Theophylact of Ohrid

Byzantine officials, both ecclesiastical and secular, faced a problem familiar to all representatives of empires that aspired to world domination, namely the need to reconcile the imperial ideology they were called upon to spread with the cultural and political aspirations of the people of the countries where they worked. Education, upbringing and the responsibilities they assumed filled them with the belief that the empire, whose representatives they were, immeasurably surpasses all solid countries and peoples on earth. And over these peoples, whom the Byzantines, like the ancient Greeks, called “barbarians,” the emperor, as was implied, was supposed to exercise the power given to him by God, and if some of these barbarians still live outside the boundaries of his direct rule, then this happens only by God’s permission and at the appointed time they will either be convinced or forced to accept the power of the legitimate sovereign. This was the Byzantine theory, and any discrepancy between it and reality had to be eliminated, or at least minimized, through persuasion and skillful diplomacy. In the light of such views, it was believed that the trusted linden of Byzantium - preachers, bishops, ambassadors - were called upon to play a very important role. This chapter is dedicated to one of the most remarkable representatives of the empire outside its borders. Theophylact Ifestos, a native of the Greek island of Euboea, became Archbishop of Bulgaria at the end of the 11th century; his throne was in the Macedonian city of Ohrid, where he worked among the Slavs for the benefit of the Church and the empire for at least twenty years, and perhaps more. It is interesting to us from various points of view. Firstly, his writings were an important source from which the West, during the Renaissance, drew knowledge of Greek theology, and with his comments on the Gospels and Epistles of the Apostle Paul, Theophylact had a strong influence on the structure of thoughts of Erasmus of Rotterdam. This influence is visible in both his later Commentaries on the New Testament and his Paraphrases, but is most noticeable in Erasmus's most famous work, The Praise of Folly. The concept of “divine stupidity” (μωρία), found in the theological discussions of the “Praise,” was borrowed by Erasmus, by his own admission, from Theophylact’s commentaries on the Epistles of the Apostle Paul. It is consistent with the tradition, especially rooted in the Eastern Church and going back to the “First Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians”: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing... For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the sight of God” (Cor. 1:18, 3:19). It is curious that at the time Erasmus wrote his “In Praise of Folly,” he did not know who the author of the commentaries he was using was, and believed that some of them belonged to the pen of a certain “Vulgarius.” Only in 1519, many years after the publication of “In Praise,” Erasmus realized his mistake and learned that “Vulgarius” was just one of the names of the Bulgarian diocese of Theophylact. Secondly, Theophylact played, although not a primary, but very important role in the dogmatic disputes that at that time were further and further dividing the Eastern and Western churches. He acted in them as a sensible and impartial judge. He severely condemned the Latins for their doctrine of the dual origin of the Holy Spirit (Filioque), which he considered heretical, and the Greek hierarchs for their lack of tolerance and understanding, which often led to the defamation of the most legitimate customs of the Western Church. Thirdly, Theophylact’s life path serves as a vivid illustration of those psychological and cultural contradictions that were mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. He, an educated man with refined tastes, studied in the best schools of Constantinople, a professor of rhetoric, was sent around 1090 as Archbishop of Ohrid to govern the remote Slavic province of the empire, and this province only seventy years earlier was part of the independent and very hostile Bulgarian Kingdom of Byzantium. In his new position as Archbishop of Bulgaria, Theophylact now had to reconcile in his activities two contradictory directions: on the one hand, he had to ensure the political loyalty of the Bulgarian flock to Byzantium, on the other hand, he had to fulfill his pastoral duties towards them; Aware of his belonging to the dominant nation of the empire, Theophylact inevitably became imbued with an understanding of the aspirations of its Bulgarian subjects. Of course, being essentially in the position of a colonizer, he experienced conflicting feelings, which could not but generate tension and some uncertainty. To see how Theophylact confronted these difficulties and how he tried to solve them, we must turn to his writings. Fortunately, the information contained in them is very, very numerous; the only difficulty is caused by the fact that they need to be extracted from the context with which they are tightly connected and deciphered. The biographer of Theophylact faces enormous obstacles in determining the chronology. Outside evidence about his life is so scanty that the dates of most events can only be determined very approximately. He was probably born between 1050 and 1060; Theophylact reports about himself that he is a native of Euboea, and we can assume that he was born in Chalkis, the main city of this Greek island. We can be absolutely sure that he bore the surname Ifestus. He apparently came from a very wealthy family, in any case, his parents had the opportunity to send him to one of the private schools of Constantinople, where he had to undergo the usual course of secondary education - encyclios paideia, which included grammar, rhetoric and philosophy. If Theophylact came to Constantinople in the 1060s, then we have the right to assume that during his years of study he witnessed the last phase of a remarkable intellectual movement that arose after the death of Emperor Basil II, which followed in 1025, and came to its end in the third quarter of the 11th century. Renewed interest in teaching and science, especially philosophy, rhetoric and law, led to a further concentration of intellectual life in the capital, led by a whole group of outstanding scientists who were engaged in teaching and subsequently received high positions in the state and the Church. This circle was headed by John Mavropod, Metropolitan of Euchaitis, poet and scholar; Constantine Likhud, rhetorician and jurist, first minister during the reign of Constantine IX Monomakh (1042–1055), then Patriarch of Constantinople; John Xyphilinus, head of the state School of Law, founded in the 1040s, later Likhud’s successor on the patriarchal throne; finally, Mikhail Psell, philosopher, historian, orator, politician, who played one of the first roles in the intellectual life of his century. We do not know whether Theophylactus ever met Mauropodos, Xyphilinus and Likhud, but Psellus was his teacher and the only person whose influence he definitely acknowledged. In one letter, Theophylact speaks about him in enthusiastic, although not very specific, terms. However, it is known that Psellus taught in one of the Constantinople schools for a very long time, dying in 1078 or 1096; thus, Theophylact was most likely his student in the truest sense of the word. Having completed his education, Theophylact remained in the capital; he was ordained a deacon, became a member of the clergy of St. Sophia and received an appointment as a rhetorician, that is, a teacher of rhetoric, like his teacher Psellus had previously done. Apparently, he soon received a promotion - in one of his letters he reports that he was appointed “senior rhetorician.” For several years he worked in a school at the Patriarchate, but it was not a religious educational institution, and many of his students became teachers, doctors, military officers, officials, judges, as well as priests. Notable among them was Constantine Ducas, the presumptive heir to the Byzantine throne. The son of the former Emperor Michael VI and the Caucasian princess Maria of Alania was entrusted to the care of Theophylact, probably in 1085 or 1086, by Emperor Alexius I Komnenos. Konstantin was then ten years old, and had just been betrothed to the newborn daughter of Alexei, who appointed his future son-in-law as co-ruler; such a decision apparently indicated that Constantine was to inherit the imperial throne. But in 1087, these hopes were dashed, as Alexei’s wife gave birth to a son, John, who became the heir of Alexei I. But Alexey did not deprive Constantine of his love; the young man remained Anna’s fiancé until his death, which followed in 1095. As a sign of imperial favor to Constantine's mother, the former basilissa (i.e., empress) Maria of Alanya, she was entrusted with the upbringing of Anna. By that time, the Georgian princess Maria, whose beauty was later sung in the most lyrical tones by Anna Komnena, had become a nun. She continued to be actively interested in the life of society and was no stranger to political intrigue. She maintained close friendly relations with Theophylact. Later, already as Archbishop of Bulgaria, he wanted to visit her on the Princes' Islands, but a storm at sea forced him to turn back; and one day Mary herself visited him when he was lying on his sick bed. It was at the request of Basilissa Mary that he wrote a lengthy and significant commentary on the Gospels; Theophylact worked on it probably while he lived in Ohrid. In the year 1085, when Constantine Ducas was still co-emperor, Theophylact addressed his royal disciple with a solemn speech in the presence of his mother. This logos basilicos, inaccurately called Institutio regia in the Western scholarly tradition, began quite faithfully: “At the thought that I am your teacher, I soar,” exclaimed the speaker. “When I am called the emperor’s mentor, I grow ten cubits.” He lyrically describes the delightful climate of Constantinople, mild in winter and summer, praises the excellent taste of the fruits that grow here, then scatters in immoderate praise of Constantine's dexterity in the arts of horsemanship and hunting, but mentions only in passing the virtues of his mind. What follows is a heartfelt eulogy for his mother. In the second, didactic, part, Theophylact examines various forms of government; he compares, following the classical model, monarchy, aristocracy and democracy with their opposites - tyranny, oligarchy and “ochlocracy”. The second part ends with a list of the qualities necessary for a true emperor, among them the requirement “not to give up first place to anyone, even the clergy,” not to communicate with actors and other persons involved in the theater, and to constantly practice the virtue pleasing to God - “philanthropy.” After such an eloquent word of praise, Theophylact was undoubtedly proclaimed an incomparable rhetorician. The last written masterpiece of his eloquence was a speech to Emperor Alexei, delivered, in all likelihood, on January 6, 1088. In this logos basilicos, Theophylact glorifies the military and diplomatic successes of the emperor, as well as his service to the Church. This speech is valuable evidence that the empire in 1086-1087 had relations with its northern enemies, the Pechenegs and Cumans. The Word ends with a eulogy for Alexei’s mother. Like Maria Alanskaya, Anna Dalassina became a nun, but continued to live at court and had great influence on state affairs. A year or two later, already in the Macedonian city of Ohrid, Theophylact ascended the throne of Archbishop of Bulgaria. The exact date of this event is unknown, which has caused much debate. The last publisher of Theophylact's works, Paul Gautier, believes that this happened between January 6, 1088 - the day when the Word was delivered to Emperor Alexei - and the spring of 1092; It seems most likely that Theophnlactos' ordination took place in 1089 or 1090. There have been many unfounded conjectures regarding the appointment of Theophylact as Archbishop of Bulgaria. It was argued that the appointment to such a distant diocese was a disgrace imposed by the emperor on