7th–14th century — Pagan and Christian Bulgarian empires The Bulgarian nation emerged in the
Early Middle Ages (7th–10th century CE) as an amalgam of ethnic elements of different origins:
Southern Slavs, who populated the
Balkans from the 5th century; pre-Slavic native populations, the
Thracians who had been
Hellenised and
Romanised during the previous foreign dominations; and
Bulgars, a
Turkic population who migrated from
Central Asia to the
Danube region and founded the
First Bulgarian Empire (681–1018). The
Bulgarian khans dominated over this heterogeneous population, whose components originally co-existed as separate communities with their own religious systems and traditions (
Slavic paganism the Slavs,
Thracian paganism the Thracians, and
Tengrism the Bulgars).
Christianity was adopted — in its
Byzantine Orthodox form, then still part of a United Church, from the neighbouring
Byzantine Empire — as an ideological and ethnic homogeniser around 864 by the
khan Boris-Mihail; the Christianisation of Bulgaria was largely a political expedient which granted the Bulgarian
khans the same status as other European monarchs, but it also met considerable opposition, especially from the aristocracy and even from Boris-Mihail's son and heir to the throne,
Vladimir-Rasate, who tried to suppress Christianity and revert to paganism as he saw the former as a tool of political yoke from Byzantium. In 870, the Christian hierarchs of Bulgaria took part in the
Fourth Council of Constantinople, and the council granted the Bulgarian Orthodox Church the status of an autonomous archbishopric under the
Patriarchate of Constantinople, from which it obtained its first primate, clergy and theological books. In 919, the Bulgarian
knyeaz Simeon adopted the new title "
tsar of the Bulgarians and the Romans" (
tsar was an adapted form of the Latin title
caesar; the change reflected an ideal acquisition of the Roman imperial tradition) and heightened the Bulgarian Orthodox Church to the status of
autocephalous patriarchate, independent from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Sixteen years before, in 893, an ecclesiastical council decided to switch to
Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian) as the liturgical language, and in the meanwhile the
Cyrillic alphabet was developed for writing the Slavic language; such changes protected the Bulgarians from Hellenisation, and ultimately would have been fundamental for the later history of part of the
Slavic peoples. In 927, the autocephaly of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was recognised by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The emerging
Bulgarian Orthodox Church retained many elements of pre-Christian paganisms. Moreover, since the 10th century Bulgarian Christianity was deeply characterised by the
Gnostic doctrine of
Bogomilism, developed in Bulgaria itself by the priest
Bogomil, as well as by the ascetic doctrine of
Hesychasm. Both Bogomilism and Hesychasm were highly spiritual, mystical and meditative doctrines and practices, favouring the inner (esoteric) path to God and organised around
monasticism, but while the former was
dualistic, with an accentuated distinction between spirit and matter, the latter was
monistic and spread to Bulgaria largely as a reaction to the former.
14th–19th century — Ottoman Bulgaria In 1396, the disintegrating potentates of the
Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1396) were conquered by the
Ottoman Empire, a Turkish empire whose official religion was
Islam, specifically
Sunnism. In Ottoman Bulgaria (1396–1878), like elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire, populations were classified according to the
millet (approximately "religious nation") system by religion rather than by ethnicity, and therefore Bulgarian Orthodox Christians were grouped together with Orthodox Christians of other ethnicities in the so-called
Rum Millet ("Roman Nation"), all under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople — therefore, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church lost its autocephaly. When the Ottoman Muslims conquered Bulgaria they initially sought to suppress Christianity by destroying many churches and monasteries and turning other ones into
mosques. Many Bulgarian Orthodox priests either perished or fled to other countries, while the Bulgarian Orthodox population was subjected to special taxes and obligations (the status of
dhimmi), but was not forced to convert to Islam. Forced conversion of Bulgarian Orthodox Christians to Islam was sporadic (and sometimes those who refused to convert where executed, and were later canonised as
New Martyrs by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church), while there were cases of spontaneous mass and individual conversions to the new rulers' religion.
