Meanwhile the mustard-seed of the Slav church which Boris had sown grew into a great tree. The council held in autumn 893, it is believed, not only decreed the general use of the Slav language in the church but also made the perfected Cyrillic alphabet official. The adaptations would have been decided during the previous half-dozen years after the arrival of Clement and Naum. The prime mover was surely Symeon himself, with his fresh Greek learning, to whom the Glagolitic alphabet must have been unattractive. If Constantinople had any further thoughts of preventing the use of the Slav language in the Bulgarian church, she had now to abandon them; forced hellenization now ceased until the collapse of Bulgarian independence at the end of the tenth century. The official declaration on alphabets is deduced in directly from the statement in several Russian annals that the prelozenije knigu took place thirty years after the conversion of Bulgaria, taken as 863; the phrase is perhaps best translated 'transliteration of the texts'. East Bulgaria with the two capitals, which politically and intellectually had so far taken the lead over the wilder West, was more penetrated by Greek culture and had long been in the habit of using the Greek alphabet; it did not take kindly to the Glagolitic script brought by Clement and his companions. It was of course learnt and used there but the decision of 893, which also took into account the need for the hellenized Cyrillic alphabet as the normal secular and administrative script, thus making as little change in existing habits as possible, created a division between East Bulgaria and Macedonia which was not entirely effaced for several centuries thereafter.

(a) The modem Macedonian language (lately elevated to separate written and literary status) is a later development, born of the overlay of Serbian dialect on Bulgarian.

Clement out of devotion to his masters developed his educational and literary activities in Macedonia on the basis of the Glagolitic alphabet and the language of the translations of Constantine and Methodios. In his hands Church Slavonic reached a relatively stable artificial norm returning to or confirming its original Macedonian character. But the dialects of East and West Bulgaria (including Macedonia) were certainly no more identical then than they are today.(a)  Preslav set about imposing its own East Bulgarian norm on the ecclesiastical language. The sacred texts were all transcribed into Cyrillic and at the same time revised in language, removing words and forms which were too Macedonian or too Moravian to be readily acceptable in the East. Without being in any sense condemned or pro- scribed, Glagolitic gradually came to be felt as a provincial survival. The position of the priest Constantine is in all this difficult to define. As almost certainly a disciple of Methodios, though not numbered among the Seven, he must have been an important voice at the council of 893. By 906 at latest he had been promoted Bishop of Preslav, that is, court bishop; perhaps this took place in 893 at the same time as the promotion of Clement. His attitude to the schism of the alphabets is not clear. His own training was of course Glagolitic, as the Acrostic Prayer (Azbuchnaka molitva), attributed to him with a high degree of probability, bears witness. While admitting the excellence, indeed the Divine inspiration, of St Cyril's alphabet, the literati of Preslav could not but feel that it would be a barrier to the further assimilation of Greek culture.

It must also be clearly recognised that the Bulgarian church was from 893 Orthodox in all respects, using exclusively Greek liturgies and other services. If Clement used a liturgy of St Peter in Macedonia, in deference to Moravian practice, no evidence thereof survives. The preservation or such a text on Athos is at best a very indirect pointer. It is much more probable, as we have seen, that the Kiev missal (and no doubt other Western texts now lost) indicates not so much a general as a rather special and local usage which SS Cyril and Methodios freely conceded to some Central European Slavs, whereas they themselves translated ane normally used Byzantine liturgies and other services from the very beginning of their Moravian mission. Clement's work may be safely assumed to have followed in the main the usages of the Eastern church. Moreover the work of translation had still be to completed. According te Theophylakt's Life of Clement the saint finished the translation of the Triodion shortly before his death (916). The Triodion contains the Byzantine offices for the period Lent-Pentecost, during which the Canons - or hymns - on Lenten weekdays consist of only three odes instead of the normal nine. Whether the translation of the Triodion was entirely Clement's work - either because it had never been done or because the first translation was lost in Moravia - or was merely completed by him, cannot be established. A reference in the Russian Primary Chronicle suggests that the Oktiokh, the complementary service-book for the rest of the year, had already been translated in Moravia.(a)  And the use of the Oktoikh and Triodion implies of course the use of the Orthodox Liturgy. Only the Glagolitic alphabet was linked with the West and this was rejected in 893 for official Bulgarian use.