Theophylact for friendship with the Empress Maria, who was allegedly in disgrace at that time; There were also suggestions that Theophylact was considered the most suitable person for the Hellenization of Bulgaria. In my opinion, all these hypotheses are devoid of any basis. In the 11th–12th centuries, appointment to the highest church positions was often seen as a reward for special services to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Archbishopric of Ohrid was considered by the Byzantine authorities to be a key post. Basil II annexed Bulgaria to Byzantium in 1018 and, to ease the lot of the Bulgarians, allowed them to retain some of the national institutions most dear to their hearts, the main one being their Church. In three charters issued between 1019 and 1025, the emperor asserted that the Archbishopric of Ohrid (replacing the Bulgarian Patriarchate at the time of independence) was autocephalous, that is, independent of the Patriarchate of Constantinople; in addition, the emperor subordinated to him all the bishoprics that in the 10th century were part of the Bulgarian kingdom, in other words, a significant part of Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Northern Greece, as well as Northern and Central Bulgaria. The archbishop was appointed by the emperor, but the suffragan bishops approved this appointment. This order, on the one hand, strengthened the power of Byzantium over the Bulgarian Church, but on the other hand, it did not infringe too much on Bulgarian national pride. Ohrid's autocephalous status meant protection from direct intervention by the Patriarch of Constantinople, and the archbishop occupied one of the highest places in the hierarchy of the Eastern Church. It was - and was so for several centuries - of the greatest importance in the Northern and Central Balkans. Theophylact's talents and his reputation, undoubtedly strengthened after his recent “Word to the Emperor,” fully explain his rapid promotion and appointment to such an important diocese. Between 1025, when Basil II died, and 1089–1090, when Theophylact became Archbishop of Ohrid, much changed in Bulgaria. Although it still retained suffragan dioceses in Macedonia, Albania, Greece and Central Bulgaria, the territory of the archbishopric was greatly reduced. Even more ominous was the fact that the successors of Vasily II abandoned his moderate policy towards the conquered lands. Byzantium imposed unmerciful taxes on them, which caused an armed rebellion in 1040, followed in 1072 by a second, much more dangerous one, supported by the Serbs. He too was brutally suppressed by the Byzantines, and by the time Theofnlaktas arrived in Ohrid, the growing discontent of the Slavs had become even more evident. The archbishop was the main representative of the Byzantine authorities in the conquered lands after the military governor (chief) of the Bulgarian province, or theme, who usually stayed in Skopje. Although Emperor Basil II appointed a Bulgarian as the first Archbishop of Ohrid, all of his successors were Greek. Leo, the next Archbishop of Ohrid, was chosen by Emperor Michael IV from among the deacons of St. Sophia. He became notorious for provoking a schism between the Churches of Constantinople and the Roman Church, which came to light in 1054. By the will of Patriarch Michael Cerularius, Leo of Ohrid sent a message to the representative of the Patriarchate in Rome for delivery to the Pope and all bishops of the Western Church. In his letter, Leo unconditionally condemned the Latin Church for the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist and for Saturday fasts. In Rome, the message caused irritation and anger, and a furious dispute broke out between the two Churches, which led to the fact that on July 16, 1054, the papal legates placed a bull of excommunication of Leo of Ohrid and Michael Cerularius on the altar of St. Sophia. It fell to Theophylact, the fourth successor of Leo, to mitigate the consequences of the rule of the fanatical scolder. Around 1090, or perhaps 1112, he wrote to a former student named Nicholas, deacon of St. Sophia, a lengthy response to a letter asking "about the errors of the Latins in ecclesiastical affairs." It is clear that Theophylact was bound by his position. However, he rejected Nicholas's statement that these misconceptions were numerous. Many of the accusations of the Greeks against the Latins, he wrote, concern the smallest differences in rituals and customs and are childish and frivolous in nature. Two charges - the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist and Saturday fasts - are much more serious. However, these errors, so severely branded by his predecessor Leo, in the opinion of Theophylact, although worthy of reproach, are still not so important as to tear apart the single body of the Church of Christ because of them. In both of these matters, Theophylact emphasized, tolerance and mercy are necessary above all. According to his reasoning, only one dispute, without being resolved, can cause a split in the Church. It concerns the addition by the Latins of the term Filioque to the Nicene Creed. From this addition it follows that the Holy Spirit does not come from the Father alone (as the Greek Church has always maintained, following the Ecumenical Councils in this), but from the Father and from the Son. Since 867, when Patriarch Photius denounced the Latin preachers for spreading this teaching, the Filioque became the main stumbling block between the Western and Eastern Churches. Theophylact strongly opposed the Filioque for two reasons. First, that there was an innovation (καινοτομία) to the Creed, which “should not undergo any change.” Secondly, this is incorrect from a theological point of view, for it distorts the true relationship between the hypostases of the Trinity. Both of these objections were made at one time by Patriarch Photius, but Theophylact brought another argument, which Photius clearly lacked in his polemics with the Latins. Greek theologians, arguing with the Latins about whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son, as well as from the Father, were faced with the need to interpret the Gospel of John in the tone of its part, where the risen Christ gives his disciples the Holy Spirit: “... he breathed and said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20; 22). Theophylact argued that, basing their teaching on this verse, the Latins were guilty of confusing two concepts - the eternal “procession” and the temporary “descent.” “Procession,” according to Theophylact, “is the way in which the Holy Spirit receives its existence from the Father,” and “descent is the way in which it is sent, bestowed and distributed... and testifies to the enrichment and outpouring of mercy that he possesses, existing in the Father, but it is poured out on those. whoever was worthy of this, from the Son.” In other words, the “procession” (το έκπορεύεσθαι) is directly related to the main mystery of the Holy Trinity. And in this sense, the Spirit eternally comes only from the Father. But as a temporary phenomenon, “descent” (το πέμπεσθαι), “giving” (το χορηγείσθαι) or “message” (μεταδίδοσθαι) is associated with “outpouring” (χύσις) grace by the Son. Theophylact insists that the Latins do not know the difference between “procession” and “descent”; he returns to this again and again. But even in theological matters, in which Theophylact would not make any concessions, he wanted to show the full measure of human understanding. The errors of the Latins, he believed, “arise not from weakness of judgment, but from ignorance of the truth.” However, they cannot be held fully responsible for the confusion of the concepts of “origin” and “descent,” for it is rooted in the poverty of the Latin vocabulary. If the Latins, says Theophylact, apparently without a hint of irony, really cannot distinguish the “origin” from the “descent” and its synonyms, so be it; let them use the words at their disposal, provided that they accept the Creed without the Filioque. At first glance, it seems strange that Theophylact paid little attention to disagreements on another issue, which, at least from the 9th century, acquired a threatening character in the polemics between Rome and Constantinople - on the question of the primacy of the Pope. Apparently, he considered it only as a natural consequence of the Filioque and, above all, objected to the Pope's claims to the right to extend this teaching to the entire Church. Theophylact did not speak clearly and openly about the theoretical aspects of the papal claims. Undoubtedly, he shared the views of the most “liberal” Byzantine clergy and recognized that the Roman See has primacy over all other Churches and that the Pope is the first among all the bishops of Christendom. This primacy, which the Byzantines never gave a precise definition, Rome in their eyes owed not so much to the apostolic origin of the Roman see, but to the fact that it was located in the capital of the former Roman Empire, as well as their memories of the former, virtually unsullied theological unity. Probably, more than some kind of honorable primacy, this recognition on the part of the Byzantines was caused by the right of any clergy condemned by his Church to appeal the conviction in Rome. But they never recognized Rome’s right to summon any clergy to the Curia or to examine in Rome matters affecting the vital interests of the Eastern Church. Believing that the autocratic government of the Ecumenical Church contradicts both church canons and traditions, the Byzantines stood on the fact that theological truth cannot be spoken through the lips of one bishop alone, no matter how high his rank, but is proclaimed by the entire Church, represented by its bishops at the Ecumenical Councils. Despite the very cursory mention of the question of Roman claims, we can hardly doubt that Theophylact shared these views, even if he did not openly preach them. Like his other compatriots and contemporaries, he, apparently, simply could not present a detailed and clear objection to the Roman teaching on the Church. That is why he reduced the Pope's claims to direct control of the entire Church to a simple desire to subject all Christians to his authority. He does not intend to recognize any teaching as true, Theophylact writes with undisguised sarcasm, for the sole reason that it was proclaimed from the papal throne. He does not intend to and will not recognize it for anything, even if the Latins “shake the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven before our eyes.” From Theophylact's treatise it becomes absolutely clear that he did not consider the schism between the Western and Eastern Churches to have already occurred. “If the Latins speak out in accordance with the laws of the Fathers of the Church,” he argued, “nothing can separate us from the Western Church.” However, Theophylact sadly admitted that only a small number of compatriots shared these views. Many Byzantines, he bitterly complains, filled with conceit and pride, curse and denigrate the most legitimate customs of the Latins, which differ from the customs of the Byzantine Church. By giving vent to “selfishness” and “a tendency to argue,” these newly minted Pharisees endanger their own souls, and Theophylact solemnly predicts to them that, having separated their Latin brothers from the Church, they themselves may find themselves torn away from the Kingdom of Heaven. Theophylact's conciliatory and generous attitude towards the differences between the Eastern and Western Churches has been compared with the attitude towards the same issue of his contemporary, Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury. Indeed, there is a certain similarity in their views on the main doctrinal problem of that time. In 1098, at a council convened by Pope Urban II at Bari to settle differences between the Latin Church and the Greek Church in Southern Italy and Sicily, Anselm, then exiled from England, was invited to speak on the Filioque. He calmly and restrainedly said that by introducing the Filioque into the Creed, the Latins did not make any changes, but only brought clarity to it. There was no need, he said, for the Greeks to introduce the