RELIGION

Macedonian male names (Coming Soon).

Macedonian female names (Coming Soon).

Religion Christian worship had taken root early in Macedonia with the Christianisation of the Pantheist People being almost complete by the 8th century. Christianity amongst the Macedonian's was consolidated with the creation of the Macedonian Archbishophic in Ohrid in the 10th century, during the region of tsar Samuel. Though it managed to survive the excesses of the Byzantine and Serbian Empires, its most severe test came with the Ottoman conquest, and the threat of the mandatory imposition of Islam. Paradoxically, the Turks initially proved quite tolerant of Orthodoxy. However, conscious of its role in fomenting rebellion and under the influence of the increasingly powerful Greek Patriarchate in Constantiopole (which together with an aggressive Greek bourgeoisie undertook to expand Greek domination in the Balkans), the Turks abolished the Macedonian Church in 1767. Its Eparchates were absorbed by the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Religion Many attempts were to restore the Ohrid Church, intensifying during the anti-partriarchate drift during the 1870's. In 1967, the autonomy and the nature of the Macedonian Church was declared, thus crowing the long struggle which had led to the restoration of the Archibishophric of Ohrid in 1958. During its period of darkness, the local clergy in Macedonia, who held very tenuous links with the Bulgarian Exarchate, which was established in 1870, and the Greek Church often supported the I.M.R.O, during the Ilinden era, a period in which coincidentally, the idea of a separate Macedonian Church prospered.

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