Church Policies and Rivalries in Political Context

In Greek historiography, the Ottoman political reality as a point of reference for the study of the self-proclaimed Ecumenical Orthodox Church is completely missing, as some Greek scholars observe (Anagnostopoulou Reference Anagnostopoulou2004, 37–38). In the Ottoman institutional context, by the eighteenth century, the Orthodox leader came to be known as “the Rum Patriarch of Istanbul” (İstanbul ve tevabi-i Rum patriği), or “the Patriarch of the Rums of Istanbul” (İstanbul ve tevabi-i Rumiyan Patriği) (Konortas Reference Konortas, Gondicas and Issawi1999, 173–174), literally from Romioi “Romans” (Orthodox subjects of the former Roman-Byzantine Empire). The term Rum, however, indicated first the magnitude of the Ottoman sultan, sometimes addressed as Kayser-i Rum, in an open declaration of the hegemony of the Ottoman Empire, also referred as Devlet-i Rum, over the inherited domains of the Eastern Roman Empire. Although the conflation of Ottoman elitism with Eastern Orthodoxy under the label Rum was a “widespread reductionist misconception” (galat-i meshur) (Ergul Reference Ergul2012, 638), this shift is explained by the infiltration of Enlightenment ideas in the Ottoman empire and the gradual decline of Ottoman central administration in the eighteenth century.

During this period, the Orthodox Church received more administrative and jurisdictional privileges, while the Greek Orthodox clergy and the Grecized elites, namely the so-called Phanariots, acquired greater social and political power in the Ottoman state. By the end of eighteenth century, the Istanbul Patriarch backed by the very powerful Phanariot aristocracy succeeded in having Orthodoxy defined by the Ottomans as a “Rum Millet”, which meant all the Orthodox, regardless of their formal association with different ecclesiastical jurisdictions and regardless of their speaking different languages. This laid the groundwork both for the Rum Patriarch to exercise his authority over the whole Orthodox ecclesiastical jurisdictions of the Ottoman empire and for the cultural predominance of the Greek-speaking Orthodox over the other Slavic, Vlach, and Albanian-speaking Orthodox peoples in the Balkans.

The Rum, or Ecumenical Patriarchate, belonged above all within the Ottoman institutional system of power (Inalcik Reference Inalcik1991). The Ottoman state granted individual clerics the right to take their positions as hierarchs in return for yearly tax payments. Under these circumstances, church positions became subject to the same forces of competition and corruption than other Ottoman administrative offices faced. The Rum Church functioned as an ethno-religious and political entity of the Ottoman world, and the Rum Patriarch had to legitimate his power within this political and administrative framework rather than as a religious leader of the faithful.

The Ottoman context is central to understanding the confrontation between Rum Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism in terms of political affiliations, ecclesiastical policies, and doctrinal ideologies, including language politics and cultural evangelism. In the East, the Rum Patriarchate and Orthodox hierarchy accommodated to Ottoman rule and continued to grow apart from the one and undivided Christian Church. In the West, through the pastoral strategy of the Jesuit Order from the 1540s, and after the centralizing spirit introduced by the Council of Trento in 1545–1563, the focus changed from overseas missionizing to pastoral assistance for Protestant Christians in the West and Orthodox Christians in the East under Ottoman rule.

The Catholic leadership quickly recognized the importance of this expansion, and immediately sent apostolic visitors to survey missionary regions and map their geographical, historical, political, religious, linguistic, and cultural characteristics. In particular, Eastern Orthodox Churches were considered terra missionis for Latin missionaries, who treated the Orthodox as distant heretics and schismatics in need of evangelization. The Catholic Church elaborated a “return ecclesiology” that interpreted united Churches as a return to unio ecclesiarum, re-establishing the state of affairs before the schism and bringing dissidents and schismatics back to Roman allegiance.

Attempts at union characterized the pontificate of Gregory XIII (1572–1585), who adopted a more politically skillful attitude towards the Eastern Orthodox rite in trying to establish unity between the Eastern and Western Churches. The program relied on what is called propaganda libraria, as a political instrument of reconciliation and union, which included the Greek publication in 1577 of the programmatic princeps and canons of the Florentine and Tridentine Councils (Peri Reference Peri1975, 90). This was followed by the reorganization of the Eastern Orthodox rite in the Italian states. In the same year, the Pope established the College of St. Athanasius in Rome for the systematic training of clergy in the Eastern Orthodox rite, mainly among the population of Albanian descent in the South Italian states, commonly known as Italo-Albanians (arberesh), subsequently joined by Albanian, Greek, and Slavic seminarians from the Ottoman-ruled Balkans.

