Anthim I.

Antim I., Bulgarian exarch

Anthim I also Antim I. ( Bulgarian Антим I *  1816 in Kırklareli † / Lozengrad  1. December 1888 in Vidin , Bulgaria born when) Atanas Mihailov Tschalakow was a Bulgarian (bulg Атанас Михайлов Чалъков.) Prelate , politician, Exarch and head of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church as well as one of the activists of the Bulgarian National Revival . He was also the first chairman of the Bulgarian Parliament and led the constituent sessions for the drafting of the first Bulgarian constitution, the Tarnovo Constitution .

Life

Anthim I was born in Lozengrad in Eastern Thrace, today Kırklareli (Turkey). He was ordained as a priest in 1837 in the Athos monastery in Hilandar . He then studied at the most prestigious priest school in the Ottoman Empire, the Chalki seminary , which he finished in 1844. With a scholarship that he received with the help of the Russian consul in Smyrna , he was able to continue his education at the seminary in Odessa . After some time there, he moved to the Moscow Spiritual Academy , which he successfully completed in 1856.

After his return, Anthim was initially professor and rector at the seminary in Chalki . With the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the beginning of the Bulgarian National Revival and the concessions made by the Ottoman side in terms of religious practice, the struggle for a Bulgarian church independent of the Constantinople Ecumenical Patriarchate began .

After the events of the Bulgarian "Easter campaign" in 1860, when Bishop Ilarion Makariopolski failed to mention the Ecumenical Patriarch in the service and other Bulgarian clergymen followed him in the Ottoman Empire, the Constantinople Patriarch was forced to accept the Bulgarian demands and Bulgarian ones To set up bishops who held mass in Bulgarian and not in Greek. In 1861, Anthim I was appointed Metropolitan of Preslav . In 1868 he became the Metropolitan of the Eparchy of Vidin , which refused to bow to the Ecumenical Patriarch. However, the movement for the establishment of an independent church could no longer be stopped by the Greek-dominated ecumenical patriarchate. In 1868 Anthim joined the Constantinople movement and declared his detachment from the authority of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

The territory of the Bulgarian Exarchate

On March 11, 1870, the Ottoman Sultan Abdülaziz was forced to sign a ferman ( decree ) that foresaw the establishment of an independent Bulgarian exarchate, subject only to the sultan . This enabled the Bulgarian Orthodox Church to regain limited independence after centuries of Ottoman rule.

On February 4th ^jul. / February 16, 1871 ^greg. The Council of the Bulgarian Exarchate elected the Metropolitan of Vidin Antim I as the first Bulgarian exarch, after which his predecessor Ilarion I was not accepted by Sultan Abdülaziz after a protest from the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. The Bulgarian population of Constantinople, as well as personalities such as Gavril Krastewitsch , the Bogoridis and the Russian ambassador there, Count Ignatiev , campaigned for the candidacy of Anthim .

The establishment of the Bulgarian exarchate, and in particular a Bulgarian school and education system, also led to severe tensions with the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople, which had dominated up to that point. On May 11th, ^July / 23 May 1872 ^greg. , on the day of commemoration of Cyril and Methodius , the exarch Antim I declared independence from the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the Bulgarian Church of St. Stephen in Constantinople.

In response, at a synod in 1872, the Constantinople Patriarchate declared the Bulgarian Exarchate to be schismatic and accused it of heresy of phyleticism . In addition, the Bulgarian Church was accused of bringing about the uncanonical state in the form of the exarch residing in Istanbul (Constantinople), which two bishops officiated in one and the same city.

Antim Peak , a mountain on Smith Island in Antarctica, has been named after him since 2006 .

literature

• Hans-Dieter Döpmann : Church in Bulgaria from the beginnings to the present , Munich, Biblion Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3-932331-90-7
• Velichko Georgiev and Stajko Trifonow: Exarch, the Bulgarian Josef. Letters and Documents , Klub 90 Publishing House, Sofia, 1994, ISBN 954-596-007-8
• Hering, Gunnar: The Conflict of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Bulgarian Exarchate with the Porte 1890. (1988)
• Petar Angelow: Istorija na Balgarija (from the Bulgarian history of Bulgaria). SOFI-R, Sofija 2003, Volume 1: ISBN 954-638-121-7 , Volume 2: ISBN 954-638-122-5

Individual evidence

1. ^ Bulgarian State Archives

Web links

Commons : Anthim I  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biography and works of Anthim I. (bulg.) On the portal www.pravoslavieto.com
• Short biography of Exarch Anthim I (Bulgarian) in the church newspaper of BOK
• Biography of Exarch Anthim I. (bulg.) ( Memento from February 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) on the website of the Thrace Association Anthim I.
• Biography of Anthim I. (ru) in the Orthodox encyclopedia ("Православная Энциклопедия")

predecessor	Office	successor
Ilarion I.	Exarch of Bulgaria 1872–1877	Joseph I.

predecessor	Office	successor
Germanos IV.	Metropolitan of Widin 1868–1872	Kiril of Plovdiv