Oriental Churches. She was even in a worse plight than her neighbours. The misgovernment of the Phanariots and the despotism of the bishops who owed allegiance to the patriarch of Constantinople as a minister of the sultan were hard enough to be borne in Greece; but there the people had at least to deal with their fellow-countrymen. In Bulgaria the oppression was in the hands of an alien priesthood. The patriarch of Constantinople appointed Greek bishops, and they in turn Greek parish popes. The state of affairs may be compared to that of the Anglican Church in Ireland and Wales until recent times. But it was really ten times worse; for this alien priesthood was in the employ of the cruel, unjust, Mohammedan government of the Ottoman Empire. Thus the Bulgarians suffered from a double grievance—the intrusion of foreign Church leaders, and these men acting as servants of the Turkish tyranny under which they groaned—a Greek ministry serving the Turks.
At length patriotic or rather racial feelings began to stir in the breasts of the long-enduring Bulgarians. The revival sprang from a literary awakening, which was first seen in the work of Paisii, a Bulgarian monk of Mount Athos, who published a history of his people and their saints.[1] This was followed by the autobiography of Bishop Sofronii,[2] written in a modified Sclavonic dialect. Bulgarian schools were now established. That provoked the Greek clergy to establish schools of their own, and to attempt the suppression of Sclavonic literature in favour of the Greek. But the national movement spread. The Bulgarians addressed an appeal for support to the pope, and for a time some progress was made in connecting their Church with the Uniats. But this never went far, and it soon died out. The people's aspiration was for an independent Bulgarian Church. There were repeated attempts at insurrection; but they all failed. It was the Greek ecclesiastical tyranny, rather than the Turkish