Established in 1622, the Congregation of Propaganda Fide was delegated wide-ranging powers and substantial financial resources to set up Catholic missions targeting specific groups and scattered minorities (Molnar Reference Molnar2019, 71-72). In 1626 it established its own Tipografia Polyglotta and in 1627 its own Collegio Urbano for the training of missionaries to promote teaching and preaching in languages important for the missions. Languages were studied, grammars and dictionaries compiled, and catechisms, religious texts, and pastoral guidebooks were translated into vernacular languages, all with a view to boosting the effectiveness of mission work.

In this apparent conciliatory and appreciative approach, the exclusivist “return ecclesiology” involved a dual strategy (Molnar Reference Molnar2019, 72–73). The Roman-centered mission strategy of the Holy See pursued a strategic universal principle of Catholic evangelism and a practical pastoral method that made considerable allowances for linguistic and cultural differences, especially for the promotion of native clergy in church hierarchy and native language in church liturgy. The duality of Propaganda Fide’s mission strategy had a formative intellectual effect on missionary graduates. During their training in Rome, they developed a sensitivity to their native language and culture, and an awareness of their historical and political identity, which they retained in their pastoral work within their own communities. After graduating, they returned to Calabria and Sicily, or were conveniently sent to their native land of ancestral origin to spread education and learning in Albanian language and cultural traditions, as well as to propagate Catholicism and obedience to Rome among their brethren. They naturally made further systematic inquiries, both for themselves and for Rome, into Albanian linguistic and cultural characteristics, describing in increasing detail the language, customs, geographical boundaries, and key historical events.

Since the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Catholic missions in present-day North Albania tried to facilitate access to Christian doctrine for priests who had not mastered Latin, for they might prevent their flocks from converting to Islam. In this context, the use of Albanian in church liturgy was facilitated not only for Albanian Catholics in North Albania and Eastern Orthodox Albanians in South Italy, but also for Orthodox Albanians in Lower Albania (present-day South Albania and North Greece). This was in direct opposition to Rum Church policy, which vehemently defended the ecumenism of Greek language in church liturgy. Despite vindication in Greek scholarship (Giakoumis Reference Giakoumis2011), language politics became increasingly a burning issue in the complex relationship between the two churches and between the Greek hierarchy and the local Orthodox clergy under the jurisdiction of the Rum Patriarchate.

Evangelism North and South

The use of vernacular language in church services and other religious practices was important both for the pastoral care of the faithful and for the distinctive identity of the people. A report of 1332 attributed to Brocardus Monacus (or Giullelmus Adae), suggests a first reference to texts written in Albanian: the Albanians of the North are said to “use the Latin letters in all their books,” even though there is disagreement about the exact meaning of this litteram latinam in suis libris. Footnote ² A Christ-is-Risen apolytikion, together with a fifteen-line pericope translated from the Easter Gospel (Mt. 27.62-66), written in Albanian with Greek letters probably at the end of the fifteenth century, were found inserted in a fourteenth-century codex of the Orthodox rite.Footnote ³ In 1462, Paul Angelus (1417–1470), Albanian Archbishop of Durres, wrote in Latin script the Trinitarian baptismal formula of the Roman Catholic rite, addressed to North Albanian clergy at the local Council of Emathia (present-day Mati in North Albania).Footnote ⁴ These records indicate the two cultural influences that prevailed in the Albanian-speaking area before the Ottoman conquest, Roman Catholic to the north and Eastern Orthodox to the south. Remarkably, the timing of the Trinitarian formula in Albanian cannot be without relation to the massive mobilization of Albanians lead by George Kastrioti, known as Skanderbeg, against the powerful Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth century, and Paul Angelus is most remembered as a special adviser who served as Skanderbeg’s special envoy to European chancelleries (Çabej Reference Çabej1963).

Under Ottoman rule, Albanians lived in a polyglottic situation, with a communication system made of several languages with clearly defined, hierarchical uses and with a strong relationship between social status and language proficiency. Though it remained largely confined to the domain of oral expression, since at least the sixteenth century the Albanian language has nourished ecclesiastical literature written in Latin and Greek scripts, including some manuscripts in Arabic script dating from the eighteenth century (Hetzer Reference Hetzer1984).

