Byzantine interest in this people and all its cousins on the steppes was of long standing: they were a possible menace to the security of the Empite, especially to its Crimean and Caucasian outposts. As early as 619, according to tradition, a Bulgar chieftain Kubrat (or Kovrat), who attempted to create a single Bulgar Empire of the steppes, was converted to Christianity as a friend and ally of the Emperor Heraklios. But this seems to have been a personal act without consequences for his subjects. Certainly none of his five sons, of whom Asparuch was one, was a Christian.

(a) The old channels of trade had not wholly ceased to function via Byzantine ports on the Black Sea coast and less certainly on the right bank of the lower Danube. Townr far in the interior, such as Singidunum (Belgrade), Naissa (Nig) and Serdica (Sofia), which appear to a greater or lesser degree to have survived the disasters of the sixth century, may still have had some commercial importance.

The conversion of Asparuch's successor Terbel (Tervel, 702-16?) is to be assumed. He was deeply involved in Byzantine politics in 704/5, helping the exiled Justinian II to regain his throne. For this he was rewarded with the high rank of Caesar and a daughter of Justinian's to wife; this surely implies baptism as a prerequisite. Again in 717/18 the Bulgarian ruler was of great service in defeating the last and most formidable Arab siege of the Imperial City. The full statehood of Bulgaria may be dated from 716 when a political and commercial treaty was made with the Empire. Strictly supervised trading by Bulgars in Constantinople and Saloniki was permitted from this time.(a) Byzantine policy entered a new stage: to civilise and Christianise this power on her northern doorstep, which was absorbing more and more of the Sclaviniae (nominally Byzantine territories settled by Slavs) in the North Balkans.

The sedentary Slavs in the regions closest to the Bulgar settlements, who now looked to the Bulgars for military protection and gradually became their subjects, were perhaps more amenable than the Bulgars to these new influences which closer relations with the Empire were to bring. These were the 'Seven Tribes' (a conventional number, not to be taken littrally), evidently a Slav political unit in the making. In the early eighth century no Bu!gar leader could afford, it would seem, to opt for Christianity in the face of the uncompromising attitude of the Bulgar military aristocracy which for the most part was stoutly maintaining its pagan traditions and steppe culture. Not till the apartheid between Bulgar and Slav at the higher social levels had been broken down - a process which remained slow down to 800 - did Bulgar exclusiveness lose its force. Up to that time it was only the occasional Bulgar in especially close relations with Constantinople who ventured on the decisive step of baptism. So Telerig (regnabat c. 772-7), who was converted when he fled into exile and, like Terbel, was graciously allotted a Greek wife by the Emperor Leo the Khazar. But altogether little is recorded of Bulgaria in the eighth century: the iconoclast troubles within the Empire were not favourable to missionary work outside and the second half of the century was filled with inconclusive hostilities. We may note in passing that this necessity for a constant watch on Bulgaria diverted Byzantine attention from Italy and contributed to the loss of Ravenna (751) and thus to a complete revision of Papal policy both towards the East and the West.

A new line of exceptionally able Bulgar rulers started with Krum (regnabar c. 803-14) whose assumption of the title Khngan announced him as heir to the Avar power recently broken by Charlemagne. (a)

(a) Krum came of the Kutrigur Bulgars of Pannonia who had entered Europe in Justinian's reign and became more or less subject to the Avars from 567.

His sweeping conquests brought a considerable Christian population in the North Balkans for the first time under Bulgarian rule. He removed many Christian craftsmen into the interior of Bulgaria. Even quite high-ranking Byzantine officials and army officers appear to have remained, more or less voluntarily, in Bulgarian employ. Further, some Bulgarian prisoners-of-war, exchanged in the peace negotiations of 812, had been baptised in captivity.

As the military advantage now tended to lie with Bulgaria, so the penetration of Greek culture was the self-perpetuating Byzantine answer. Greek as the cultural language made considerable headway in Bulgaria from the beginning of the ninth century. Two now fragmentary Greek inscriptions recording Krum's crushing defeat of the Emperor Nikephoros (811) have survived; these must have been done to the orders of Krum himself. In his reign Bulgar and Slav reached approximate social and legal equality. The highest offices were now open to Slavs, witness Dragomir, his ambassador to Constantinople. There is reason to believe that Krum introduced a new code of laws for Bulgaria, more suitable for a now sedentary people than the tribal law of steppe nomads; this code may have been recorded in Greek. But in religious matters Krum was scarcely disposed to listen to the Greeks: he offered all Christian prisoners-of-war the alternatives of apostasy or death. No Greek was likely at this time to contemplate evangelisation of Bulgarians; the great barbarian war-leader who had brought Byzantine arms so low was an object of execration throughout the Empire.