Filioque into the Creed, but they should not condemn the Latins for doing so. And the Greek bishops from Italy and Sicily agreed with him. So, around 1100, the Archbishops of Ohrid and Canterbury, who had never seen each other, thought that, despite the painful events of 1054, the Christian world still remained united, and this fact is clearly of interest to the Church historian. The rhetorical and theological works of Theophylact can tell us something about their author, and it is probably not so fantastic to try to trace from them the manifestations of two traits inherent in him, which is clear both from the writings of Theophylact and from his life path. Firstly, this is an organic, natural conservatism of the worldview, supported, undoubtedly, by his position as a rising luminary at court and the patriarchy, and, secondly, the ability to benevolently understand views and social institutions that are alien to him. His conservatism is clearly visible in both Logos basilicoi, addressed to Constantin Duca and Alexei Comnenus. In both works he follows the conventions of the genre of imperial panegyrics established by his Byzantine predecessors, not only Michael Psellus. Another feature of his character - a well-known sympathy towards Western Christians - was much rarer for Byzantium. Nowadays we would call this the rare gift of empathy. Both of these sides of Theophylact's personality were reflected in his letters. We have approximately one hundred and thirty published letters of Theophylact, written by him during his tenure at the See of Ohrid. Scientists found in them information about a variety of subjects: about the structure of Byzantine government in Bulgaria, about the fiscal policy of the empire in the provinces, about the social and economic history of Macedonia, about medieval heresies; they were addressed as a kind of “Who’s Who?”, a kind of biographical directory of Byzantine officials. Relatively little attention has been paid to evidence of a more personal nature, and few have examined Theophylact's letters in order to find out what light they shed on the personality of the author himself, on how he related to his human and professional responsibilities. The following pages, while not intended to be exhaustive, will probably help fill this gap. Reading these letters, the researcher experiences some difficulties. Firstly, the ease of understanding is not facilitated by the atticism of his Greek language with the deliberate obscurity of the style. The abundance of riddles and vague metaphors, sometimes found in his writings, indicates the connection of Theophylact’s style with the elliptical style of writing letters accepted in Byzantium at that time, and sometimes with the “parabolic-shaped” style that then prevailed in some literary genres of Europe. Although Theophylact renounced his intention to follow the canons of this style, he did not renounce too decisively and still resorted to it from time to time. This manner of “piling up riddles”, “intricately weaving puzzles” and “dark words” leads to the fact that the correspondent finds himself in a labyrinth from which he cannot escape without Ariadne’s thread. The effect of this style on the reader was well described by Margaret Mallett: “When you read the letters of Theophylact, it often seems as if you are touching the very core of a great historical story, or as if you have been told such a strange joke that it does not cause laughter, or as if you are trying to unravel an encrypted text written in an alphabet from which you know only a few letters.” Secondly, the “deconcretization” of literary material, as modern scholars call it, is aggravated by the fact that we do not have the reply letters of Theophylact’s correspondents, and therefore the dating of his own letters sometimes encounters insurmountable difficulties. Adhering to abstract conventions, he sometimes passes over in almost complete silence the most significant events that took place in his diocese. For example, he barely mentions, and then in passing, in a single letter, that a huge army of the first crusade passed through Ohrid in the spring of 1087. And regarding the appearance between Lake Ohrid and the Adriatic Sea of ​​Bohemond, the Norman prince of Antioch, who intended to besiege Dyrrachium, he wrote even more vaguely. Regarding both of these invasions, Fsophylact reports in very unflattering terms. But sometimes Theophylact in his letters discards literary conventions. Personal feeling, very strong and clearly expressed, breaks through fashionable rhetoric and archpastoral concerns. This is especially felt in a letter to an unknown Constantinople friend, in which Theophylact shares his first impressions after his arrival in Ohrid. Ohrid, located on the north-eastern shore of the lake of the same name, was by no means a quiet backwater: the ancient Roman Lychnida had a rich historical past; Having become part of the Bulgarian kingdom, it became at the end of the 11th century - largely thanks to St. Clement - a major center of the Slavic Christian world. At the end of the 10th century, Ohrid was the capital of the Bulgarian Tsar Samuil. During Byzantine rule, one of Theophylact's predecessors crowned Ohrid's precious scattering of churches and monasteries with the reconstruction of the monumental Church of St. Sophia, which became the cathedral of the diocese. In addition, the Via Egnatia, a Roman road linking Constantinople via Thessalonica, Ohrid, Inner Macedonia with the Byzantine outposts on the Adriatic Sea of ​​Apollonia and Dyrrhachium, contributed to the international relations of the Ohrid diocese. However, Theophylact was not made a good impression either by his new place of residence or by the local inhabitants. As soon as Theophylact entered the city, he wrote to his friend, “he was overwhelmed by a murderous stench.” Even worse, the people of Ohrid greeted their new archbishop with ridicule and insults and sang a “victory song” in the streets of Ohrid, deliberately glorifying the past glory of independent Bulgaria, obviously in order to offend him. It is quite understandable that because of such a hostile meeting, Theophylact’s thoughts turned to the imperial capital he had recently left, and in the same letter - one of the first he wrote in Macedonia - he succumbed to a strong attack of homesickness. “I have barely set foot on the land of Ohrid, but I am already yearning for the city, which, like a reckless lover, does not let us go from its embrace.” Nostalgia did not leave Theophylact throughout his stay in Ohrid. The longing for Constantinople - the “center of aspirations” of so many expelled from it or those who left it due to circumstances - constantly sounds in his letters. More than once he turns to his high-ranking friends and acquaintances at court with a request to free him from the burden of archpastoral duties. His trips to Constantinople, apparently, were rare and short-lived - in his letters he mentions only two. But Theophylact made more efforts not to leave his post, but to overcome, as befits a courageous man, his painful melancholy. Being an educated Byzantine, he inherited long and rich literary traditions, from which he drew models for expressing his feelings. Two themes developed in these traditions were especially close to Theophylact in his new position: longing for Constantinople, a feeling that was shared with him by all the officials of the empire who served in its provinces, and the habit of resorting to writing letters as a spiritual expression of friendship. The first topic was especially often addressed in the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries; the second was common in medieval Byzantium, starting from its heyday in the patristic era. Writing was perceived as a spiritual gift, a “portrait of the soul”; it brought with it the “illusion of presence” and, in Plato’s apt and oft-used metaphor, the “second journey,” the best possible substitute for real presence. St. put this metaphor into widespread use. John Climacus; Psellus shared this idealized concept of friendship with his student Theophylact. Although Theophylact, as far as I can tell, did not use any of these expressions, with the exception of comparing a letter with a gift, this spiritualistic idea of ​​\u200b\u200bfriendship is very strongly felt in his epistolary heritage. It is very clearly visible in Theophylact’s letter to the Bishop of Corfu: “Even if we are orphaned without each other, then this is true only for our eyes - we talk with you through the lips of our letters.” Friendly warmth is also clearly visible in his letters to a certain Nikolai Lnemas. This otherwise unknown man had recently been appointed administrator of the Bulgarian diocese, but not of Ohrid. Theophylact could not hide his joy at the news that his friend was nearby. Jubilant quotes are crowded in his head, and it is curious that first he quotes Euripides and Aristophanes and only then quotes the words from Holy Scripture: “My soul praises the Lord,” as that is undoubtedly more befitting of an archbishop. Most of Theophylact's letters concern business issues - he makes requests, instructs, and provides information. He writes to some of his bishops in a friendly and fatherly tone, but to no one does he send such warm letters as to the Bishop of Corfu. He addresses the patriarch in different ways, thanking him for his encouragement and support, for sending him twelve pairs of walking shoes as a gift, asking for protection from local tax collectors, who groundlessly attributed to him the receipt of large incomes that he allegedly hid from the treasury. But one day his relationship with the patriarch became very complicated. Without consulting Theophylact, the patriarch gave permission to an unnamed monk to open a “house of prayer” in Macedonia, and the archbishop, who jealously guarded the independence of the Church, regarded this act of the patriarch as uncanonical and responded very angrily. “What right does the Patriarch of Constantinople have to dispose of on Bulgarian land,” he wrote to a high-ranking clergyman in Constantinople, “he who has no power to order anyone here and no other privileges on this land that has acquired an autocephalous bishop?” Protesting against the violation of his rights, Theophylact wrote - undoubtedly, much more restrained - to the head of the office of the patriarch, but received no answer. The outcome of this canonical dispute is unknown, but it is difficult to believe that Ohrid defeated Constantinople. Another clash, which bothered Theophylact a lot and worried him greatly, arose between him and the Bishop of Sofia. This elderly hierarch was harassing the abbot of a monastery in his diocese, and the abbot turned to Theophylact for protection, who took his side. But no amount of pressure from the archbishop, or even the emperor himself, could soften the stubborn bishop. Invited to a council of bishops of the entire archbishopric, he declined under various plausible pretexts. Then Theophylact imposed a ban on his subordinate, which was to come into force in fifteen days,” then wrote a personal message to the rebellious bishop, in which he sharply reproached the rudeness and illiteracy of his letters; according to Theophylact, there are so many solecisms in them that schoolchildren would burst with laughter. In the end, the parties showed the will to reconcile. The bishop, announcing that he was seriously ill, relented. Theophylact wrote that he was inclined to forgive him, not to remember how he slanderously defamed his archbishop in Constantinople, and to encourage his clergy to lift the ban. Theophylact's relations with local military and political officials, at least with high-ranking ones, were generally favorable. Of course, the compliments he made in his letters were not always disinterested, and the most insincere of them were addressed to the two military governors of Bulgaria who successively held this position and were based in Dyrrhachium. The first of these was John Ducas, son-in-law of Emperor Alexios, who was already in Dyrrhachium when Theophylact arrived in Ohrid, and recalled to Constantinople in 1092. Theophylact praises his military exploits and, of course, recalled the