Writings in Albanian were more frequent in the North, facilitated by the evangelization efforts of Propaganda Fide. They included publication in Albanian of a Catholic missal (1555) by Gjon (John) Buzuku, the Christian Doctrine (1592) by Luca Matranga, another Christian Doctrine (1618), and the Roman Ritual and Mirror of Confession (1621) by Peter Budi. Despite their limited dissemination, they may have stimulated the cultivation of the Albanian language. This may have placed great value in belonging to a linguistic-cultural community, engendering a distinctive consciousness that the Catholic missions deliberately strengthened. Bishop of Sapa Peter Budi (1566–1622) described his works as “a spiritual discourse most useful for those who understand no other language than their Albanian mother tongue.”Footnote ⁵ Bishop of Sapa and Sarda Frank Bardhi (1606–1643), in his introduction to the first Albanian dictionary published in 1635, was already concerned about the Albanian language and alarmed by its “dissipation and corruption.”Footnote ⁶ Bishop of Scutari and archbishop of Skopje Peter Bogdani (1630–1689) stated a similar purpose in his Cuneus Prophetarum (1685),Footnote ⁷ the first substantial work of religious literature not translated but originally written in Albanian. He included not only a defense of the Catholic faith but argued for the preservation of Albanian in the face of pressure from Turkish, Greek, and Serbian languages. As Catholic archbishop of Skopje, he sought the survival of Albanian in a basically Turkish-speaking city (Fraenkel Reference Fraenkel1986), where the Orthodox archbishop spoke Greek, and Slavic speakers resented Greeks, much as Catholic Albanians resented Slavic-speaking Christians further north.

From the second half of the sixteenth century, Albanian linguistic and cultural distinction was strengthened more through a political rather than religious resistance to Dalmatian bishops. At that time, requests were often submitted to the Holy See to withdraw Ragusan missionaries and appoint native Albanian bishops in their place (Molnar Reference Molnar2019, 76–77; see also Xhufi Reference Xhufi2016, 1084). In 1577, the elders of Priska and Alessio sent a letter to Rome in support of a candidate for bishop of Alessio on the ground that he was beloved by the inhabitants of the area, as “he was born and raised in the same nation … belonged to the same nation … of the same our Albanian country.”Footnote ⁸ Again in 1602 and 1603, Albanian-born bishops together with the local clergy bombarded Pope Clement VIII and influential cardinals, requesting to have not Ragusan priests in their parishes, as “they were of alien nation, of alien language, of alien customs.”Footnote ⁹ Native clerics, by contrast, had studied in foreign schools with the sole purpose of returning to become “the light, the honor, and the glory of their own homeland.”Footnote ¹⁰ In addition, long accounts were given of the sins and offences of foreign clergy in Albania. In particular, because they considered unacceptable any contact between Christians and Muslims, they ignored how to behave and they rather showed contempt for fellow Muslim Albanians.Footnote ¹¹

In the 1620s, Dalmatian-born bishops and missionaries complained that Albanian priests did not obey prelates from outside the region and obstructed their work, while Albanian clergy demanded that prelates should speak Albanian and be of Albanian descent. The conflict between Albanian and Dalmatian clerics continued unabated in the second half of the seventeenth century, with a vehemence unusual in church disputes of the time. Albanian opposition to the Latinizing pressures of Dalmatian Catholic clergy is clear evidence of a boundary work, as was the fierce opposition to Slavic clergy and Orthodox Slavic speakers. Incidentally, as the Catholic Archbishop of Skopje Peter Bogdani reported, Slavs denounced the Catholic religion as arbanaška vjera, the “Albanian faith.”Footnote ¹²

Added to this anti-Dalmatian and anti-Slavic reaction, and to Albanian linguistic and religious activism, the development of Albanian anti-Ottoman ideas and actions further strengthened Albanian cultural distinctiveness. Anti-Ottoman movements culminated with the important part played by the archbishop of Skopje Peter Bogdani, author of the foremost seventeenth-century Albanian-language religious book, who organized anti-Ottoman resistance movements among the Albanian Catholics during the Morean Ottoman-Venetian war of 1684–1687. In 1689, he led again North Albanian forces that joined Austrian army against the Ottomans in Kosovo (Malcolm 1998, 140–147). Anti-Ottoman ideas were developed by the bishop of Sapa, Peter Budi, who embarked on a wide-ranging literary program to emphasize a distinctively Albanian contribution to the European anti-Ottoman enterprise. This stance made him unpopular in certain quarters, especially after he revealed his plan to foment an armed uprising in Albania,Footnote ¹³ given that he was drowned under suspicious circumstances while crossing the Drin River in December 1622 (Zamputi Reference Zamputi1958). Following in his footsteps, Frank Bardhi published a substantial Apology of Skanderbeg (1636) against Slavic megalomaniac ideas and brash historical fabrications.Footnote ¹⁴ At the same time, Peter Mazreku, archbishop of Antivari (1624–1634) and apostolic administrator of Serbia (1634–1642), advocated the construction of Albanian Catholicism in connection with Catholic universality, and distinct from Slavic Catholicism, known at that time as “Illyrianism” (Fine Reference Fine2006, 255–261).

