Bulgaria—Prime Candidate for Byzantine Commonwealth Membership?

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Angel Nikolov

Published:

2025

Publisher:

Oxford University PressOxford

Abstract The chapter shows that, from a Byzantine perspective, the conversion of the Bulgarian people placed it in spiritual dependence (‘sonship’), which presupposed a kind of political union with the empire. However, Bulgaria was a well-organized and powerful country that did everything possible to defend its sovereignty not only through diplomacy and war, but also by building its own autocephalous church and adopting Slavonic as the language of liturgy and worship. This was a model of selective borrowing from—and adaptation to local demands of—Byzantine political, literary, and cultural norms and patterns, one which was adopted by all Eastern European countries that accepted Byzantine Christianity. Thus, Slavia Orthodoxa was born—a new Christian world that shared the religious and cultural values spread by Constantinople, but remained autonomous and separate from the empire, which is why it was regarded by the Byzantines as barbaric and alien to Roman traditions.

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