Eastern Orthodoxy in Bosnia and Herzegovina
The Eastern Orthodox Church is the most widespread Christian denomination in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the second largest religious group in the country , after Islam and, on the other hand, followed by Roman Catholicism . The vast majority of Orthodox Christians belong to the Serbian Orthodox Church . According to statistics, Orthodox Christians make up 31% of the country's population.
history
At the end of the High Middle Ages , after a period of rule by the Kingdom of Serbia, Eastern Orthodoxy was firmly established in the form of the Serbian Orthodox Church in eastern Herzegovina, namely in Zahumlje . Zahumlje was conquered by Stjepan II. Kotromanić in the late 1320s and was henceforth part of the Bosnian Banat (later kingdom), in which the Roman Catholic Church and the native Bosnian Church vied for supremacy. In this political climate, Eastern Orthodoxy never seems to have really penetrated medieval Bosnia beyond Podrinje.
The Ottoman conquest of the Kingdom of Bosnia in 1463 led to drastic changes in the denominational structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the invasion of Islam and Orthodox Christianity spreading to Bosnia. Sultan Mehmed II promised to respect Orthodox Christianity and like all Orthodox churches, the Serbian Orthodox Church enjoyed the support of the Ottoman state . The Ottomans settled large numbers of Orthodox Christians in Bosnia, including the Wallachians from the eastern Balkans .
The conversion of the followers of the Bosnian Church promoted the spread of Eastern Orthodoxy. Later the areas abandoned by the Catholics during the Ottoman-Habsburg Wars were populated with Muslims and Orthodox Christians. Ottoman rule consistently favored the Orthodox Church over the Catholics and urged Catholics to convert to Orthodoxy out of political interest: while the entire Orthodox hierarchy was subordinate to the Sultan, Catholics were suspected of conspiring with Rome.
While the Catholics were only allowed to repair existing sacred buildings, a long series of construction of Orthodox monasteries and churches all over Bosnia began in the northwest in 1515. An Orthodox priest was officiating in Sarajevo as early as 1489 and the city's first Orthodox church was built between 1520 and 1539. By 1532, Bosnian Orthodox Christians had their own metropolitan who officially took up residence in Sarajevo in 1699 . At the end of the 18th century, the Metropolitan of Bosnia had the right to issue instructions over the Orthodox bishops of Mostar , Zvornik , Novi Pazar and Sarajevo.
The tide finally turned against the Church when the Orthodox clergy broke their loyalty to the Sultan and began to side with the peasant uprisings. The Ottomans abolished the Patriarchal Monastery of Peć , and from the late 1760s to 1880 the Orthodox were directly subordinate to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople . As such, it was run by Phanariotes , Greeks in Istanbul . In the mid-19th century there were more than 400 Orthodox priests in Bosnia and Herzegovina; it was a time of renewed prosperity for the country's Eastern Orthodoxy. In 1920, after the First World War and the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the region came back under the religious authority of the newly reunited Serbian Orthodox Church under Patriarch Dimitrije.
Christian Orthodox sites
Individual evidence
- ↑ CIA World Factbook
- ↑ a b c d Mitja Velikonja: Religious Separation and Political Intolerance in Bosnia-Herzegovina . Texas A&M University Press, 2013, ISBN 1603447245 , pp. 74, 80. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016 Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Accessed May 15, 2016).
- ^ A b Robert J Donia, John Van Antwerp Fine: Bosnia and Hercegovina: A Tradition Betrayed . C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1994, ISBN 1850652120 , p. 40.