Similar ideas and actions set the conceptual and substantial framework for how Catholic prelates and missionaries thought about Albanian linguistic and cultural distinctiveness in the seventeenth century. In their reports to Propaganda Fide,Footnote ¹⁵ they represented their flock not only as endangered Catholics, but as members of their own Albanian community, making proposals for how to provide them pastoral and cultural assistance, and thereby helping them preserve their linguistic and cultural distinction in close relation to their Catholic faith. Mazreku called on the Holy See for a full mission program, including the establishment of an Albanian college, distinct from the “Greek” (Orthodox) and “Illyrian” (Slavic) colleges in Rome. An Albanian college was argued to be crucial for the education of young Albanian people and the preservation of Catholicism among a key Catholic group in the Balkans, whose military strength could be essential in fighting the Ottomans.Footnote ¹⁶ With the foundation of the Pontifical Corsini College for Albanians in San Benedetto Ullano (Calabria) in 1732 and the Italo-Albanian Seminary of Palermo (Sicily) in 1734, the training of church intellectual elites laid the foundations for the development of Albanian written language and Albanian literature.

The writings from the Orthodox South are from a much later period, but similar in character to those of the Catholic North. In several churches in Moschopolis (present-day Voskopoja in South Albania), votive inscriptions in Albanian written in Greek script are found throughout the eighteenth century (Shuteriqi Reference Shuteriqi2005, 107). A quadrilingual votive inscription in Greek, Latin, Aromanian, and Albanian, made in 1731 by Nektar Terpo of Moschopolis, is found on the icon of the Holy Virgin in the Ardenica Monastery near Fier in Central Albania.Footnote ¹⁷ The inscription was reproduced in his “Book of Faith” (Βιβλιάριον καλούμενον Πίστις) published in 1732, and reprinted in Venice as many as twelve times during and after his lifetime.Footnote ¹⁸ This inscription is of particular interest as the Aromanian and Albanian text was not a translation but an original composition in Albanian (Lloshi Reference Lloshi2008, 297–298), which may suggest a successful confrontation with ecclesiastical Greek and Latin (Plasari Reference Plasari2018, 25), and above all indicates a consolidated tradition of written liturgy in both Aromanian and Albanian.

Around this time, Gregory Konstandinidi (1700–1772) from Moschopolis, who later became Metropolitan Bishop of Durrës, is believed to have “translated the New Testament and the Old Testament written with an Albanian script of his own” (Zaviras Reference Zaviras1872, 236; see also Shuteriqi Reference Shuteriqi2005). In 1731, he became the first director of the Moschopolis printing press that the rich and powerful merchants and manufacturers of the city brought from Venice, where he also learned the art of printing (Plasari Reference Plasari2018, 26–27).

A more important manuscript is the Codex Chieutino of Albanian sacred poems and Albanian Christian Catechism (Cristeu i arbrésc), written in 1737 in the Albanian dialect of Italy (arberesh) by Nicolò Figlia (1693–1769) from Mezzojuso (Sicily).Footnote ¹⁹ In the Catholic North, Archbishop of Skopje (1743–1752) Gjon Nicola Kazazi (1702–1752) from Gjakova (Kosovo) published in 1743 a catechism of Christian Doctrine (Doctrina e Kërshten), translated in Albanian language explicitly for “the education of children of Albanian nation.”Footnote ²⁰ At about the same time, a major literary tradition in Albanian language made inroads among Muslim Albanians, culminating with the Divan written in 1735 by Ibrahim Nazim Frakulla of Berat (1680–1760).Footnote ²¹ While Sufi mysticism permeated all his verses written in Arabic script, he provided the first substantial work of secular literature in Albanian. Remarkably, he explicitly acknowledged his own contribution, considering himself the first to bestow Albanian with the dignity of a literary language (Pipa Reference Pipa1978, 36–37). His creative writing was the expression of a distinctive culture of a new Albanian-speaking Muslim urban class, which affected the future development of Albanian literature.

