individuality as a people.

These conclusions are also supported by the fact that the Slavonic educator Methodius himself was for ten whole years, up to the year 850, the administrative head of the Bregalnica region, while his brother Constantine at the same time, in the same region, still converted Slavs to Christianity; he had created “Slavonic letters” for them and wrote “books in the Slavonic language”.^[4]

And that the Christian faith was widespread or perhaps the conversion to Christianity in Macedonia was already completed (although the hagiographies of Clement say that there were still heathens) is indirectly confirmed by the following two arguments. Following the Church Council of Constantinople in 870, when the Bulgarian Church was recognized and Joseph, a Greek, was appointed Archbishop, eight dioceses were recognized or created, of which only two were in original Bulgaria — to the far north, in Silistra (Durostorum) and Ovech (Provadija) — while all the other six remained in Byzantine territories and were gradually (chiefly in the 9th century) annexed to Bulgaria: Philippopolis (Plovdiv), which lay within the theme Macedonia and developed within the sphere of Byzantine culture with continuous Christian life; Sredec (Sofia), which came within Bul- garia’s borders as late as 809; present-day Serbia — Belgrade and Morava (somewhere around the mouth of the River Morava), which were conquered by the Bulgarian state in the early 9th century (but before the capturing of Sofia), while two dioceses were recognized on the territory of the newly-conquered Macedonia: Ohrid, and the Bregalnica region. It is also known that at the ‘False Council’ of Patriarch Photius in 879 one of those taking part was Bishop Theoc- tistus of Tiberiopolis, whose seat is believed to have been in Strumica. These data confirm that preconditions had been created earlier for a widespread spiritual activity in the territory of Macedonia, as illustrated by the facts in the charters of Basil II of 1019, 1020 and 1025, written immediately after the destruction of the state of the Macedonian Slavs, and testifying to the much more developed spiritual life in Macedonia as compared with Bulgaria. These documents point to the existence of the following dioceses in the Devol komitat: Ohrid, Kostur, Glavinica, Meglen and Bitola, while the komitat covering the region between the rivers Vardar and Mesta involved the dioceses of Strumica, Morozdvizd, Velbužd and Sredec, whose south-western gravitation was beyond any doubt at the time. Accordingly, even on the basis of these few facts we can conclude that the conversion to Christianity in Macedonia was completed by the 9th century, a process which took place gradually and without shocks, before Macedonia found itself within the borders of Bulgaria, while the conversion of the Bulgarian people to Christianity was carried out only after 865, using force and bloody reprisals, events which were reflected in written records and documents concerning the relations between Byzantium, Bulgaria and Rome. On the other hand, this is an illustration of the character of the culture in these two regions: while a pagan Bulgarian-Slavic culture with Thracian elements was created in Bulgaria, a Christian Macedonian-Slavic-Byzantine culture (with elements of all the native peoples and ethnic groups) developed in Macedonia, which undoubtedly, as testified to by černorizec Hrabar (and confirmed by Misirkov), gave rise to the development of literacy.

1. ↑ For more details see: D-r Blaže Ristovski , Makedonskiot narod i makedonskata nacija, Misla, Skopje, 1983, 88-116.
2. ↑ Ivanъ Dujačevъ , Izъ starat a bъlgarska knižnina, I, Sofija, 1940, 65-66.
3. ↑ K.P . Misirkov , Za makedonckite raboti , Sofija, 1903, 142-143.
4. ↑ Emil Georgiev, “Kiril i Metodi i razvitieto na bъlgarskata kultura“, Hiljada i sto godini slavjanska pismenost 863-1963. Sbornik v čest na Kiril i Metodi, BAN, Sofija, 1963, 27.