Macedonia

By virtue of its geographical position, located in the Balkan peninsula of southeastern Europe adjacent to the countries of Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia, the region of Macedonia has been continually exposed to the influence of several world religions and has thus been the locus for their strong competition. The earliest arrival of Christianity in Macedonia occurred around the middle of the first century. (St. Paul's letter to the Thessalonians was written in approximately 52 CE, after Timothy had returned from the region, which then incorporated the territories of Epirus, Vetus, Thessaly, and parts of Illyria and Thrace.) The arrival of Islam in Macedonia happened as early as the 11th century CE.

Following World War II, the territory of what is today the Republic of Macedonia was constituted in 1946 as the People's Republic of Macedonia and incorporated as a constituent republic in the former Yugoslav Federation. After the breakup of Yugoslavia, Macedonia was admitted to the United Nations on April 8, 1993, as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) pending an agreement with Greece, which claimed that some of the articles of the new Macedonian constitution made territorial claims on the Greek province of Macedonia. The issue regarding Macedonia's name has still not been resolved; thus, FYROM and Republic of Macedonia are commonly used as synonyms.

The present-day religious composition of the Republic of Macedonia is predominantly Eastern Orthodox, represented by the Eastern Orthodox Church (Macedonian Orthodox Church) to which approximately 60% of the population belong. About 30% of the population are members of the Islamic religious community. The remaining 10% belong to all other religious communities, including members of the Catholic Church, the Jewish community, Protestants, Evangelicals, and so on.

The first church officials in Macedonia were Archbishop St. Clement of Ohrid and St. Naum, both disciples of the brothers Saints Cyril and Methodius, who were the founders of the Slavonic literacy and the Glagolitic alphabet, on which the Cyrillic alphabet was based. St. Clement was the first Archbishop in what is now Macedonia, in Ohrid in 893 CE. However, the tradition goes back even earlier than this. Parigorius—the first Metropolitan of Skopje (the present-day capital of the Republic of Macedonia)—took part in the Second Synod in Serdica, in 343 CE, thus supporting Orthodoxy. At that time, there were two Metropolitan dioceses in the region: Thessaloniki and Skopje.

The Ohrid archdiocese was established in 893 CE under the jurisdiction of Prince Boris of Bulgaria. By the end of the 10th century (996 CE), Tsar Samuil, without the approval of the [Page 725]Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, proclaimed its autocephalous (self-governing) status, with five eparchies (dioceses): Voden, Meglen, Serres, Ohrid, and Skopje. The aim of this action was to proclaim ecclesiastic authority independent of Byzantium and to make it closer to the secular authority of Tsar Samuil. Its center was on the small island of Achilles in the Prespa Lake. Two years later, the center was moved to Ohrid. In 1018, after the defeat of Tsar Samuil in the battle of Belasica, the Ohrid archdiocese lost its autocephalous status but did not cease to exist, being legally strengthened and included in the Byzantine ecclesiastic institutional system.

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