While Jul Variboba from San Giorgio Albanese (Cosenza) published in 1762 an original creative writing piece on the “Life of the Virgin St. Mary” in Albanian,Footnote ²² among various translations of biblical, liturgical, and other ecclesiastical texts in the Orthodox literature of South Albania (Beduli Reference Beduli1961; Pelushi Reference Pelushi2000), the oldest known is the Elbasan Gospel manuscript from around 1761. Theodor Haxhi-Filip (1730–1805) from Elbasan (Central Albania), and a Moschopolis graduate, known as Dhaskal Todhri, translated various biblical and Orthodox liturgical texts into an Albanian script of his own, and is believed to have imported a printing press manufactured after his new script (Shuteriqi Reference Shuteriqi2005; see also Elsie Reference Elsie1991).

His work was followed by Albanian translations usually attributed to Kostandin Berati (1745–1825) found in the Beratinus Codex. They included Orthodox liturgical texts, Bible fragments, and a Greek-Albanian dictionary, written between 1764 and 1822 for educational purposes (mathematarion) in an original alphabet adapted from the Greek script.Footnote ²³ Similar texts in Albanian are included in a manuscript produced circa 1822 by Kostandin Cepi of Vithkuq (South Albania),Footnote ²⁴ which is considered to be an original adaptation rather than a simple copy of the original material in the Beratinus codex (Demiraj Reference Demiraj2021, 162–170). Vernacularization was also reported in Leskovik (South Albania), where Nikola Postenani (1748–1838) used in church services liturgical texts he had himself translated into Albanian. The evidence reveals a steady circulation of Albanian liturgical manuscripts and the use of Albanian language in church services across the Albanian-speaking Orthodox cultural area.

Ecclesiastical Imperialism

While the different traditions of Albanian writing in the Catholic north, Orthodox south, among Muslim Albanians, and among Italo-Albanians (arberesh) were contemporaneous, they were not necessarily synchronized. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries cultural communication and intertextuality were relatively nonexistent between the different cultural worlds in which they evolved. What united them is that they were written in different versions of the same Albanian language, which was used primarily to give access to the language of the sacred. Indeed, the clergy were compelled to use the vernacular language for the spiritual needs of their flocks, which in all likelihood could not be otherwise fulfilled.

In Lower Albania, communication with ordinary people could not be made without knowledge of Albanian language. At the end of sixteenth century, for instance, an emblematic agent, who held talks with Albanian and Greek insurgents of the Ionian coast on behalf of the King of Naples, was considered suitable for this task because he could speak and write both Greek and Albanian (li conveniva per simil negotio non solo a saper la lingua greca et albanesa come lo sa, ma anche scriverle) (Bartl Reference Bartl1974, 148). In 1620, Venetian authorities insisted that the negotiators with Himarra and Labëria leaders “should know the country language” (persone pratiche della lingua del paese) (Xhufi Reference Xhufi2016, 1091). Similarly, the Catholic mission to Albania was executed by Basilian monks who already knew Albanian (Murzaku Reference Murzaku2009, 66–71).

However, in the Orthodox south, despite occasional exceptions, the Greek language was the unchallenged monolithic idiom, whether in church, school, or in cultural and business communication. In this context, the number of anonymous translations and original publications in Albanian and/or in Aromanian, together with the import of a printing press to publish them, highlighted an inherent cultural process of differentiation from the Greek cultural world and of identification with the Albanian and/or Vlach-speaking cultural worlds. While South-Slavic idioms were supported by the well-established structures of Slavic Orthodoxy, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the learned clergy could not have yet worked out deliberately the awareness of a distinct Albanian and/or Vlach-speaking individuality, either for their own individual or for their group interests. The process seems to have been stimulated by rivalry and competition between Greek and Roman churches as well as between opposed Greek and Slavic church hierarchies and their respective interest groups and agencies. Indeed, it can be argued that early liturgical texts were translated and published in Albanian for proselytizing purposes, and served as the kind of political evangelism and ecclesiastical imperialism that we know from other contexts (Castro Reference Castro2007).

The Roman Catholic Church was supposed to be “the only one to which salvation was entrusted” while “the Roman Pontiff had primacy over the whole world” (Neuner and Dupuis Reference Neuner and Dupuis2001, 309). In the Western perception, ecclesiological and soteriological exclusivism was an absolute necessity - there was but a single valid Christendom, under the sway of the Bishop of Rome. For the Eastern Orthodox hierarchy, Catholic attempts for Church union were “a submission, a simple surrender to Latinism, a sacrifice of one’s native religious heritage for an artificial unity,” contrary to the communion ecclesiology of the Church of the first millennium (Murzaku Reference Murzaku2009, 11–14). They tended to see these unions as politically rather than religiously motivated, and not without reason they emphasized the political aspirations of Catholic governments in concert with the expansionist and assertive Catholic Church.