Gnosticism was not recognised under the new rule, so that most
Bogomils converted to Islam, while most
Paulicians became Roman Catholics (
Banat Bulgarians). Throughout the centuries of Ottoman Islamic rule, Bulgarian Orthodox monasteries had a significant role in continuing the traditions of Slavonic liturgy and Bulgarian literature, and therefore in the preservation of the ethno-national character of Slavic Bulgarians linked to Orthodox Christianity. The need to persist under Ottoman domination strengthened the conservatism of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and insulated it from external influences, so that it remained untouched by the ideas of
Protestantism when the
Protestant Reformation was spreading athwart continental Europe. At the same time, however, this situation favoured a tendency to secularisation and conformism towards the state, so that the Orthodox Christian clergy lost spiritual and moral authority for many Bulgarians. With the rise to power of the Greek
Phanariot aristocracy in Constantinople, in the late Ottoman Empire the Patriarchate of Constantinople became a tool of Grecisation of all Orthodox Christians in the empire. The Bulgarians strongly opposed such tendency: Father
Paisius of Hilendar (1722–1773), a native Bulgarian from the south-western town of
Bansko, wrote a
Slavo-Bulgarian History in the contemporary Bulgarian vernacular as a response to the "monastic nationalism" promoted by
Mount Athos in Greece, and a call for Bulgarian national awakening and freedom from the yoke of Greek language and culture. In the foregoing 17th century, Bulgarian Catholics in the western parts of Bulgaria expressed support towards the
Holy League of 1684 of European Christian states against the Ottoman Empire, with both diplomatic ties and armed struggle; Catholic uprisings were crushed by Ottoman authorities. Since the early 19th century, there was a decades-long struggle of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church to regain autocephaly from the Patriarchate of Constantinople; in 1860 the authority of Constantinople was openly rejected and Greek bishops appointed by Constantinople were ousted from the church. In the same year, under the influence of French Catholic propaganda, a former Orthodox priest named Yosif Sokolski was re-ordained as a Catholic priest by
Pope Pius IX and established a Bulgarian Uniate Church of the Eastern Rite in communion with the Roman Catholic Church; the experiment was short-lived, as Sokolski was soon abducted and taken to Russia while his small community dissolved. In 1870, the Ottoman
sultan Abdulaziz officially set up the Bulgarian Orthodox Exarchate, while the Patriarchate of Constantinople declared it schismatic and an ethno-nationalist heresy. In the late 19th century, the government of Bulgaria, which in 1878 had become an independent state once again, was very intertwined with the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, so much that the then metropolitan of
Veliko Tarnovo,
Kliment (1841–1901), headed two governments, albeit short-lived.
20th century — socialism, World War II, and communism Beginning in the early 20th century,
secularist and
laicist ideas spread in Bulgaria, and the freed Bulgarian state started to disregard and sometimes restrict the autonomy and educational functions of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The role of the church in society began to be questioned by the emerging intelligentsia, and especially by
socialist thinkers, most of whom were teachers and state employees or white collar workers. There were intellectual strifes between socialists and clergymen, and the former proposed introducing lessons on socialism in schools to replace religious teaching. One of the earliest
Marxists,
Dimitar Blagoev (1856–1924), while recognising the important role that the church had in past Bulgarian history, attacked it because, according to him, in modernity it had become "a tool of the bourgeoisie" and a network of the latter's "political clubs". At the end of the
World War II, in 1943, the government of Bulgaria signed an agreement with
National Socialist Germany and began implementing the
Final Solution against Bulgarian
Jews — their deportation to death camps. The Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church clarified that the church did not share the racist ideology and called for a humane treatment of Jews. On 9 September 1944, a ''
coup d'état'' brought to power the
Fatherland Front, a coalition of
communists,
agrarians and other political parties. Over the next four years, the communists, sponsored by the
Soviet Union, ousted and banned all opposition parties, took full power and undertook a transformation of society according to the
Stalinist model. Ostensibly, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was granted a foremost status, and in 1945, under the pressure of Moscow and alongside the establishment of the
People's Republic of Bulgaria (1945–1990), the Patriarchate of Constantinople recognised the church's autocephaly, and the metropolitan of
Sofia was elected as Exarch
Stefan I (1878–1957), whom, however, within three years was deposed and exiled for being not well disposed towards ecumenism and Soviet authorities. In 1950, the Holy Synod of the church adopted a new constitution which turned the church from an exarchate of Constantinople into a patriarchate of its own;
Kiril (1901–1971) was elected as the first Patriarch of the fully restored auctocephalous church, which he remained until his death in 1971, when
Maxim (1914–2012) was elected as his successor. At the same time, during the period of full implementation of Stalinism, religiosity was in fact restricted, and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church became a tool of the interests of the communists in domestic and foreign politics. After the establishment of the communist republic, a number of Orthodox Christian priests were arrested and tried by "people's courts"; some of them were condemned to life imprisoned or to death. Also some Catholic priests and Protestant pastors were accused of espionage for foreign powers and other political crimes. From 1945, only civil marriage was recognised by the state, religious activities were banned in the armed forces, so were prayers and religion classes in schools, while all restrictions on atheism and free thinking were removed.