previous ties that connected him with this family, writes that John combines all the virtues of the “blessed house of Duk.” In one letter, Theophylact asks for some favors for his relatives in Euboea, in another he demands that a certain Macedonian village near Bitola be returned to his jurisdiction. The next governor after Ducas was John Komnenos, the emperor's nephew. Theophylact's letters to him contain very specific and urgent demands: to remove excessive taxes from the Albanian diocese of Devol, to complete military recruitment in the vicinity of Ohrid, to ensure that the exemption from all taxes granted by the emperor to the clergy of the Vardar Valley, with the exception of land tax, is strictly observed. Theophylact had no aversion to accompanying his requests with modest gifts. These “gifts” do not necessarily have to be regarded as outright bribes - the Byzantines had a custom of sending gifts along with letters. Most often he sent fish - a lean delicacy and quite befitting an archbishop and a monk. He apparently sent gifts to the ruler of Thessalonica, Caesar Nicephorus Melissinus, twice, the first time - fifty fish, some brined, some baked in small loaves, the second - two hundred medium-sized brined fish. He sent a hundred pickled fish to the governor and Duke John Komnenos. He sent small shipments to Constantine Duque, governor of the Vardar district, and Nikephoros Bryennius, Duke of Dyrrachium. It was probably the famous trout from Lake Ohrid (Salmo ohridanus), which gourmets have always appreciated. Each time he mentions the number of fish sent, he is pleased to reveal the favorable meaning contained in the numbers: fifty means five ten, that is, five feelings multiplied by the most modern of numbers, two hundred means five feelings multiplied by four virtues and multiplied by ten. His letters to Constantinople were varied and, from the point of view of this study, more meaningful. He wrote to his friends, students, colleagues and those officials whose favor he considered necessary to gain. The most powerful of these were Gregory Camateros, chief of the imperial chancellery, and Hadrian Komnenos, brother of the emperor and commander-in-chief of the Byzantine forces in Europe. Theophylact's letters to Gregory, both fatherly and respectful, suggest that Gregory was either his disciple or spiritual son. Their tone is complimentary: the new governor, appointed through Gregory’s efforts, is so good that it couldn’t be better; tax collectors brought a certain village in the lower reaches of the Vardar to the brink of ruin - Theophylact thanks Gregory for protecting the interests of the Church, but Theophylact's enemies did not lay down their arms and are trying to convince the emperor to cancel his decision, so let Gregory be on the alert and hold firm. Theophylact's letters to the Great Domestic Adrian, written earlier than 1105, concern mainly the abuses of tax collectors - praktores - in Bulgaria, from which the archbishop seeks protection. Bitter complaints about covetous people are repeated again and again; they could hardly leave the addressee indifferent. The strict fiscal policy of the government of Alexei Komnenos, aimed at fleecing the provinces in favor of the capital and improved by the system of tax farming, placed a heavy burden on the outskirts of the empire. Theophylact complains: “The Prakrores are always robbing us.” One of them, the chief tax collector in Bulgaria, like some kind of evil genius, is present on many pages of Theophylact's correspondence. His name was Yasit, he belonged to an aristocratic Byzantine family. He, like Theophylact, had influential friends in Constantinople, and he was well able to fight the archbishop who was trying to remove him from office. The archbishop owned large estates in Macedonia and levied a special tax on his subjects - kanonicon; this allowed him to fight Yasit and his minions openly. In a letter to the emperor's son-in-law, Theophylact, with devastating sarcasm, complains about rumors about the archbishop's supposedly failing health, which are spread by his enemies. One of them, writes Theophylact, slandered him to the emperor, claiming almost under oath that “my roads ooze with oil, that milk flows from my mountains, that... I am fabulously rich and live like a satrap... that the imperial palaces in Susa and Ecbatana are just miserable hovels in comparison with my elegant, luxurious, multi-story houses, in which I spend time in the summer.” Theophylact was so absorbed by the thought of evil tax collectors that, even mourning the death of his brother, he could not help but mention them. “Who will from now on,” he wrote, mourning the departure of a loved one, “to pacify the rabid praktores? Who will shut the mouths of these inflated frogs? It would be wrong to believe that Theophylact fought against tax collectors only out of selfish interests. His most furious anger was caused by their claims to church property and persecution of the orphaned and defenseless. He directly accused fiscal officials of “taking one out of every five children into slavery,” asserted that they had fallen under the power of Satan, and implored them to stop “beating and ruining and robbing the parents of these children. The outcome of Theophylact's numerous battles with tax collectors is unknown, but there can hardly be any doubt that he suffered a lot from them, financially and humanly. This guerrilla war could well undermine his strength. Theophylact, at least during his stay in Ohrid, was not in very good health; he often complained of weakness. Apparently, he was a hypochondriacal person, since the diseases of which he complains - gout, sciatica, catarrh and dry cough - could hardly lead to serious consequences, although sometimes they confined him to bed, and once he feared that he had become infected His interest in painful symptoms and treatments borders on obsessiveness. Judging by the lively correspondence that he maintained with several prominent doctors in Constantinople, Theophylact possessed enormous medical knowledge. He wrote ten letters - the largest number of letters he sent to the same person - to his former student, who became the emperor's physician, Mikhail Pantechni. Theophylact loved this student, who managed to make his way in life: he advised him to beware of court intriguers (“scorpions,” as he called them), blamed him for not writing and not coming, and promised to give him garlic if he visited him. The most impressive “medical” letter Theophylact wrote to Master John Pantechni, probably Michael’s father. In terrible detail, he describes an attack of seasickness that probably happened to him on the way from Constantinople to Thessalonica and lasted all four days of the sea voyage. Not a single unattractive detail is hidden from us: nausea, vomiting, separation of saliva and bile, as well as “undigested fluid.” Theophylact is clearly afraid of sea travel and, if it were his will, he would never find himself on the open sea, preferring to “scrape the dry land with oars.” He describes even more vividly his futile attempt to visit Basilissa Maria, when a storm overtook him between Nicomidne and the Princes' Islands. The ship was prevented from entering the port by the combined efforts of the “roaring” northern Negro and the “murderous” southern one. However, he spared Vasilisa Maria and there are no immodest naturalistic details in the letter sent to her. Another series of letters on a medical topic is addressed to the archiatros Nicholas Callicles, the chief physician of Emperor Alexei. Some of them are devoted to the deteriorating health of Demetrius, the younger brother of Theophylact. Between 1097 and 1105, Theophylact's struggle with the tax collectors sometimes became so fierce that he had to leave Ohrid and retire to Pelagonia (Bitola). Seeking justice from Jasit, he - in the middle of winter - sent Demetrius with two letters to Nicholas Callicles in Constantinople. It was probably then that Dimitri fell ill with consumption, from which he later died. Soon Theophylact wrote to Nicholas again, conveyed greetings from his brother and said that he was seriously ill. He asks to be sent some of Galen's books and other commentaries on Hippocrates, perhaps in the hope of discovering the origins of the disease. He conveys more accurate medical observations in a letter to the Bishop of Kitros in Pieria. To protect Demetrius from the summer heat, Theophylact took him from Ohrid to a village in the Vardar Valley. However, there Dimitri yearned for the mountain air, light wine and healthy Ohrid food. He lost his appetite, his gastric juices were depleted, he was tormented by headaches, in a word, Dimitri’s health was quickly deteriorating. The only medicine that he could take, and even then infrequently, was όξυσάκχαρι, its basis, apparently, was honey and vinegar. Demetrius must have died in Ohrid around 1107. The brothers were probably very close, but, unfortunately, Theophylact’s letters to Demetrius have not survived. Demetrius served as a reliable support for his brother; he, like a messenger, delivered his messages and supported him in the fight against Yasit. The emperor, according to Theophylact, loved Demetrius, he was respected at court and in the Senate. The death of his brother turned out to be the most sad event mentioned in Theophylact's correspondence. In a letter to the Bishop of Kitros, filled with sadness and longing, Theophylact writes about his brother that he was “the breath of my breath and everything in the world for me.” Perhaps, soon after the death of Demetrius, mourning his brother, he wrote two poems. The first begins with these lines: Let him be turned to stone, These Anacreontic poems, full of dignity and deep feeling, are among the fifteen poems composed by Theophylact at different times and on different occasions; Apparently, Theophylact’s poetic creativity was valued very highly by his contemporaries. In one of his letters, Theophylact tells how, trying to distract himself from the heat and sirocco of the Ohrid summer, he composed iambics. In two poems he extols the psalms of the Byzantine mystic St. Simeon the New Theologian. “Everyone should read this book” - this is how one of these two poems by Theophylact begins. Of course, Theophylact admired Simeon’s psalms so much because he himself had a keen sense of poetry and knew how to appreciate spiritual wealth. When you read the letters of Theophylact, it is difficult to even imagine that this busy, troubled, sometimes grumpy archbishop could be spiritually close to the great contemplator, whose writings bear the reflection of an unchanging divine radiance. Everything that we have learned about Theophylact helps us come closer to understanding the main topic of our research: how he managed to reconcile his mission as a representative of the interests of Byzantium in Bulgaria, entrusted to him by the emperor, with the duties of a shepherd of the Bulgarians. In other words, how could he live simultaneously in two different worlds - the one of Constantinople, the center of his memories, the subject of constant longing and the habitat of his friends, and the world of Ohrid, a distant, border Macedonian city in which he was doomed to spend half of his life. Apparently, this was not easy for him. As we already know, Ohrid immediately made a depressing impression on him, and over time this did not change much. Yes, he could value Ohrid’s mountain air, Ohrid wine and food more than the miserable life in his Vardar village, but he never ceased to suffer from the poverty and abandonment of this region. “A small and completely poor province,” Foofilakt wrote about Ohrid, “of all the provinces of the empire, the most pitiful.” In terms of size, it cannot be compared with the vast Nelagon Valley in Central Macedonia; it can only be compared with the island of Mykonos, whose cramped conditions and dirt are proverbial. Books are difficult to obtain, and at best they reach him once a year. Even the beauty of Lake Ohrid leaves him indifferent; he calls it “Unfortunate Lake”24. However, Theophylact's complaints about Ohrid and its inhabitants are for the most part of an abstract and literary nature. For example, he compares the local