As a result, Catholic politics of church unity and threats against Greek cultural ecumenism pressured the Rum Patriarchate and Orthodox hierarchy to accommodate to Ottoman rule and elaborate an ecclesiology of submission to Ottoman sovereignty. Conversely, the situation of Christians in the Balkans remained problematic and they sought protection from Western powers. A range of anti-Ottoman movements in the Western Balkans at the end of the sixteenth century and throughout the seventeenth century were led by Catholic and Orthodox higher clerics (Bartl Reference Bartl1974, 146–153). After the Christian victory at Lepanto in 1571, they skillfully situated their anti-Ottoman movements in the broader context of the Long Ottoman-Austrian Wars in the Balkans, and when the promised help was not forthcoming from the Pope and the Catholic powers, they did not hesitate to work with Protestant powers (Xhufi Reference Xhufi2016, 543–544).

Such a generalized trend of Catholic proclivities, together with Western association and anti-Ottoman reaction, strengthened distinctiveness among the Albanian-speaking people, in spite of their being confused with Ottoman Muslims and the Greek Orthodox, and in spite of their own division between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic rites. Indeed, active Albanian clerics often explicitly included Catholic Albanians, Orthodox Albanians, Muslim Albanians, and even Italo-Albanians (arberesh) in their politics. In July 1610, bishop of Stephania Nikolla Mekaishi asked Pope Paul V to support a new anti-Ottoman uprising of more than fifty thousand armed men he could mobilize in North Albania. As he explained in his letter, “in spite of their different rites, either Orthodox or Latin, these men have the same language and they are related by blood and by marriage,” and even powerful Albanian Muslims would take up arms against the Ottomans. Along with twenty-three thousand Spanish soldiers from the Italian peninsula, Bishop Mekaishi continued, there were three thousand Italo-Albanians of Apulia, who “had still retained their native language, and in this respect, they are greatly valuable to both Albanian men and Italian soldiers, given the intelligence of one and the other language.”Footnote ²⁵

Throughout the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, along with the escalation of anti-Ottoman uprisings in the Western Balkans, the Roman Catholic Church increased efforts to attract the local Orthodox clergy and the populations in the Albanian South under the jurisdiction of the autocephalous Archbishopric of Ohrid, taking advantage of their positive disposition towards the Western Catholic powers. From the 1560s onwards, the people of Himarra and Labëria (in present-day South Albania) made frequent requests for help to the Western Powers, especially Venice and the Kingdom of Naples, which reciprocated every time they felt the Ottoman threat necessitated subversive movements (Floristan 1990–Reference Floristan1992). There is no surprise that while they played an important role during the decennial fights between Spain and the Ottoman Empire, their involvement against the Ottomans led them to turn to the Church of Rome, offering their conversion to Catholicism in exchange for help. In that, they were following wider ecclesiastical unionist and political anti-Ottoman movements in the entire territory of the autocephalous Archbishopric of Ohrid.

In July 1577, after the establishment of St. Athanasius College and the Greek publication of the princeps of Church unity, representatives of distinguished Himarra families wrote a letter to Pope Gregory XIII, requesting the rebuilding of their Episcopal residence which had been destroyed by the Ottomans. In February 1581, they again solicited the Pope and the intervention of the King of Spain, through his possessions in Naples and Sicily. In this letter, signed by both clergy and lay people, they declared their will to recognize the King of Spain as their sovereign in temporalibus and the Pope as their sovereign in spiritualibus. They expressed their will for union with the Roman Church, under the condition that their priests, bishops, prelates, and patriarchs would be able to administer the sacraments and celebrate according to their liturgical tradition and ritual, because they did not understand Latin.Footnote ²⁶

The issue of church union was one of the main topics of their letters to the Roman Church, evidenced in their correspondence with Pope Gregory XIII. The Pope paid special attention to the Himarra people’s offer for church union with Rome, and in his reply of January 1582, stated “he would mostly give his life to see Greece united with Rome,” having clearly in mind Orthodoxy and Catholicism.Footnote ²⁷ To this aim, he had already in mind the Catholic missions, expected to prepare the doctrinal and practical ground for the “cultivation” of Orthodox schismatics towards union with the Roman Church.Footnote ²⁸ Indeed, shortly thereafter, Catholic missionaries were invited by the Orthodox of Himarra and Labëria to assist them spiritually. From the first half of the seventeenth century, a Basilian mission of monks trained for this purpose at the Pontifical College of St. Athanasius was sent by Rome in view of an initial jurisdictional union of the Orthodox populations of Lower Albania. In May 1664, Basilian missionary Arcadio Stanila requested to send to Rome and Venice a delegation from Himarra, who would declare union with the Catholic Church and recognize Venetian sovereignty.Footnote ²⁹

