20/07/2022
Bulgaria celebrates: 300 years of the birth of St. Paissy of Hilendar and 60 years of his canonisation
In the second half of the 18th century, along with the economic revival of the Bulgarian people, the Bulgarian monk, St. Paissy of Hilendar, laid the foundation of the Bulgarian National Revival with his book "Slav-Bulgarian History". St. Paissy pointed out that the restoration of the independent Bulgarian Church, which would mean the recognition of the Bulgarian population as a Bulgarian nationality and as a Bulgarian nation, separate from the Greeks, was the first and absolutely necessary prerequisite for the restoration of the independent Bulgarian State. When all the strata of the Bulgarian people embraced the idea, the struggle broke out for the restoration of the independent Bulgarian Church and against the power of the Greek clergy. In the course of four decades the Bulgarian population of Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia united this struggle in one ethnic body with a well-defined national consciousness as a Bulgarian nation. In 1870, by a decree (firman) of the Sultan, the Ottoman government restored the once unlawfully destroyed Bulgarian Patriarchate under the name of "Bulgarian Exarchate". According to art. 10 of the firman, it included in its diocese all Bulgarian Regions. Thus the conquerors officially recognized before the world the Bulgarian nation and authoritatively determined their ethnic boundaries. The Bulgarian Church thus won the international juridical recognition of this nation before the world and consolidated it ethnically, spiritually, culturally, historically, territorially and, to a certain degree, also politically.
