Boris I of Bulgaria

Boris I of Bulgaria, later known by his baptismal name Boris-Mihail (Michael), ruled the First Bulgarian Empire as knyaz from 852 until his abdication in 889. He was a son of Khan Presian I and inherited a large, still largely pagan state that stretched across the eastern Balkans and stood between the Byzantine Empire, the East Frankish kingdom, and Great Moravia. Contemporary sources do not record a precise year or place of his birth. His early years on the throne involved the wars and alliances typical of a ninth-century Balkan ruler: conflict with Byzantium, dealings with Louis the German, and involvement in the affairs of the Slavs of Great Moravia. These pressures, together with the diplomatic isolation of a pagan court in an increasingly Christian Europe, formed the background to his decision to accept baptism.

The Christianization of Bulgaria is the act for which Boris is chiefly remembered. In 864, after a Byzantine invasion coinciding with famine and other disasters, he agreed to receive Christianity from Constantinople and was baptized, taking the name Michael in honor of Emperor Michael III, who stood as his godfather. The conversion of the ruler was followed by the baptism of the court and, over time, of the population. A pagan reaction among the boyars broke out in 865 or 866; Boris crushed the revolt and, according to later Latin and Slavic accounts, had a large number of leading families put to death. Seeking an independent church that would not be a mere Byzantine instrument, he opened negotiations with Pope Nicholas I, sending a detailed questionnaire on Christian law and custom to which the pope replied in the famous Responsa ad consulta Bulgarorum (866). For a few years a Latin clergy worked in Bulgaria. At the Fourth Council of Constantinople (869–870), however, the Bulgarian church was placed under Constantinople with its own archbishop, and Boris accepted that settlement, securing a measure of autocephaly while remaining in the Eastern ecclesiastical sphere.

Boris then made Bulgaria a center of Slavic Christian culture. When the disciples of Saints Cyril and Methodius were driven from Great Moravia around 885, he welcomed Clement, Naum, Angelarius, and others. They were given support to teach and to translate, first in the old capital Pliska and then in Preslav and in the southwest (the future Ohrid school). From this patronage grew the use of the Glagolitic and, later, Cyrillic scripts and a Slavonic liturgy and literature that would spread among other Orthodox Slavs. In 889 Boris abdicated, entrusted the throne to his eldest son Vladimir-Rasate, and entered a monastery. Vladimir’s attempt to restore pagan cults and to reverse his father’s religious policy brought Boris out of retirement in 893. He deposed Vladimir, had him blinded (a Byzantine-style punishment that barred him from rule), and convened a council at Preslav that placed his younger son Simeon on the throne, confirmed Slavonic as the language of church and state, and prepared the transfer of the capital from Pliska to Preslav. Boris then resumed the monastic life under the name Mihail.

He died on 2 May 907. The Eastern Orthodox Church honors him as a saint and Equal-to-the-Apostles for bringing the Bulgarian people into Christianity and for fostering a native Slavic church. His principal feast day is 2 May. Later Bulgarian tradition remembered him as the ruler who chose the faith that would define the medieval Bulgarian state and as a monk-king who did not hesitate to leave the cloister to defend that choice.