The people of Lower Albania sustained anti-Ottoman resistance and promoted the union of Eastern Christianity into the unique Church of Rome under the guidance and patronage of Orthodox higher clerics in the area, including several autocephalous Ohrid Archbishops. Archbishop Athanasius of Ohrid (1595–1615) engaged into a correspondence with the papacy and organized, with Spanish support, the failed Himarra Revolt (1596) against the Ottomans. Metropolitan Bishop of Larissa Dionysius II Philosophos (1541–1611) led two local uprisings in Thessaly (1600) and in Epirus (1611). Archbishop Athanasius II of Ohrid (1653–1660), “an ardent supporter of the anti-Ottoman resistance” who lived “as a refugee in Himarra to escape persecution,” was also “the principal protagonist of the unity of his see with Rome” (Murzaku Reference Murzaku2009, 63). He signed a profession of his faith in January 1658, in which he recognized the primacy of the Pope.Footnote ³⁰ Apparently, either the people of Himarra or the higher clerics affiliated to the autocephalous Archbishopric of Ohrid were prepared to accept Catholicism and the Pope’s authority for political, rather than spiritual reasons. Similarly, they did not appear to consider the union with Rome as a religious, but an immediate political issue, in exchange for Western Catholic support to their efforts for liberation from the Ottoman rule. In turn, the strategic course of ecclesiastical action, siding with the autocephalous Archbishopric of Ohrid against the Rum Patriarchate strengthened their identification as distinct from the Ottoman-oriented Greek Orthodoxy.

Enlightened Transformation

A great deal of the intellectual energy among present-day Greek scholars is devoted to account for the intense confrontations of Orthodox ecumenism to preserve the Byzantine-Ottoman tradition against the modern philosophy of the Enlightenment (Kitromilides Reference Kitromilides1994; Reference Kitromilides2010; Reference Kitromilides2016). There is nevertheless some consensus among Greek and Albanian scholars on the importance of the Enlightenment in the intellectual and educational activities of Theodor Kavalioti (1718–1789) in Moschopolis.

In the eighteenth century, Moschopolis (Voskopoja in present-day South Albania) flourished as one of the prominent centers of the Enlightenment in the Balkans (Xhufi Reference Xhufi2010; Akademia 2018). Probably under the special patronage of Joasaf, Metropolitan Bishop of Korça (1709-1745) and Archbishop of Ohrid (1719–1745), a native of Moschopolis, the spread of encyclopedic education and Enlightenment ideas was supported by trade and cultural relations with Venice and other Western Catholic powers. The Book of Faith by Nektar Terpo is an illustration of Balkan Enlightenment, in which the encyclopedic scholar from Moschopolis used not only evangelical and ecclesiastical sources, but also a full range of “other enlightened teachers” from antiquity and the modern times (Ballauri Reference Ballauri2005). A group of scholars around the New Academy of Moschopolis under the directorship of Kavalioti marked the beginnings of Balkan Encyclopedism and Enlightenment in the mid-eighteenth century (Plasari Reference Plasari2018; Rembeci Reference Rembeci2020). In particular, French Enlightenment and encyclopedic ideas seem to have been quite popular in the Albanian- and Vlach-speaking urban class of traders and artisans throughout vast areas in Albania and Epirus. As a French source of 1793 stated, “almost all traders of Janina and Albania are revolutionary (sans-culottes), who have translated the Declaration of Human Rights, which they all know by heart”.Footnote ⁵⁸

In 1732–1734, with funding from Moschopolis coppersmiths, Kavalioti went to the Janina Maroutseios School (in present-day North Greece) to study with Eugenios Voulgaris (1716–1806), whom he also followed to Kozani after a few years (Thunmann Reference Thunmann1774, 177–178; Zaviras Reference Zaviras1872, 319–320). Kavalioti returned to teaching in Moschopolis and in 1746 became headmaster of the church school, which he upgraded to a New Academy in 1750.Footnote ⁵⁹ In this academic context, he wrote his encyclopedic trilogy of Logic (1743), Physics (1752), and Metaphysics (1767),Footnote ⁶⁰ which are still considered masterpieces of the Balkan Enlightenment (Uçi Reference Uçi2004). At the same time, Voulgaris became Maroutseios’s headmaster in Janina, before being entrusted in 1753 with the renewal of ecclesiastical education in the Athos Academy, thereby becoming one of the towering figures of the Greek Enlightenment (Kitromilides Reference Kitromilides2016). Over the twenty years of their teaching, Voulgaris and Kavalioti, along with their disciples in Athos Academy and Moschopolis New Academy, epitomized education through the affirmation of reason as the only standard of truth, and made the Enlightenment appear a credible option, relevant to the changing needs of Balkan society under Ottoman rule in the eighteenth century.