(a) The reference is in the material of Western provenance s.a. 898. (b) The treatment of existing texts in some cases went far beyond revision: the East Bulgarian Psalter is virtually a new translation, mainly following Theodoret in the Commentary. At least parts of the O.T. were newly done by order of Symeon (afte the loss of Methodios's version), who not unnaturally favoured the texts current in Constantinople when he studied there. (c) Byzantine models were such works as the Emperor Constantine's Excerpta de legationibus and Patriarch Photios's Myriobiblon.

The work of the 'Preslav School', under Symeon's personal patronage not only set the character of the Bulgarian church once and for all as an Orthodox church of Slav language: it further enlarged Old Church Slavorlic as a literary language. While Clement, as far as we know composed original works of strictly religious content only, the capital could embrace new genres of Christian literature. Many new sacred texts were translated, (b) but now also Greek works of learning, particularly history. What Bulgaria needed was still typically the 'world chronicle' which carried on the history of the Bible into modern times, thereby showing the continuity of God's operation in the world down to and including the Byzantine Empire. Such was the Chronicle of John Malalas, which goes down to the reign of Justin II, translated in the tenth, possibly only in the eleventh century. And there are other similar compilations. Here too we may note Symeon's Encyclopaedia (Izbornik), a choice of extracts from Greek theological, historical and other learned works covering the essentials of Christian education and life. Made about the year 900, this only survives in a Russian copy made for Svjatoslav in 1073.(c) It was prefaced by an encomium of Symeon inverse.

The main work of this group of authors no doubt falls after 893. How far it already existed in Boris's later years is difficult to answer. Symeon's return to Bulgaria in the 880s is a likely enough moment for new departures. But it may be that little was achieved during the disturbed years of Vladimir's rule (889-93) and before the dispute over alphabet had been settled.

The following authors (with works confidently ascribed to them) are known by name:

I. John the Exarch. Assumed to be a Bulgarian, since his command of Greek is by no means perfect, he may have been born as late as 890.(a) His notable translations are two treatises and many sermons of St John Damascene. His version of St Basil the Great's Hexaemeron is rather an adaptation with additional matter, probably made c. 915.

(a) So little is known about John that there are widely different estimates of his dates. Another view maintains that he was born nearer the middle of the ninth century and spent some time in Constantinople in the 870s. The ostensible reference to Methodios as still alive in the Preface to his Nebesa is scarcely conclusive. (b) The alphabet is not named but the argument surely requires the Glagolitic in all other respects. The work may have been revised when Glagolitic went out of use in East Bulgaria. (c) It has been suggested that Doks represents [sic], which might be loosely rendered hrabru in Slav.

Both the Hexaemeron and the treatises of St John have adulatory addresses to Symeon in their Prefaces. The Preface to the Nebesa, that is St John's Exposition of the True Faith, resumes what was then known about the early Cyrillomethodian translations.

2. The monk (chernorizets) Hrabr. His Essay on the Slav alphabet variously entitled in different copies, is vital for an understanding of the position at the end of the ninth century. He shows acquaintance with Greek grammatical and literary scholarship and demonstrates that the Slav alphabet is as well designed for the Slav language as the Greek is for Greek. The arguments are aimed at Greek pride: Greek is not such an ancient language as Syriac, which was Adam's tongue; the Greek did not invent their own alphabet but adapted the Phoenician. Hrabr magnifies St Cyril's achievement in designing a wholly new alphabet (therefore the Glagolitic)(b) for the Slavs, who, as the saint consistently maintained, have a right to a sacred tongue and script of their own. 'For it is easier,' says Hrabr, "to build on others' work than to create from scratch.' Such arguments are evidently addressed to Bulgarians conversant with Greek who found the Glagolitic too troublesome and obscure. That the author, whose pseudonym is no genuine monastic name, was either one of the early companions of Cyril and Methodios or prompted by one of them is sufficiently clear. Naum has been suggested and, with less probability, Boris's brother Doks.(c) The work must date from about 893 when the question of alphabets was being actively discussed. The author knows the Vita Constantini and writes of the 'chief disciple', that is Clement, as still alive.

3. Constantine the Priest, later Bishop of Preslav. He was the compiler and translator of a Gospel commentary based on St Chrysostom, St Cyril of Alexandria and St Isidore, written about 893/4. Three manuscripts of the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries are extant. The Acrostic Prayer would appear to be his Preface to this work, following fairly closely the matter and manner of St Cyril's verse Preface to his translation of the Gospels. It may therefore also be dated c.894.  There are at least eight Cyrillic manuscripts of the poem, dating from the twelfth- thirteenth centuries onwards, and showing clear signs of adaptation from a Glagolitic original.(c)

(c) E.g. 1l. 12 and 26 represent Glagolitic letters unknown to the Cyrillic alphabet.