residents to frogs, among which he, like Zeus’s eagle, is doomed to live. This barbaric country, he laments, hates intelligence more than myrrh to dung beetles. The people of Ohrid, he claims, reinterpreting an old proverb, listen to his song just as a donkey listens to the playing of the lyre. He compares Bulgaria to the barbarian tents of Kedar, so contemptuously mentioned in the Psalter. And worst of all, he writes to his friend Anemas, apparently around 1105, that, living surrounded by barbarians, he himself becomes a barbarian. “Now that we have lived for so many years in the Bulgarian lands,” he continues in the same letter, “a rough way of life has become our inseparable companion.” Theophylact's attitude towards local names explains a lot about his seeming contempt for his surroundings. With obvious snobbery, he emphasizes his contempt for geographical names of Slavic origin. He writes about the main river of Macedonia, which “the Greeks called Axios, but in the new barbarian dialect it is called Vardar.” Even more unpleasant is his request to the addressee not to laugh at him for using the Slavic name of the Macedonian city. These local names are “a nuisance (άηδία) that one has to put up with; “You can’t constantly delight your ears with the delightful sounds of the Greek language.” The literary nature of this game becomes even more obvious when you see with what readiness Theophylact uses “barbarian names” if his archbishop’s duties require it. It is not surprising that the textbook image of Theophylact - a hater of everything Bulgarian - was established quite firmly. The most passionate advocate of this concept was the leading Bulgarian midianist V. N. Zlatarsky. He even insisted that the main mission entrusted to Theophylact by the empire was to eradicate the Bulgarian language and literature and to Hellenize the Bulgarian people. We will postpone our judgment until we reach the final pages of this chapter. But perhaps a few preliminary remarks will be quite appropriate here. Firstly, those who emphasize Theophylact’s hostility to everything Bulgarian base their arguments only on Theophylact’s letters; they do not always realize that among his epistolary works, “anti-Bulgarian” ones constitute a clearly smaller part. Secondly, these “xenophobic” letters should be studied without losing sight of Theophylact’s special character, as well as the Byzantine traditions of this genre. Exposing the vices of Ohrid, Theophylact often resorts to literary, classical and biblical parallels. In general, when lamenting the fate of the exile, he mainly relies on classical mythology. In this semi-ghost world, where, through the power of associations, mythological characters acquire almost an independent existence, Theophylact’s enemies appear in the forms of mythological monsters, and Theophylact himself becomes one of the ancient heroes - the winners of these monsters. He bravely sails between Scylla and Charybdis, he fights with the formidable opponents of Odysseus, the Listrygonians and Cyclops, one after another, he demolishes the heads of the Lernaean Hydra, which invariably grow again and again; he turns into Tantalus, doomed to eternal hunger and thirst, and into Hercules, the amusement of Omphale, the Lydian queen. It was noted that he reserved all the classical allusions and reminiscences for a very narrow circle of addressees, for people equal to himself in intelligence and ideas about life, that is, for students, colleagues and close friends. Consciously or not, by describing his life to them in this way, he pursued several goals. Plunging into the ancient world, into the golden age consonant with it, Theophylact escapes from the dull everyday life. In addition, classical images serve as a link between Theophylact and his Constantinople friends, mythological allusions emphasize the commonality of their upbringing and the “comradeship” that unites them, despite their separation. Selecting worn-out scraps of the ancient world and mythology with a taste that would have pleased his teacher Psellus, Theophylact let his friends know that he had not forgotten the rules of the intricate game, and at the same time proved to himself that he was not turning into a barbarian after all. The psychological value of mythological fantasies is not the subject of this study, but we can say that Theophylact willingly immersed himself in them and that they helped him to bridge the gap that separated Constantinople and Ohrid. Apparently. Theophylact was not much different from most of the “comrades in misfortune” who served their empires outside the metropolises. Theophylact's alienation from the Slavic environment finds a way out with the help of another literary tradition. It is her influence that largely explains the contempt for the Bulgarian flock that creeps into some of his letters. Many Byzantine officials, who by force of circumstances found themselves far from their homeland, succumbed to the temptation to compare the unpretentious provincial life with the temptations of distant Constantinople. In the 11th–12th centuries, Byzantine provincial bishops were very susceptible to this fashion. One of them, John Mavropod, Metropolitan of Euchaita in the north of Asia Minor, more than once wrote to his student Michael Psellus about his passionate desire to return to the capital. And Michael Choniates, the learned Metropolitan of Athens, was so shocked by how strikingly different the city, inhabited by uncouth common people speaking in a vernacular dialect, was from Ancient Greece, the radiant image of which lived in his imagination, that he dropped such remarkable words: “Living for a long time in Athens, I become a barbarian.” When such people found themselves in a non-Greek environment, they especially suffered from loneliness. Longing, they reached for pen and paper, and in their letters to friends and colleagues who were lucky enough to live in Constantinople, echoes of those traditional ideas about ideal friendship, which were mentioned above, were heard. Theophylact was no exception, and, finding unflattering statements about the Bulgarians in some of his letters, one should not lose sight of this. So, we saw that these anti-Bulgarian attacks of Theophylact occurred not only and not so much from his rejection of the Slavic society in which he lived. In any case, they are partly generated by “administrative” irritation, a sense of one’s own cultural superiority, and simply literary fashion. They do not really help us penetrate into the inner world of Theophylact. We can probably do this, move towards a clearer understanding of his relationship with both worlds, thanks to his other two hagiographic works, which were written by Theophylact during his archbishopric. The first of them is the “Long Life” of St. Kliment Ohridski; we often referred to it in the first chapter of this book 1 . The Extensive Life became the main source of our knowledge about the life of Clement between 885, the date of Methodius's death, and 916, when Clement died. The authorship of Theophylact is sometimes disputed, and therefore it seems appropriate to me to at least briefly present the main arguments, which, in my opinion, do not leave a bridge for any reasonable doubt that the “Long Life” was written by Theophylact. These arguments are divided into three groups; they concern the manuscript tradition, textual parallels between the “Long Life” and other works whose authorship is beyond doubt, as well as chronological comparisons that indicate that the time of writing the “Long Life” falls on the years of Theophylact’s life. Of the nine lists of the “Long Life” known to us, three contain the full text, all three lists are independent of each other, and all three contain an indication of the authorship of Theophylact. Of the six remaining, fragmentary, lists, five are anonymous, while in the sixth Theophylact is mentioned as the author. Textual parallels are even more convincing: passages about Filioqur in the “Long Life” of St. Clement, on the one hand, and Theophylact's treatise on the errors of the Latins and his comments on the Gospels, on the other hand. Moreover, in the “Long Life” Clement and his associate Gorazd, in disputes with Frankish priests in Moravia, resort to the same basic argument that is present in the theological writings of Theophylact - about the confusion of the words “procession” and “descent” by the Latins. Such textual parallels and similarities are too clear and numerous to be accidental, and clearly point to Theophylact as the author of the biography of Clement. And finally, mentions of some historical events in the “Long Life” allow us to come to the conclusion that it was written at the end of the 11th - beginning of the 12th century. Nevertheless, some fragments of the Long Life were clearly written long before Theophylact, and they probably belong to the pen of one of the first Bulgarian students of Clement. Researchers believe that these and possibly other fragments were included in the existing Greek text from a much earlier and not extant Church Slavonic work, written shortly after the death of Clement, which followed in 916. We do not know whether Theophylact knew the Church Slavonic or the local, Bulgarian version. If not, then Climeng's early biography was translated for him by his employees; There were probably quite a few such translators in the administrative center of the archbishopric. Theophylacto's "Long Life" begins with a word of praise to the teachers of Clement, Constantine-Cyril and Methodius. These Byzantine preachers among the Slavs are praised by Theophylact as “blessed fathers and teachers” and saints. According to him, Pope Adrian II listened to them like Moses to God. Methodius is given first place, of course, because it was Methodius who was Clement’s mentor - Theophylact honors him with the epithet “great” several times. It is likely, although not proven, that Theophylact used the ninth-century biography of Cyril and Methodius; but he, of course, had other sources at his disposal, since he stated facts not mentioned in the Vita Constantini or Vita Methodii. In any case, one of these sources was of local, Bulgarian origin. Describing how Methodius instructed Rastislav of Moravia and Kocel in Pannonia in Christianity, Theophylact states that “even before that he made Boris, king of the Bulgarians, who lived during the reign of Michael [III], emperor of the Romans, his [spiritual] son... and constantly poured out the grace of his teachings on him.” None of the 9th century biographies of Cyril and Methodius, much less medieval sources, mention their personal meetings with Tsar Boris. And Clement himself, who knew everything first-hand and wrote in Bulgaria “The Eulogy of St. Kirill,” didn’t even mention it. If such a connection existed, he would certainly talk about it. Theophylact was the first author known to us to state that Methodius baptized and instructed Tsar Boris in the faith. He claims that this happened even before the brothers left for Moravia, that is, before 863. This statement, which diverges from earlier reliable evidence about the lives of both brothers, apparently represents an ahistorical attempt to appropriate the works of Cyril and Methodius to the Bulgarian national tradition. Bulgarian writers made similar statements more and more often in the 13th–14th centuries. The official document of the Bulgarian Church, the Synodikon of Tsar Boril, compiled in 1211, states that Cyril translated the Holy Scriptures “from Greek into the Bulgarian language” and “enlightened the Bulgarian people.” There was only one step left to proclaim the brothers Bulgarians by blood. It was he who, around 1500, was the anonymous Bulgarian author of a short biography known as “The Dormition of St. Kirill." Theophylactus does not go that far. However, by calling the Old Church Slavonic language of Cyril and Methodius the “Bulgarian language,” he took a step towards the growing national claims of his Bulgarian flock. The early works of the Cyrillic-Methodological tradition, and no less so “Vita Constantini” and “Vita Methodii”, bear the stamp of a cosmopolitan worldview, and the brothers’ preaching in them is seen as addressed to all Slavic peoples. In