In 917 Symeon assumed the title of Tsar, and in 924 compelled Byzantium to recognize the Bulgarian Church as an autocephalous patriarchate, with its seat at Ochrida or Achrida. Under his son Peter (927-969) the kingdom began to decline; during the reign of Shishman I the western part proclaimed its independence; two years after Peter's death the eastern section was pledged to the Eastern Empire. The western part, not able to preserve its autonomy, went to pieces in 1018 under the repeated attacks of the Emperor Basil II, surnamed Bulgaroktonos (the slayer of the Bulgarians). Though Basil left the Bulgarian Church its autonomy, the Metropolitans of Achrida were no longer styled Patriarchs, but Archbishops, and after 1025 were chosen from the Greek clergy, instead of the Bulgarian....
...Kaloyan, or Ivanitza, ruled alone until 1207; he entered into negotiations with the Holy See, promised to recognize the spiritual supremacy of the pope, and in November, 1204, was crowned with the royal diadem by Cardinal Leo, legate of Pope Innocent III. At the same time Archbishop Basil of Tirnovo was consecrated Primate of Bulgaria. This new Bulgarian Church embraced eight dioceses, Tirnovo being the primatial see, but the union with Rome was not of long duration. The new empire soon came into conflict with the recently founded Latin Empire (1204) of Constantinople; the Greeks fanned the dissensions in order to gain the Bulgarians over to their side. King Ivan Asen II (1218-41) formed an alliance with Emperor Vatatzes against the Latin Empire (1234), and again joined the Greek Church, which thereupon solemnly recognized the autonomy of the Church of Tirnovo (1235)...
...During the fourteenth century, the Turks, flushed with victory, invaded the Balkan Peninsula, and under Amurath I overthrew the Servian kingdom in the battle of Kossovo (Field of Blackbirds, 1389), captured Tirnovo, and imprisoned Ivan III Shishman, the last Bulgarian Tsar, thus destroying the Bulgarian hegemony. The Church shared the fate of the State, and the last Bulgarian patriarch, Euthymius (1375-93), was driven into exile. Only the Patriarchate of Achrida continued as a Graeco-Bulgarian metropolitan see, with Greek or helenized occupants, until it was suppressed by the Porte in 1767 in consequence of the intrigues of the oecumenical patriarchs. The Greek language prevailed everywhere in schools and churches, and the remains of ancient Bulgarian literature were destroyed to a large extent by the Greeks...
In 1860 a representative body of the Bulgarian nation requested the Greek patriarch at Constantinople to recognize their national church, to accord them freedom in the selection of their bishops, and to appoint Bulgarian, rather than Greek prelates to Bulgarian sees. The Patriarch of Constantinople refused these concessions. This act inflamed the national feeling and was followed by the expulsion of the Greek bishops and finally insurrections against Turkish authority. To ensure its supremacy, the Porte sought to mediate between the parties, but fresh negotiations were productive of no further result, and the Sultan by a firman of 11 March, 1870, granted the Bulgarians an exarchate of their own, independent of the Greek patriarchate. In 1872, the first Bulgarian exarch was chosen by an assembly of Bulgarian bishops and laymen. In a council at which only twenty-nine orthodox bishops assisted the oecumenical patriarch solemnly excommunicated the Bulgarian Church and declared it schismatical.