(a) Among Omurtag's surviving Greek inscriptions are two on columns, the one letel incorporated in the Church of the Forty Martyrs at Turnovo (built by John Asen II in 1230), telling of his glorious martial exploits and his new palace by the Danube; the other, now in the Sofia Archaeological Museum, recording the provieionr of the treaty with the Empire.

Omurtag (c. 814-c. 831) had the wisdom to conclude a peace of thirty years on his accession.(a) The new southern frontier with the Empire was heavily fortified - the 'Great Fence'. Persecutions of Christians continued. Several bishops were martyred, including Manuel, Bishop of Adrianople, who had been deported to Bulgaria when Krum took that city.

Prisoners were forced to eat meat in Lent or suffer for their faith. The Byzantine authorities hastened to redeem as many as possible. These, it is curious to note, included the parents of the future Emperor Basil I (867-86); Basil himself was apparently born in Bulgaria. But it is per- missible to suppose that the little we know of the treatment of Christians in Bulgaria under Krum and Omurtag is coloured by Byzantine hysteria. Both rulers may have been personally as tolerant as circumstances permitted.

In the generation of Omurtag's sons the Bulgar element was rapidly losing its identity in the Slav though the process was scarcely complete before the end of the ninth century. Two of Omurtag's sons adopted Christianity, of whom one lost his life in a persecution on the accession of a third son, Malamir, in 831 or 832. This may have been, however, the normal Turkish elimination of rival claimants; Malamir appears a relatively tolerant throughout his reign, though not himself a Christian.

The 830s were thus still a period of very tentative adoption of Byzantine ways and a reserved attitude towards the Byzantine religion - more so on the part of the Bulgars than of the Slavs. An inscription found near Philippi in Greek Macedonia, dating from the reign of Presjan, still uses the words Bulgar and Christian as opposites: a Christian meant Greek.(a)

(a) Cf. p. 246: a century later a similar situation between the Russians of Kiev an Constantinople produced the same usage. (b) Bulger Bogor(is), thought to be cognate with Mongolian bogori = small. Boris is variously given as the nephew of Malamir (831-6?) or as Presjan's son. Some concider, probably rightly, that Presjan and Malamir are one and the same person, ruling 831-52.

The adoption of Christianity must not be politically and socially disadvantageous. This was the problem before the exceptionally capable ruler who succeeded in 852 - Boris.(b) He saw that it was time to bring Bulgaria into the comity of Christendom; a proportion of his subjects, Greek and Slav, was already Christian. The Bulgar language was now virtually extinct; Bulgaria was a Slav state. In comparison with Rastislav of Moravia contiguity with the Byzantine Empire and the persistent infiltration of Greeks and Greek ways inevitably gave Boris's religious policy a far greater political content. Was it possible to make Bulgaria a Christian state without sacrificing its power and independence? He learnt that the polarity of secular power and spiritual authority invested in king and bishop, and at the highest level in emperor and patriarch, was the correct and only model of a Christian stat. Given this, Bulgaria would take its place as a civilised country. But he also knew that all Orthodox dioceses had to belong to one of the Patriarchates, in his case manifestly to that of Constantinople, and that the Emperor of Byzantium was held to be the supreme fidei defensor of all Orthodox peoples. He was prepared to bargain his entry into the Christian world against some measure of independence for a Bulgarian church. The precise form of Christianity to be adopted was indifferent. There was still also a portion of the Bulgar aristocracy to be reckoned with, opposed to Greek and Christian ways.

His first overtures appear to have been made to Louis the German in 862. The two rulers met at Tulln on the Danube. Louis sought Bulgarian military help against his rebellious son Carloman and his Moravian supporters. Bulgaria had had a common frontier with Moravia since about 825 and contacts with the Franks for some years before that.