the ideological gap between the broad horizons of the Cyril and Methodius tradition of the 9th century and the narrower, nationalistic point of view of the Bulgarian authors, the biography of Clement, written by Theophylact, occupies an intermediate position. The sources of the “Bulgarophile” passages that he introduced into the biography of Clement are unknown to us. They are almost certainly of purely literary origin; moreover, since they reveal emerging Bulgarian nationalism, they go back to a much later time than the supposed Church Slavonic biography of St. Clement, which, as we have seen, was probably written in the first half of the 10th century. There is no reason to doubt that, in claiming that Methodius baptized Tsar Boris, Theophylact was sincerely mistaken. He had the highest opinion of Boris, Clement's patron. Theophylact considers Boris "holy", "prudent, receptive to goodness" and calls him "assistant commander" of God. He praises him for the construction of seven cathedrals in the Bulgarian kingdom; Theophylact mentions this a second time in a letter to John Komnenos, the military governor of Bulgaria. But what is much more surprising is that he spoke positively, although restrainedly, about Simeon, the son of Boris and the mortal enemy of Byzantium. True, Theophylact here confines himself to only mentioning, as if in passing, that Simeon inherited “kindness of heart” from his father and that he was on friendly terms with Clement. Most likely, Theophylact drew these assessments of Boris and Simeon from one of the Bulgarian sources, perhaps from the ancient Church Slavic biography of Clement, but it is noteworthy that he considered it necessary to include them in his own work. However, in Vita Clementis the Bulgarians are not always presented in a favorable light. Talking about Clement’s testamentary dispositions, which he made shortly before his death (he left half of his own property to his diocese, and the second to his monastery in Ohrid), Theophylact tells us that Clement received this property as a gift from the Bulgarian princes and kings and accepted these gifts only because he did not want to offend the donors with obvious indifference, “especially since by nature they were still almost barbarians.” Here, literally for a moment, that Theophylact appears, who is familiar to us from letters - a metropolitan scientist, filled with pride in the high Byzantine culture: even his very admiration for the ancient Bulgarian rulers is colored in tones of condescension. And his condescension turns into contempt when he speaks of the Bulgarians - subjects of Boris and Simeon: “full of ignoramuses and like wild beasts” - such is his verdict. He often applied the second definition to Bulgarian priests who barely understood Greek. The reader who has familiarized himself with the facts and followed the evidence presented in this chapter might come to the conclusion that Theophylact's attitude towards the Slavic environment and the Bulgarians entrusted to his spiritual care was largely ambivalent. Contemptuous of their rude manners - partly sincerely, partly following literary fashion - he courageously defended them from the cruelty of the government and from injustice. He yearned for Constantinople, his alma mater, and considered his appointment to Ohrid perhaps a lifelong exile, but he fulfilled his pastoral duties zealously. Despite some disgust towards the primitive Bulgarians, in the “Life of St. Clement” he does not hide his admiration for the founders of local Christian culture. How should we understand this duality? Did it stem from the personal qualities of Theophylact? Perhaps his reason simply told him that the Bulgarians should be appeased by concessions to their national pride? Or did he side with the victims of inhumane fiscal policies out of a natural sense of justice? Or, having a strong, energetic character, did he choose the role of an active and zealous administrator, and not an eveque faineant 2? There is probably some truth in each of these assumptions. However, none of them seems convincing enough to fully explain why a man like Theophylact, with his background and prejudices, could with such apparent ease not only perceive the main features of an alien culture, but also feel it as his own. What is the secret of such sensitivity? It is perhaps worth recalling that its foundation was laid by Cyril and Methodius by creating the Slavic alphabet and translating the liturgy and Holy Scripture from Greek. Thus, they gave birth to a new literary language, built on the Greek model and understandable to all Slavs in those days. This language - ancient Church Slavic - was “in the common possession” of the peoples who were part of the Byzantine cultural Commonwealth; it became both a channel that ensured a constant flow of cultural influences from the Greek-speaking world and a strong link between Byzantium and the Slavs. Thanks to him, the Orthodox Slavs (and later the Romanians) received the opportunity for common worship, their own writing and literature; Through the works of Cyril, Methodius, Clement and their students, this language became the basis of a cultural tradition, which quite organically included Greek and Slavic elements. From its very origins in the 9th century, the Cyril and Methodius tradition acquired a corresponding ideology.” This ideology, which Roman Jakobson did so much to describe and study, proceeded from the belief that all languages ​​are equal before the Lord, and from the belief, close to this belief, that the language in which Christian worship is performed becomes sacred. Thus, every people possessing such a sacred language rises to the position of a people destined for the service of God, has its own rightful place and special mission in the Christian world. In the early works of the Cyrillic-Methodological tradition, this worldview is expressed very eloquently. Literary masterpieces - the Lives of Cyril-Constantine and Methodius, written in the 9th century, Cyril's poetic Prologue to the Gospels and The Tale of Bygone Years - apparently were widely known among the educated Slavs of the early Middle Ages. After the death of Methodius and the defeat that his cause suffered in Moravia, the Bulgarians not only preserved the heritage they received from him, but also made the greatest contribution to the development of the Cyril and Methodius tradition in the next century. The life of the Moravian Old Church Slavonic school continued in the scriptorium founded by Clement. At the other end of the country, in North-Eastern Bulgaria, the same Cyril and Methodius tradition was nurtured in the capital city of Preslav. The largest writers of the Preslav school were Presbyter Konstantin (later a bishop, whose acrostic “ABC Prayer”, along with Kirill’s “Prologue”, is the highest example of early Church Slavic poetry) and Chernorizets Khrabr, the author of the Slavic alphabet “On Letters”. These writers, working at the end of the 9th and beginning of the 10th centuries, zealously served this tradition and were devoted followers of its founders. Thus, two centuries later, working on his writings in the style of St. Clement, whose distant heir was Theophylact, he already relied on the rich tradition of Cyril and Methodius literature. In order to gain access to it, he did not need to know the Church Slavonic language, he only needed the services of an intelligent translator. "The Life of St. Clement" contains several key indications that Theophylact admired the classical-methodological tradition and wanted to become imbued with it. Here are a few examples of the gift of insight he was endowed with. The word logos, seen as “the source of human reason and communication with God,” became the central concept of this tradition. Writers of the Cyril and Methodius tradition denoted by it the divine truth received through their native languages; They believed that, having found worship in their own language, they received the “word,” a gift that enabled them to understand and proclaim the true faith. And never was the sacred meaning of the logos, thus understood, expressed so clearly and eloquently as in the poetic “Prologue” of St. Cyril to his translation of the Gospels. He writes: “From now on, listen with your own minds, listen too, you Slavs. The Word, it comes from God, the Word that feeds human souls, which strengthens the heart and mind, the Word that prepares all people to know God.” The semantic and mystical connection between the "word" denoting the sacred mother tongue and the incarnate Word or logos - that is, Christ himself - is revealed several times in the Vita Climentis. Describing the solemn moment when the Pope, having blessed the translations of Cyril and Methodius, laid Slavic books on the altar of one of the Roman churches, Theophylact adds: “What could be more pleasing to the Word than a word that frees rational beings from unreason, for like rejoices at like?” He returns to the same idea in another place, built on alliterated wordplay. Believing - like the author of the Vita Constantini - that St. Clement of Rome, whose relics, as it was thought at that time, the brothers brought from the Crimea, was the heavenly patron of their preaching among the Slavs, Theophylact writes: “The philosopher [St. Clement] meets the philosopher [St. Kirill], the great teacher masters the voice of the word, the teacher of the people meets in his abode the one who enlightened the people with the light of knowledge.” This point of view is very different from the one we find elsewhere in the Vita Climentis, where it is stated that it was mainly the Bulgarians who benefited from the fruits of the labors of Cyril and Methodius. Like other, earlier and closer to the historical truth writers of the Cyril and Methodius tradition, Theophylact knew that the apostles of the Slavs worked for the benefit of more than one people. Other judgments of Theophylact are filled with the same cosmopolitan spirit. In the Cyril and Methodius tradition, the brothers appear as the successors of Paul, the apostle of the pagans. Judging by the Vita Constantini, Constantine-Cyril, defending the fundamental equality of all languages ​​in Venice, quoted Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, and this text was used as an ideological justification by the champions of the Slavic tradition. Theophylact constantly emphasizes that Cyril and Methodius followed St. Pavel. The same, says Theophylact, is true of Clement, who became “the new Paul for the new Corinthians, the Bulgarians.” On the other hand, writers who followed the Cyril and Methodius tradition in the early Middle Ages believed that the later entry of the Slavs into the Christian world did not at all degrade them; in their opinion, this circumstance should have been considered in the light of the parable from the Gospel of Matthew (20: 1 - 16) about the owner of the house who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard: those whom he hired at the eleventh hour received the same pay as those who had endured “the burden of the day and the heat” since the morning. And Theophylact, speaking about the conversion of the Slavs to Christianity, in a similar letter writes that they came to know Christ, “although they entered the divine vineyard late, at the eleventh or twelfth hour of the day.” The last example, which shows that Theophylact knew to the subtlety the main themes of the Cyril-Methodological tradition, introduces us to the field of interpretation of Holy Scripture. Throughout the entire literature of the Cyril and Methodius tradition there runs a through-line idea that the creation of the Slavic alphabet was a continuation of the miracle of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles in bands of flame, and they “began in other languages, as the Spirit gave them to preach” (Acts 2:4). Theophylact uses the same image of Pentecost; he writes that Cyril and Methodius, before setting about creating the Slavic alphabet, “turned to the Holy Spirit, whose first gifts were language and the help of the word.” The Cyril-Mosphodic heritage, both in its original, “Pan-Slavic” version, and in the later, “Bulgarophile” version. gave Theophilaios an ideological basis and served