Georgi Dimitrov's Constitution of 1947, which followed Stalin's Constitution of the Soviet Union of 1936, proclaimed freedom of religion and worship and the separation of religion and state;
Todor Zhivkov's Constitution of 1971 declared freedom of both religious rites and antireligious activities, and the principles of both constitutions were reinforced with a 1949 Law on Religious Denominations. The law blandly proclaimed atheism as the dominant view supported by the state. In general, communist Bulgaria, while taking the Soviet Union as a model, never imitated
Bolshevik extreme methods of forbidding religion completely and destroying places of worship. Georgi Dimitrov, who was communist leader from 1946 to 1949 and was born in a Protestant family, in a 1946 speech on the occasion of the thousandth anniversary of
John of Rila, the patron saint of Bulgaria, praised the Orthodox Church for its historical role and for preserving national identity and culture. Islam and the Turkicised minority of the population who practised it faced a worse treatment than Christianity under communism; in the 1970s and 1980s mosques were closed and Islamic religious practice was restricted, the properties of Islamic charities (
waqf) were confiscated, Islamic
imams were persecuted, traditional
Islamic names were forbidden and forcibly changed to Bulgarian ones, and severe restrictions were placed on Turkish language, so that many Bulgarian Muslims left the country for
Turkey.
1990–21st century — contemporary Bulgaria After the end of the communist rule in Bulgaria in 1990, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church had the opportunity to recover from spiritual and institutional stagnation. However, already weakened, it experienced serious problems both within itself and in its relationship with society: its ecclesiastical hierarchy did not renew itself after communism and therefore was seen as a continuation of the communist bureaucracy, and within society heated debates broke out about its involvement with the erstwhile regime; moreover, in 1992 part of the clergy claimed that the election of Patriarch Maxim was invalid as he was in fact installed by the communists. The clergy thus divided itself into two factions: the Holy Synod led by Maxim, and another synod headed by Pimen of Nevrokop, whom in 1996 was elected by a schismatic council as a rival Patriarch. Islam recovered better than the Bulgarian Orthodox Church after the communist period, because the harsher persecutions to which Muslims were subjected ultimately strengthened their faith, so that in contemporary Bulgaria the activities of Muslims have become more visible and pronounced, politically active, and Islamic organisations have multiplied. The repatriation of those Bulgarian Muslims who had fled communist Bulgaria for Turkey also reinvigorated the Muslim population. Today, Bulgarian Muslims are ethnically and religiously diversified: they comprise
Muslim Bulgarians or
Pomaks,
Turks,
Romanies and
Tatars, under the denominations of
Sunnism, the majority, and
Shiism, a minority with a strong
Sufi tradition. The transformation of Bulgarian society after the fall of communism has also led to the spread of
Eastern religions, various
new religious movements, the newest denominations of Protestantism, and
Restorationism. A new religious movement indigenous to Bulgaria is
Dunovism, a form of
Neo-Theosophy also known as the Universal White Brotherhood, which was founded in the early 20th century by the spiritual teacher
Peter Deunov (1864–1944) and has undergone a great revival in its home country and an international propagation since the 1990s. The late 20th and early 21st century have also seen the appearance of
Neopagan religious movements in Bulgaria, including
Slavic Rodnovery (often with elements of
Turco-Mongol Tengrism),
Celtic Druidry, and Thracian
Hellenism. According to the scholar Antoaneta Nikolova, Bulgarian society has been particularly well receptive to the spread of teachings from Eastern religions because of both the traditional mystical and esoteric character of Bulgarian Orthodox Christianity and the influence of Dunovism, the latter of which also directly incorporated Eastern elements. Additionally, during the communist period, the daughter of the leader Todor Zhivkov,
Lyudmila Zhivkova (1942-1981), developed a strong interest in Eastern teachings and Russian
Roerichism - itself, like Dunovism, being a Neo-Theosophical movement incorporating Eastern elements -, and popularised them in Bulgaria. ==Religions and life stances==