The Franks were likely to remain conveniently distant allies rather than exacting neighbours. Byzantine reaction was swift and sharp. No extension of Frankish influence into Bulgaria could be tolerated; the spheres of influence agreed in 811 must stand. In this ecclesiastical and political needs were at one. The war which ensued in 863/4 ended in Boris's discomfiture. The peace terms imposed the rejection of the Frankish alliance and baptism into the Eastern church, which would undertake the further evangelisation of Bulgaria.

Boris was baptised forthwith by the Patriarch of Constantinople; the Emperor as godfather gave him his own name Michael. This took place in 864 or 865, though there is some disagreement in the sources. Boris's sister Maria may also have played a part: she had spent the greater part of her life in Constantinople and was completely hellenized. Later tradition that Methodios had some part in Boris's baptism can be ruled out: it is not supported by the biographies of Constantine or Methodios. There was also a territorial settlement which finally recognised Bulgaria's foothold south of the Balkan range (therefore called by them Zagorje, in Greek form Zagora) - a situation going back to Terbel over a century before. Though a concession of weakness on the Byzantine side, with grave consequences for the future, it was no doubt the unavoidable quid pro quo for Bulgarian adherence to the Eastern church - the overriding necessity for Constantinople at this difficult moment. Boris had to crush a serious revolt of the remaining conservative Bulgar magnates at bome, which nearly cost him his life and throne. But he steadfastly followed the principle of many later Slav rulers in seeing his duty in promoting what he believed to be right for his people.

But no sooner had Byzantine clergy gained a foothold in Buigaria than it became plain to Boris that Constantinople contemplated nothing less than a stranglehold on the new Bulgarian church. A letter sent by Patriarch Photios in 865 made clear what Boris was well aware of - that Bulgarian bishops, all necessarily Greeks, would come under the Patriarch of Constantinople with all the political implications thereof. There was no promise of ecclesiastical autonomy; naturally Bulgaria was still eminently a missionary area. There was no likelihood that Bulgaria would be handled in similar fashion to Moravia; Boris was to be a subservient Byzantine vassal. Consequently, in August 866 Boris made an approach to Pope Nicholas and perhaps again to Regensburg.

Nicholas wanted nothing better than to gain the obedience of Bulgaria. In 860 he had made another unheeded demand to the Emperor for the return of the former Illyricum occidentale and Sicily to his jurisdiction. His attention was shortly to be drawn to possibilities in Moravia. The  tension between Rome and Constantinople was increased by the proffered prize of Bulgaria. It must be repeated that Boris, like Rastislav,  was no doubt personally indifferent to the precise form of Christianity which he adopted. Even the most sincere and intelligent barbarian convert, among whom Boris can be numbered, could have no personal judgment in matters of theology and liturgy. But he is at once confronted  with a multitude of practical difficulties in changing over his way of life  to that of a Christian. He is unable to distinguish the essential from the inessential in the mass of prescriptions and rules thrust at him. He wants to know, in short, how little of existing customs need be changed; for  enforcing change is the dangerous part. In answer to Boris's immediate difficulties of this kind Photios had sent him in 865 a long and elaborate disquisition in difficult Greek on the fundamentals of the Christian faith under the title 'On the duties of a prince'.  Photios perhaps judged that it was the task of humbler men to deal with  the 'trivialities'. Pope Nicholas did not so judge. He was aware of  Boris's dissatisfaction. In a detailed reply to a long list of questions from  Boris (November 866) the Pope gave his rulings on these things so important to a neophyte. These hundred odd answers, based partly on the instructions of Pope Gregory the Great to St Augustine for his mission to the English, are yet in no sense propaganda in favour of   Rome. Greek practices which differ from Roman are not condemned as such, and none of them bear upon doctrine. Nicholas even corrects Boris's misunderstanding of certain Byzantine teachings. Conversely, Photios had not directly attacked Rome at any point in his recondite essay: to eradicate pagan practices and to know the duties and authority of a Christian prince was the burden of his message. Further, the Pope did not attempt to deny existing Byzantine rights: he merely pointed out that if Bulgaria was to come under Roman obedience the appointment of prelates would rest with the Holy See (answer to question no. 73). The granting of a Patriarch is put in its right perspective: all must be  done in due order - first bishops, then a prelate of higher rank. Naturally the Roman view is adopted that the order of precedence of the Patriarchates is Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, Jerusalem (nos. 92 and 93). In the last reply (no. 106) the Pope exhorts Boris to do nothing until he receives a bishop from him. Nicholas sent his replies by the hand of two bishops, Paul of Populonia and Formosus of Porto, with a mission for the conversion of Bulgaria. Louis had meanwhile sent his own mission under Bishop Hermanrich of Passau. The Pope delivered a direct snub to the Frankish church by causing Louis' mission to be expelled from Bulgaria (867). Hermanrich never forgave this slight. The Pope did not envisage the appointment of a Patriarch for Bulgaria; he could not even accede to Boris's wish to retain Formosus as bishop since such translations were not readily granted. It is clear that Boris was convinced that the best policy for his country's future was to extract the maximum of ecclesiastical independence from the offers made to him.