as support in his attempts to build bridges between the worlds of Constantinople and Ohrid with the help of his writings. Slavic in form and mainly Greek in content, this heritage turned out to be the strongest link between Byzantium and the Slavs. And Feofilaktovo’s “Life of St. Clement" can be truly understood within this bicultural context. In the second hagiographical work, Theophylact also seeks to raise the prestige of his archbishopric, telling about the beginning of his Christian path and painting the history of the Bulgarian Church against a broad historical background. In the only surviving medieval list, this work is called “The Martyrology of the Holy and Glorious Fifteen Martyrs of Tiberiopolis, called Strumitsa in Bulgarian, martyred during the reign of Julian the Apostate.” It was published by Min in the last century. In 1968, Paul Gautier prepared a critical edition, but it has not yet seen the light of day. This relatively little-known work is of considerable interest. A historian of antiquity, a researcher of the medieval Balkans, and even, as we will later see, an art critic will find new material in it; it is no less important for a researcher studying the life and work of Theophylact. Its ideological similarity with the Life of St. Clement." We have seen, “The Lives of St. Clement" Theophylact attempted to consider the history of Christian Bulgarians in the context of the Cyril and Methodius tradition. In the Martyrology (or Passion) he was moved by similar but more "ambitious" intentions, namely the desire to graft the history of his archbishopric, personified in local saints, onto the rootstock of the earliest Christian tradition of the Roman Empire. This becomes clear even from a brief summary of his work. The Martyrology begins with an extensive historical introduction, based on the works of several ancient authors, mainly the fifth-century church historian Socrates, and covering the reigns of Constantius I, Constantine the Great and Constantius II. He then moves on to Julian, talking about his youth, his upbringing, his interest in paganism, his accession to the throne of the empire (in 361) and the persecution of Christians. From this moment on, Theophylact ceases to rely on ancient authors and begins to use sources unknown to us. He describes the horrific and most likely apocryphal persecution of Christians in Nicaea as they fled to Thessalonica and from there, for safety, into the interior of Macedonia. About one of them, Theodore, Theophylact reports that he was present at the Council of Nicaea in 325. The persecuted Christians settled in a city “located north of Thessalonica and bordering the lands of the Illyrians,” which Theophylact calls Tiberiopolis. There they founded a Christian community, which soon gained great influence in the surrounding area. Their fame reached Thessalonica; two officials, zealous servants, went to Tiberiopol to find out everything on the spot. As a result, fifteen Christians, along with their spiritual leaders Timothy Comasius, Eusebius and Theodore, were captured, tortured and, on the orders of two officials from Thessalonica, put to death. Local Christians buried them, each in a separate sarcophagus, and soon miracles began to take place at their graves. Their veneration spread widely, and many pagans converted to Christianity. “Tiberiopolis has become a recognized beacon, illuminating Western cities [that is, the Balkans] with the light of faith.” The hagiographic source or sources from which Theophylact obtained information about the persecution of Christians in Tiberiopolis are unknown to us. The martyrdoms themselves and the names of the fifteen martyrs are not the fruit of the author’s imagination, since, as we will see, there is evidence of their cult in Strumica at the end of the 9th or beginning of the 10th century, and the names of some of them are mentioned in the Slavic menaions of the late 10th - beginning of the 11th century, Strumica. a city in the valley of the river of the same name, a tributary of the Struma or Strymon, is located in Eastern Macedonia. Several sources from the mid-14th century confirm that the city was formerly called Tiberiopolis. We don't know how far back this name goes. There is no information in ancient documents about such a city in the Balkans, but references to a city in Phrygia, named after the Emperor Tiberius and known for its hardness in sulfur, are found in sources of the early Christian era. Perhaps, as Zlatarsky and others suggest, the inhabitants of this part of Asia Minor, resettled in the Balkans, brought with them the name of their home or capital city to Macedonia. Most likely, this toponymic transfer occurred at the beginning of the 9th century, since the Chronicles of Theophanes reports that in 809 Emperor Nikephoros I ordered Christian communities “from every province” to be resettled in the Slavic regions of the empire. The emperor undertook this resettlement in order to establish Byzantine power in those lands that had been occupied by the Slavs over the previous two centuries. The Slavs densely populated Macedonia, and Theophanes tells us that several Christian communities, sent here at the behest of Nikephoros I, settled on the banks of the Struma. Sgrumitsa is located about fifty miles from the river; and it is not impossible that several communities, having moved here from Asia Minor, called this city Tiberioliol. Recent archaeological finds have brought serious evidence in favor of the point of view that Strumipa began to be called Tiberiopolis precisely in the IX century. During the excavations carried out in Strumica by Yugoslav archaeologists in 1973, a set of buildings that were rebuilt over different periods were uncovered. On the lower level it was an early Christian basilica with three naves and three crypts, the latter presumably dating from slightly later, the 6th–8th centuries. Above this basilica, a cruciform and probably five-domed church was discovered, built in the 9th-early 10th century and dedicated to the Fifteen Martyrs of Tiberiopolis. At the same time, the central crypt was painted with frescoes depicting the Fifteen Martyrs. Although the painting has only partially survived, it can be judged that it was made using a technique reminiscent of the Byzantine one of that time. And finally, fragments of paintings were discovered dating from the end of the 11th - beginning of the 12th century and indicating that the cruciform church was rebuilt already in the time of Theophylact. Archaeological finds in Strumica, as we will see, strongly confirm the testimony of Theophylact about the cult of the Fifteen Martyrs during the reign of Boris; The frescoes are of particular value to us, since they are the only medieval depiction of the Tiberiopolis martyrs. But let's return to Theophylact's story. Having read the story of martyrdom, we part with the ancient world and, having skipped several centuries, we find ourselves in the Middle Ages. After - probably in the 580s - "Tiberiopolis" was sacked by the Avars - no other source mentions this event - the Bulgarians appeared a century later, which served as Theophylact's starting point for the second part of his narrative. He must have used one or more Slavic sources, very accurate and reliable, and added to our knowledge of ancient Bulgaria in several directions. He writes about the conversion to Christianity of a member of the royal family of Enravota, the son of Khan Omurtag. The ruling classes of Bulgaria still adhered to paganism, and Enravota, who openly professed Christianity, was martyred by his brother, Khan Malamir (831–836). This martyrdom returns Theophylact to the topic of the eye. He paints in vivid colors the baptism of Boris in 864 by Byzantine priests and the subsequent spread of Christianity in his kingdom; Thus. Theophylact prepares the reader for the story of the posthumous history of the Fifteen Martyrs. Since the time of the Avar invasion, their graves, writes Theophylact, were abandoned and forgotten. During the reign of Boris (852–889), miraculous appearances of saints and healings began, and then Boris, “always zealous for everything divine,” decided to solemnly rebury the remains of his retinue in the church. The story about the extraction and transfer of the relics to Strumitsa is very interesting; it once again confirms the accuracy of the sources used by Theophylact. The removal of remains from the graves took place in the presence of a large gathering of nobility, clergy and common people. When the layer of earth was removed, “It so happened that they saw sarcophagi covered with hewn marble slabs, on which were carved the name, body outline, occupation, knowledge and facial expression.” Boris did not bury the relics in Strumica, but ordered them to be transferred to a new church, which he built in the vicinity of Bregalnica and dedicated to the Fifteen Martyrs. Theophylact does not give any reasons why such a decision could be made, but there is no doubt that it was done because there was an episcopal see in Bregalnica. The remains of the martyrs, in preparation for the transfer, were dressed in shrouds and placed in wooden coffins, while the marble slabs were placed in some unnamed sanctuary of the diocese. The exact location of Bregalnica is unknown; according to the latest archaeological data, it was located in the valley of the river with the same name, probably on the site of ancient Bargala or near it, about thirty miles west of Strumica. Meanwhile, in Strumica, whose residents saw that they were losing the relics of their heavenly patrons, riots began. A real rebellion was avoided thanks to the fact that the governor did not lose his presence of mind. A compromise solution was found, according to which only the remains of the elder martyrs, Timothy, Comasius and Eusebius, were transported to Bregalnica. The rest were left to the inhabitants of Strumica for an indefinite time and, presumably, were buried in the cruciform church, from where they had been removed shortly before. The action ends in Bregalnitsa, in a new church, almost in full accordance with the stories about the transfer of relics, of which there are many in Byzantine hagiography. With the usual gathering of clergy and people, the coffins with the remains were placed on the right side of the nave. What follows is a call to the local clergy to work for the good of the church and conduct services in “Bulgarian,” that is, in the ancient Church Slavonic language. Despite the fact that Theophylact's narrative is presented in the conventional form of a classical Roman martyrology and the further story about the transfer of relics is also designed in the canonical style, this work as a whole has two strikingly original features. Firstly, the accuracy and vividness of the narrative serves as proof that the author used a written Slavic source, directly or indirectly going back to eyewitness accounts of the extraction of the relics of the Fifteen Martyrs in Strumica and their subsequent transfer to Bregalnica. The second, no less remarkable, feature is that Theophylact managed to introduce local flavor into the hagiographic material relating to bygone times. From his narrative it becomes clear that by the time of Boris's reign the cult of the Fifteen Martyrs was deeply rooted in Macedonia. Recent excavations have convincingly confirmed the accuracy of his presentation, but at least in the part that relates to the events in Strumica. It can be assumed that when writing the Martyrology, Theophylact was guided by the desire to strengthen this cult. As excavations have shown, significant reconstruction of the cruciform church in Strumica was carried out during the life of Theophylact, probably when he was Archbishop of Ohrid. Strumica and Bregalnica, located near Ohrid, were part of his diocese. Apparently, both of these cities at the end of the 9th - beginning of the 10th centuries were part of the diocese of St. Clement, and it is difficult to resist the thought that Clement, together with Boris, contributed greatly to the strengthening of this cult in Macedonia. Perhaps the mention of Clement in the future will turn out to be very significant in the light of the goals that Theophylact pursued