Two of the manuscripts of the Gospel commentary also contain a description of the hierarchical organisation and services of the church - a free adaptation of a Greek original - which is likely to be Constantine's work too; there was need for such an essay in the still only imperfectly Chrstian Bulgaria of the 890s.

Constantine's Outline of History (Istorikii vukratuce), based on the [sic] of Patriarch Nikephoros, also dates from the 890s.

In 906/7 Constantine made a translation at Symeon's command of St Athanasius's Tracts against the Arians, of which only later Russian copies are extant. Though the Arian heresy was a thing of the past other heresies were becoming troublesome in Bulgaria against which these polemics could be useful, as witness the work of

4. Cosmas the Priest, whose Treatise against the Bogomils is to be dated c. 960-72

5. Gregory the Priest, alleged translator of parts of the Old Testamen and of John Malalas's Chronicle.

To the above must be added Tsar Symeon himself who appears te have made or helped to make the Zlatostruj, being the Slav translation of selected sermons of St John Chrysostom. There are two manuscript traditions of this very popular compilation; we cannot say which is closer to Symeon's version.

Many remain anonymous to us. Other valued devotional work translated at an early date were: the Ladder to Paradise of St John Climacus - a fundamental treatise on the monastic life, the Spiritual Meadow of John Moschos (the Sinai Paterik) and works of St Ephraim the Syrian. More secular were the Physiologos (though it contains much moral symbolism) and the geographical work of Cosmas Indicopleustes. It should be noted, however, that despite Symeon's alleged enthusiasm as a young man for the pagan Classics there is no sign of their translation side by side with Christian literature. They could fulfil no spiritual need in a country of such young civilisation.

The Classical Renaissance so conspicuous in Byzantine culture during the century from Photios to the scholar-emperor Constantine Porphyrogennetos left practically no mark on the emergent Slav peoples. This humanism was the preserve of an exclusive Byzantine administrative class (and thus somewhat parallel to our Classical education of the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries), into which barbarians did not easily gain admission. The Slavs were adopting Christianity in the only proper way - in all its aspects simultaneously: as theology, as ritual, in all its associated arts. But since they now had their own liturgical language, Greek was primarily a source of Christian knowledge, far less a medium of knowledge in general. Moreover the Christian works of doctrine and spirituality which urgently demanded translation were the fundamental expositions written by the Fathers of the fourth-sixth centuries. More recent elaborations were of less immediate value: even the works of St John Damascene were for them relatively modern.

The decline of Bulgaria was as rapid as its rise. With the accession of the unwarlike Peter (927), high in dignity as an acknowledged basileus but without Symeon's authority, Constantinople regained the initiative and henceforward never made any secret of her determination to destroy Bulgarian power. A tame province, not a rival, was the most she could tolerate in the North Balkans. This thorn in her flesh, which had been her undoing, had been there long enough. As early as 931 Serbia and parts of Macedonia passed under Byzantine suzerainty. A few years later Bulgaria was subjected to severe attacks by the Magyars, who had already shorn the state of all its dependencies north of the Danube when they settled in Transylvania and the Alfold. Nikephoros Phokas was unwise enough in 965, when Peter's Byzantine empress Maria-Irene died, to refuse Bulgaria its annual 'tribute' and thereby reawaken quiescent hostility. Byzantine diplomacy then brought the Prince of Kiev's Russians into play. In 966/7 Svjatoslav of Kiev, receiving an inducement of 800 pounds of gold, started an invasion of Bulgaria from the north and took Preslav. What little cohesion the Bulgarian state still had disappeared on the death of Tsar Peter on 29 January 969. The general who ascended the Imperial throne in December of the same year, John Tzimiskes, embarked on the conquest of Bulgaria from the south. He also found it necessary to put an end to Russian conquest from the north which were proving far too successful for what Constantinople had envisaged as the contribution of a useful but minor ally.

Preslav was snatched from the Russians and their forces finally defeated before Dorystolon (Dorostol) in July 971. By the end of the year Peter's successor, Boris II, had abdicated and all East Bulgaria was in Byzantine hands. The Byzantine authorities formally abolished the Bulgarian patriarchate and reunited the conquered territories to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. A Greek Metropolitan was installed at Dorostol where the Bulgarian Patriarch had apparently resided for most of Peter's reign.(a) Patriarch Damian (fungebatur ab 945) now migrated with the centre of political resistance by stages into Macedonia.