Constantinople had been greatly incensed by all Nicholas's actions, above all by his treatment of Photios and his interference (as it seemed to them) in Bulgaria. A Papal mission sent to Constantinople in spring 867 via Bulgaria was refused further conduct at the Imperial frontier unless the legates unreservedly acknowledged Photios, which of course they could not do. Relations were further exacerbated by the unavoidable raising of a dogmatic disagreement. As long as the addition of filioque to the Creed had been a local aberration of the Far West, not formally approved by the Papacy, Constantinople had been content to ignore it. But now Frankish missionaries had imported it into Bulgaria and Pope Nicholas supported it. To preserve an Orthodox Bulgaria Constantinople took the most serious possible step: Pope Nicholas was excommunicated (summer 867). At the same time Louis was conceded the Imperial title in the hope that he could thereby be detached from cooperation with the Pope.    In the last months of 867 all the main actors changed: Basil ousted his protector Michael and at once (3 November) replaced Photios by Ignatios; on 13 November Nicholas I died. One of Pope Hadrian II's early acts was to secure some control of the Moravian mission. But he evidently thought that Papal influence in Bulgaria was secure enough without hastening to implement the appointment of an archbishop. In the early days of his pontificate he was much occupied with scandals in the church in Rome itself. He continued to temporise. Boris became impatient at the tardiness of Rome in dealing with his demands and particularly by the refusal of both Nicholas and Hadrian to countenane the appointment of Formosus, to whom Boris had become greatly attached. The Byzantine authorities took full advantage of this and  intimated that a suitable prelate would be granted by them without delay. In 869 Bulgaria swung back again into the Byzantine orbit. A council which sat in Constantinople from October 869 to February 870 - the VIIIth Ecumenical Council in Western reckoning - formally placed Bulgaria under the Patriarchate of Constantinople in an extraordinary session on 4 March 870, which the Papal legates refused to accept as valid.

The Pope was able to complain that he had been tricked. Boris requested all Latin missionaries to leave Bulgaria. Ignatios at once appointed Bulgaria's first archbishop with several other bishops and numerous clergy.

It is possible to argue that all Boris's approaches to the West were purely diplomatic - intended to frighten Constantinople into making him this very concession out of fear of losing Bulgaria altogether. This he achieved, and the matter appeared settled, though throughout the 870s Rome tried to regain the lost ground. The rivalry for the obedience of Bulgaria was throughout complicated by the Photian-Ignatian quarrel within the Eastern church in which the Holy See had become deeply involved. The Pope expected Ignatios to abide by the stipulation that his recognition as Patriarch was dependent on his keeping his hand off Bulgaria.

(a) It was at this council that Photios ensured that the canons made clear the Eastern rejection of the addition of filioque to the Creed (there were to be no further changes whatever in the Creed). John VIII by implication accepted even this though Rome had not yet made any dogmatic pronouncement on the matter. It was evidently Imperial policy to prevent this new and potentially serious bone of contention interfering with political needs. In S. Italy too the extension of Byzantine power (especially 876-915) was not accompanied by interference with the existing Latin sees subordinate to Rome.

Thus after the death of Ignatios (23 October 877) the Pope again tried to make his approval of the reappointment of Photios dependent on Byzantine abandonment of Bulgaria and railed against the perfidy of the Greeks. Indeed a further council held in Constantinople from November 879 to March 880 did concede the return of Bulgaria to Rome and thus end one aspect of the twenty-year-old quarrel. Pope John VIII for his part recognised Photios: Byzantine goodwill was not much needed in order to obtain help against the Moslems in South Italy. (a) The Pope would in future consecrate the Bulgarian archbishop but the Creek clergy were to remain and continue their Work. In the event the arrangement was a dead letter, as the Emperor must have calculated. Boris adhered to the decrees of 870 and the Pope could do nothing. Theodosius of Nin, as special legate from the Pope to Boris in 880, met with a refusal to entertain dependence on Rome. As late as the pontificate of Stephen V (885-91) Rome was still adjuring Boris to respect its rights but was consistently ignored. By then Boris had embraced the idea of a church using the Slav language and was strong enough to pursue his own policy. Most remarkable of all, Formosus, the bishop on whom Boris had placed such hopes in the 609, occupied the Papal throne from 891 to 896 but apparently now gave up these ineffectual appeals, for no approach by him to Bulgaria is known. The Papacy itself was too weak to maintain the aggressive policy of Nicholas I.