in his hagiographical writings, as well as the means to which he resorted to achieve them. In his Martyrion, Theophylact attempted to link the local Macedonian cult, centered in the Vardar Valley, with the history of Christian martyrs in the Roman Empire, and by claiming that one of the Tiberiopolis martyrs was present at the Council of Nicaea, he linked their cult with the most revered traditions of Eastern Christianity. This could not but serve to strengthen the positions of Ohrid and the entire Bulgarian Church. In the Vita Climentis he repeated the attempt to view local tradition as a manifestation of universal tradition, grafting the cultural shoots of Christian Macedonia at the end of the 9th century onto the much more powerful tree of the accomplishments of Cyril and Methodius. These attempts in both works brought the same results - panegyrics to Bulgarian Christianity and Tsar Boris, its main builder. The baptism of the Bulgarians is described in “Martyrion” truly in biblical terms: “That which was once not a people, but a barbarian tribe, became and was called the people of God, and the race of the Bulgarians, who were once not pardoned, was called the pardoned Lord, who calls things as they are, but not as they were... The Bulgarian people became, as it is said, a royal priesthood, a holy people, a people the chosen ones." Drawing on the letter of the Apostle Paul, Theophylact expresses his belief that through baptism the Bulgarian people were called to life from nothingness, and thereby turns to the classic theme of Christian apologetics, according to which the conversion of pagan peoples to Christianity endows them with a new collective essence. We have already seen that this concept of national identity, based on the texts of the Apostle Paul, was part of the Cyrillic-Methodological ideology. In “Martyrion” it is not expressed in any way explicitly, but we should not forget how clearly Theophylact expressed his approval of the clergy of the Church of the Fifteen Martyrs, who at the end of the 9th century conducted services in the ancient Church Slavonic language. Apparently, in both hagiographical works of Theophylact, different aspects of his amazing gift of empathy were revealed. In Clement, whom he calls “the first bishop in the Bulgarian language,” Theophylact sees his immediate predecessor, and in the final part of “Martyrion” he calls the fifteen Tiberiopolis martyrs “our saints.” It is difficult for us to determine exactly what goals Theophylact set for himself and what the fruits of his activities in Bulgaria were. The recently very unpopular opinion that Theophylact had an aversion to his Bulgarian flock and saw his task in the eradication of Bulgarian culture and in the Hellenization of their Church is, in my opinion, a serious misconception. However, taking into account his capabilities, both spiritual and material, we have the right to assume that he honestly fulfilled the task entrusted to him by the head of the empire - to keep the predominantly Slavic-speaking population of his archbishopric subordinate to Byzantium. Of course, he considers the principle of order and the duty of obedience to the emperor to be unshakable institutions - in one of his letters he calls the emperor “an earthly God, one might say.” In another letter, he expresses confidence that the bishops subordinate to him should understand secular affairs no less than ecclesiastical affairs. Although the archbishop was subordinate to the local military commander in political matters, his duties were not limited to the spiritual sphere. A clear proof of this is the continuous war that he waged with tax collectors. He understood the harm they were doing to his efforts to pacify the Bulgarians. And, citing the words of Holy Scripture; “And a man’s enemy is his own household” (Matthew 10:36), he meant precisely these officials. Like all smart colonial administrators, Theophylact knew that gentleness would achieve more than force, and therefore insisted that the population of “barbarian countries” be dealt with with kindness, and not with the sword. Only by tempering firmness with humanity, he emphasized more than once, can the Bulgarians be kept from disobedience and rebellion; he demanded that the imperial authorities treat the Bulgarians with caution and restraint, “so as not to eventually exhaust the patience of the poor man.” To what extent Theophylact himself was able to implement these principles is, of course, difficult to say. Except for those cases when he wanted to call on the law for help, Theophylact apparently downplayed the degree of discontent of the Bulgarians, especially in his letters to Constantinople. Almost always, the monsters that inhabit the pages of his letters turn out to be tax collectors. We know of the only well-documented event that can be called something like popular indignation against Theophylact, it is associated with a dark matter in which a certain Bulgarian peasant named Lazar was involved; he gathered several dissatisfied people and filed a complaint with the imperial authorities about the “tyranny of the bishop,” but he, according to Theophylact, was an instrument in the hands of the chief tax collector Jasit. And we do not know whether the inhabitants of Ohrid still continued to sing defiant patriotic songs, one of which plunged Theophylact into such anger on the day of his arrival. We are somewhat better informed about Theophylact's participation in the affairs of the Bulgarian Church. In relation to the bishops subordinate to him (and they were all, apparently, Greeks), he showed himself to be a true mentor; in difficult times, he demanded steadfastness from them, urging them not to leave their flock unattended. We do not have direct evidence of his relations with the parish priests, most of whom were, in all likelihood, Slavic-speaking Bulgarians. It can be assumed that some of them, after centuries of Byzantine rule, spoke Greek better than their predecessors in the time of Clement. Theophylact could also have contributed here - on one of his letters there is a note: “To the Bulgarians, taught by him.” Sometimes he considers his entire Bulgarian flock to be the recipients of this letter. However, since the letter is written in Greek and contains an appeal “to mine,” as well as a request to convey greetings to “mine and not mine,” it can be assumed that it was intended for the recruited persons, former students of Theophylact. Perhaps he was preparing them for ordination, and it is difficult to imagine that he taught them in a language other than Greek. At the time of Theophylact, the official language of the Bulgarian Church was Greek, and, of course, the liturgy was served in it in episcopal councils. But the parish priests, no doubt, still used Church Slavonic, and there is no evidence that Theophylact was dissatisfied with this circumstance. Such an ardent admirer of Clement and his mentors Cyril and Methodius could hardly object to the decline of worship in the Slavic language. He apparently took it for granted that the psalms translated by Clement were still sung in churches, and, probably from rumors, he knew that Clement’s works in the Old Church Slavonic language were “preserved by the zealous people.” In the time of Theophylact, apparently, many works in this language circulated in Bulgaria, and philologists proved that a significant number of known Old Church Slavonic copies of the 11th–12th centuries were created in the scriptoria of Macedonia or Eastern Bulgaria. This is not surprising, since the role played by Ohrid and his scriptorium in the transmission of Byzantine culture to the Balkan Slavs could not have been so significant if both linguistic traditions had not existed side by side, interacting in the bilingual environment of Macedonian schools and monasteries. It was to this bilingual, bicultural world of the Slavs at the beginning of the 12th century that Theophylact belonged during his Ohrid ministry. Whether he encouraged worship in the Slavic language or was simply tolerant of it remains an open question. Some historians, objecting to the distorted picture painted by some scholars who presented Theophylact as a malicious Hellenizer, argued that he contributed greatly to the formation of the national self-awareness of the Bulgarians; others argued that Theophylact was primarily motivated by an enlightened and humane attitude towards his flock. It's like giving him high marks for good behavior. Not all of his verbal attacks against the Bulgarians were dictated by literary conventions; sometimes, irritated by the “barbaric” environment, he did not hide his disdain and disgust, unbecoming of a bishop, and he waged a war with tax collectors not out of love for humanity alone. Both worlds in which Theophylact lived, both in distance and in culture, were too far from each other to be bridged; connecting, turned out to be quite strong and durable. Theophylact nevertheless sought to build such a bridge, and if he failed, it was not due to weakness of will. The discontent of the people, in the end, turned out to be too great. And the fact that the Bulgarians won their independence with relative ease in 1187 confirms the inability of the empire to subdue and absorb the Slavs in the Northern Balkans. A modern Greek historian, describing the difficulties of adaptation that Byzantine bishops experienced in the 12th century, sensitively noted that they were people of “dual natures and two languages”: they yearned for the delights of civilization, but remained in their posts, which did not satisfy them; they entered into personal relationships with the people around them, but their eyes were fixed on Constantinople. In the words addressed by Theophylact to his friend and patroness Basilissa Maria, there is more than just irony: “So, I am returning to the Bulgarians, I, a true Constantinople and - oddly enough - a Bulgarian.” We do not know how long Theophylact’s service as Archbishop of Ohrid lasted. Drawing dates from letters, we can say that it ended no earlier than 1108. If the dating of the manuscript of one of his poems is reliable, then in 1125 he was still alive, but we do not know whether he was still Archbishop of Ohrid. The posthumous fate of Theophylact is clouded by misunderstanding and misconceptions. We have already seen that Erasmus, who benefited greatly from his comments, long believed that his name was Vulgarius. An even more glaring mistake was made by the Bulgarian monk Paisius from the Hilandar monastery on Mount Athos. In his “Slavic-Bulgarian History,” a manifesto of current Bulgarian nationalism written in 1762, Paisius claimed that Theophylact was Patriarch of Tarnovo (the throne of the Bulgarian high priest had been in Tarnovo since 1235), and, without hesitation, made him a saint. We have the right to doubt whether Theophylact would have liked such a posthumous hoax. His long and difficult service as Archbishop of Ohrid is perhaps best summed up by two brief quotations from letters. The first is an epigraph to one of his earliest letters; it clearly conveys the forebodings and fears that they experienced upon arriving at their new place of residence. Theophylact took this epigraph from his beloved Euripides, and Tiresias from the Phoenician Women became the spokesman for his feelings. Describing Creon’s horror at the news that his son would die if Thebes were saved, the blind prophet exclaims: “Has our Creon been replaced by the gods?” The second quotation clarifies something about the indomitable character of the learned bishop, to whom long service in the province could not help but seem like an indefinite exile. It is taken from the Odyssey and recalls the internal struggle of its hero, who, looking in despair at his ships, scattered by the winds from the Aeolian sack, still resists the desire to throw himself into the sea. Like Odysseus, who did not leave his ship in the hour of terrible trials, Theophylact had the right to say: “I took everything down and stayed.” (Translated from English by N.V. Malykhina) E-version prepared by: Teslya A.A., Teslya E.A. This refers to ch. 1 book “Six Byzantine Portraits”, dedicated to Clement Ohriduski (pp. 405 – 425 Russian edition 1998 idle bishop (fr.).