Resistance to incorporation in the Byzantine Empire was organised by the sons of a renegade Armenian officer, Nicholas. Hence they are known as the Komitopouloi.(b)

(a) Perhaps from the time of its recognition by Constanrinople about 927. (b) The names of the brothers are given as Moses, Aaron, David and Samuel, very rarely used by those who considered themselves Greeks but current in the Transcaucasian Christian states; that of their mother was Ripsime (Armenian Hrip'sime) a famous Armenian martyr of the third century, and is recorded on a monuments inscription dated 993. (c) Moses and Aaron should perhaps be discounted as brothers; Yahya of Antioch more interested in these events than the Greek historians, only mentions two in all. They may have been cousins of the Bulgarian Tsar Roman, whose legitimate position Samuel never defied, only proclaiming himself Tsar on the latter's death.

Tzimiskes had had to withdraw his troops hurriedly from Bulgaria without completing the conquest of the whole country in order to meet an Arab menace in the East. On his death in January 976 Byzantine hold on East Bulgaria further relaxed. By summer of that year Samuel, the most vigorous of the brothers, had regained nominal control of a considerable area. The Byzantine conquest had to be started all over again by Basil II.

Basil's first important campaign took place in 986. His main opponent was Samuel who managed to eliminate his brothers in the years 986/7. The civil war in Asia Minor which required Basil's full personal attention and Russian help,(d) again put a temporary halt to campaigns in Bulgaria until 991. Samuel was thus able to consolidate his position in Macedonia, take Dyrrachium, and embark on conquests in Thessaly on his own account.

The Komitopouloi had taken the expelled head of the church under their wing. The wandering 'patriarchate' moved from the Danube via Sofia into remoter Macedonia, reaching Lake Prespa about 976. The lake island of St Achilles became Samuel's capital for the next twenty years. The existing basilica was rededicated to this saint when his relics were deposited there in 983. The patriarchal title appears to have been unofficially readopted about this time. In the 990s Samuel and the Patriarchate moved on to Ohrid, where the most impressive remains of his reign are still to be seen. Samuel proclaimed himself Tsar and his primate Patriarch in 998. But the war of attrition finally went agains Samuel. Basil occupied Preslav and Pliska in 1002, Skopje in 1004. By 1008 all Bulgaria was at Basil's mercy and he had earned himself the title of the Bulgar-slayer' (Voulgaroktonos). Samuel had died soon after his decisive defeat on 29 June 1014; the final collapse came under his nephew John Vladislav.

Byzantine relief was profound. Among other celebrations Basil held a service of thanksgiving in the Parthenon, then an Orthodox cathedral. As soon as the conquest was complete the Patriarchate of Ohrid wa demoted to an archbishopric.(a)

(a) Ohrid was besieged by Basil in 1015 but probably only taken in 1018. The administrative capital of Byzantine Macedonia was however fixed at Skopje, where the Governor resided.

The Emperor reserved the right to appoint to the see. This was tantamount to restoring the origina situation of 870, when Bulgaria received its first autocephalous archbishop; the title also remained unchanged. Autocephaly under Imperial patronage was to blot out the memories of the intervening patriarchate which Constantinople had never loved. At its most extensive the proscribed Bulgarian Patriarchate had embraced not only most of Bulgaria proper but also Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania, Epirus and parts of Thessaly - some two dozen sees. The eparchy was thus for a short time at the height of Samuel's power wide than the recognised Bulgarian state had been.

The Byzantine authorities dealt lightly with the Bulgarian church; it was an important factor in their peaceful control of the country in the future. The autocephaly granted to Ohrid meant that the Archbishoo could appoint his own bishops; the Patriarch of Constantinople did no interfere in this or indeed in any internal affairs. Greek became the administrative language of Bulgaria. But though the Archbishop and many of the bishops were thenceforward Greeks, the lower hierarchy of the church remained, as far as can be told, predominantly Slav. It would be misleading to say that the Slav church was persecuted. Yet there was certainly as time went on considerable destruction of Slav service-books and much local and unofficial hellenization. Ohrid itself is a typical case: no Slav manuscripts have survived there of earlier date than Tsar Dushan...

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