The Byzantine Yoke - XI, XII century

The Byzantine yoke (XI-XII c.) is an unnatural period of interruption of the development of the government, church and cultural tradition. It had many negative processes and events in the Bulgarian community as a result. The preservation of the Bulgarian nationality on the territories inhabited by it is may be the only success, bayed on the conservative nation’s tradition.

The Byzantine yoke had a bad influence on the Bulgarians. Instead of developing their culture, they were forced to fight for their existence. The constant enemy invasions and the Byzantine quarrels, the church separation and the taxes crushed the creative will of the Bulgarian people. The rulers from Tzarigrad tried to change the people into a mass of more producers for the big cities and the huge army. The progress in trade and some crafts couldn’t replace the interrupted government tradition. The Bulgarian community and culture gradually diverted from the way of self-progress and headed towards imitation of the Byzantine ones. The harmful consequences were felt even in the Second Bulgarian Kingdom (1186).

The Bulgarian commanders resisted the Byzantine intruders for 50 years, but despite. That in 1018 the Bulgarian Kingdom stopped existing. Bulgaria had no king, its army was sent in Armenia, and our lands became Byzantine property.

The Byzantine divided the Bulgarian lands into district, called “Temi”. Only the southwest region (Macedonia) was called Bulgaria. The center of this district was Skopie. The rest of the Bulgarian territory was divided between old and new Byzantine districts. The managers of the divisions were Byzantines, that were chosen by the emperor. They had us in subordination by using Greek armies, settled in the towns and fortresses.

There were additional taxes and rates, gathered by servants, called tax collectors. They got still more unbearable, and the emperor gave many lands as gifts to Byzantine aristocrats and monasteries and thus their free countrymen became dependent.

The Bulgarian church was the only support of the nation. Because of this the Byzantines changed the patriarch with an archbishop. With this deed they underlined that the Bulgarian church was under the Byzantine one. The church center was moved from Drustur (Silistra) to Ohrid. Thus the conquerors tried to make a part of the Bulgarians think themselves Greeks.

Monasteries had the greatest part in the survival of the Bulgarian writing. Although there were many difficulties, Bulgarian books were still rewritten there, new ones were created, and some of them were translated in Greek. There were schools, in which the teaching process was in Bulgarian. In the years of the yoke save of the monasteries degraded, but others like the Rilski, existed successfully still. There were new to be established - especially in South - Western Bulgaria. There were Byzantine ones established that grew into big feudal estates soon - much land and dependent people. One of them was the Bachkovski monastery, established by a Georgian, who took an important position.

The apocrypha got extremely popular in those hard times. This was the name of the secret books that were banned by the church, thought they had religions themes. The reader could find things that weren’t written in official church books there. He could learn more about the sun and Earth, who found the Latin, Greek and the Bulgarian writing. The Bulgarians learn more about their free and glorious past from same of the apocrypha.

The Bulgarians were under a yoke physical but not spiritually. The patriarchy in Tzarigrad tired to do so, that it could make them true servants of the Byzantine emperor. They suppressed the Bulgarian church and gained control over it, changed the priests with Byzantines. The liturgies were in Greek. The Byzantines destroyed many Bulgarian cultural centers. The small monastery and hermit’s shelters in mountains became the guards of our history and culture. The monks thought children to write and read in Bulgarian, they copies books and stories of the Slavonian teachers Kiril and Methodii, of Saint like Ivan Rilski. Apocrypha chronicles reminded of a glorious past. In the years of slavery many Bulgarian books spread all over the world. Most of them got to Serbia and Russia, where they were copied and taken as an example. Thus the Bulgarian books became teachers for other Slavonian literature.