The status accorded to the head of the Bulgarian church in 870 is not made unequivocally clear in Byzantine sources. In 871 Pope Hadrian II used the ambiguous term antistes. Byzantine references are to an archbishop and indicate a precedence for the Bulgarian Primate above metropolitans and autocephalous archbishops. This anomaly can be explained by supposing that he was not an autocephalous archbishop but one whose consecration, if not also nomination, was reserved to Constantinople, whereas an autocephalous archbishop was normally elected and installed by his own clergy. The political implications of this are obvious.

Boris's policy must be contrasted with that of Svatopluk in Moravia. The latter was too much under the spell of Latin prestige and too wedded to the economic advantages of the Prankish ecclesiastical system to support Methodios wholeheartedly; he rejected the degree of independence guaranteed by a Slav church directly subordinate to Rome. Boris's tergiversations were designed mainly to protect his independence. He knew that Greek culture was already entrenched in his country. As a matter of course he sent his son Symeon to be educated in Constantinople. In 870 he had won half his battle. Learning of events in Moravia, he began to see the advantage to Bulgaria of a church using the Slav language; it would make for further independence from Constantinople. For since 870 Greek had been the language of the Bulgarian church and of the clergy sent from Constantinople. No wonder then that he received with enthusiasm in 885/6 the Moravian exiles who unexpectedly arrived on the borders of his dominions at Belgrade. It is clear that Boris was aware of, less probably in touch with, the Moravian mission and that the Governor of Belgrade was cognisant of Boris's wishes. It is not so clear what the Byzantine reaction to this development was. If Methodios, as seems certain, left competent Slav teachers behind in Constantinople in 882, it would appear that the Byzantine authorities were not by then wholly unfavourable to the use of the Slav liturgical language. But as long as the allegiance of Bulgaria had been at all doubtful they countered Latin with Greek and showed no readiness to ingratiate themselves with the Bulgarians by a concession over language. Photios nowhere suggests that he was in favour of such a thing for Bulgaria (as opposed to Moravia), which in Constantinopolitan eyes was a treacherous country where enemies of the Empire were wont to take refuge. Nor is it surprising that Photios should omit to mention to Boris in his letter of 865 the interesting experiment then going on in Moravia: Moravia had been since 863 the Empire's vital ally (formally or not) in keeping Bulgaria and the Franks apart and in reducing the danger of a westward-looking Bulgarian policy in general. Throughout the 870s Bulgarians went to Constantinople to be trained and the Greek missionaries in Bulgaria are not known to have paid serious attention to the, Slav language. Only after 880, and particularly after Methodios's visit to the Capital, are there signs of a more liberal attitude in Byzantine ecclesiastical policy. It was now clear that Greek influence was assured and that the educated Bulgarian would automatically learn Greek. The church could be allowed to be bilingual. However there were still strong  reasons for neither Constantinople nor Bulgaria embracing wholeheartedly the Glagolitic alphabet as the medium for the Slav texts. Each would prefer an alphabet as like the Greek as popsible. Thus if Constantinople was now prepared to acquiesce in the usage of the Slav language in the Bulgarian church, it might still refuse to sanction this 'Western' alphabet. Therefore Methodios's pupils and books were probably not put to active use. Moreover Basil died in 886 and his son Leo adopted a more intransigeant policy in Bulgarian affairs, which led to a long period of estrangement and war. Any reluctance on the Byzantine side to permit the Bulgarian church to decide its own path was brushed aside.

Of the traditional 'Seven Teachers' of the Slavs, fathers of the Slav Orthodox church - the sedmichislennitsi - four now found acceptance for their ministry in Bulgaria. Cyril and Methodios were dead; of Gorazd we have already collected together the little that can be surmised.

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