Bulgarian Historiography from September 9, 1944 until November 10, 1989 about the Relations between the Orthodox Church and the State Power in Bulgaria (1878–1912)

Authors:

Pages: 112-122

Abstract:

The present paper is a critical review of the historiography after September 9, 1944 concerning the relations between the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the state authority in 1878-1912 and the following conclusions can be reached: The interest and respectively the publications on the topic have different intensity over the years and depend on a number of factors such as the current socio-political situation, the personal convictions and personal professional qualities of the researchers, etc. The underestimation of the real spiritual functions of the church in free Bulgaria at the expense of the exaggerated and canonically untypical role of the Exarchate as a national-political institution, is undeniable fact and unfortunately a permanent historiographic tendency which is present also in contemporary publications. The domination of the civil-historical approach to the topic (which can be defined also as anti-ecclesiastical) and the transformation of the national idea and national thought in a constant attribute of our historiography for the new Bulgarian history, leads to the fact that in the past as well as in the present even the church historians and apologists of Exarch Joseph I present his undeniable merits for the preservation of the Bulgarian in Macedonia and Southern Thrace as “real liturgical service”. In considerable part of the publications dealing with the topic, we face inexcusable lack of information, even ignorance regarding fundamental church rules and canonical requirements which partially makes senseless the otherwise assiduous efforts of some researchers to examine the complex, but not unexplainable directions of the relations between the church and the state in 1878-1912.

Keywords:

Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Bulgarian state, historiography, Exarchate

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