Kavalioti is said to have lived both in Germany and in Venice (Zaviras Reference Zaviras1872, 319–320), where he met Dositej Obradovic (1739–1811), the influential protagonist of Enlightenment and rationalist ideas in Serbian culture and Serbian Orthodoxy, who in those years was also learning Albanian (Plasari Reference Plasari2018, 22–23). A “Biography of Georgios Kastriotis, so-called Skenderbeg, King of Albania” (Ιστορία Γεωργίου του Καστριώτη του επονομασθέντος Σκεντέρμπεη, Βασιλέως της Αλβανίας) (Zaviras Reference Zaviras1872, 397) was translated into Greek in the 1770s by Kosta Xhehani/Tzechanis (1740–1800),Footnote ⁶¹ one of the most brilliant of Kavalioti’s disciples, praised as “an enlightened mind” (von einer aufgeklärten Denkungsart) (Thunmann Reference Thunmann1774, 179–180). It is perhaps not coincidental that this Greek translation was published in 1779 in Moscow, with an appendix by Eugenios Voulgaris.Footnote ⁶²

A student of Eugenios Voulgaris at the Athos Academy and a prominent advocate of the Greek Enlightenment, Iosipos Moisiodax (1725–1800) paralleled the educational activism of Moschopolis scholars with a clear link to them. His Treatise on the Education of the Youth, adapted after Locke and the French Encyclopedists and published in Venice in 1779, acknowledged on the title page the sponsorship of one of “the most honorable and most valuable merchants of Moschopolis.”Footnote ⁶³ Being himself of a Vlach-speaking background, he advocated the use of vernacular language in education and argued against the teaching of religious superstition, aspiring to see the backward and intellectually conservative Balkan societies remodeled along European lines, which made him a target of persecution by the conservative traditionalism of the Greek Orthodox educational system (Kitromilides Reference Kitromilides1992).

In 1770, Kavalioti published a Protopeiria in Venice, which included a trilingual Greek-Aromanian-Albanian lexicon,Footnote ⁶⁴ considered to provide the earliest evidence of the transformations that disrupted and subverted Ottoman rule and Orthodox unity in early modern Balkan society (Kitromilides Reference Kitromilides1989, 152; Plasari Reference Plasari2000, 16). In the footsteps of Nektar Terpo and other Moschopolis scholars, it must have taken an act of enlightened religious and intellectual courage, attempting to equate the “sacred” Greek language of Orthodoxy with the “barbarian” vernaculars of Vlachs and Albanians. In the context of the prominent printing activity supported by Slavic Orthodoxy (Peyfuss Reference Peyfuss1996), this work registered a new awareness taking root among Vlach and Albanian intellectuals that their society could be conceived as a composite mixture of peoples rather than as a unified Orthodox community. Albanian scholars consider that the recording of ethno-lingual distinctions of this kind was a watershed moment that inspired the forging of a secularized consciousness, associated with the ideas of the Enlightenment and Western rationalism (Uçi Reference Uçi2004; Xhufi Reference Xhufi2010; Akademia 2018). The question remains whether this kind of distinctiveness paved the way for the modern concepts of citizenship that emerged later and the substitution of the Orthodox commonwealth by the secularism of national statehood.

Kavalioti’s teachings coincided with the generalization of the self-identification term shqiptar for “Albanians” as “Albanian-speakers.” Given that their current ethnic label Shqiptar, and land name Shqipëri, are not known in the old Albanian settlements of today’s Italy and Greece, it can be concluded that they were not used, or at least not generally known, before the Ottoman conquest. These populations use the terms Arberesh or Arvanites (Arbanian/Albanian) to distinguish themselves ethnically and to designate the population of their former land.

The root of the modern ethnic self-identification label for Albanians, shqip, indicates the “spoken language” of Albanians. This language label was probably of ancient use itself, perhaps parallel to the older ethnic label Arber, as they both appear regularly in the sixteenth century with the first examples of Albanian writing (Çabej Reference Çabej1972). The use of shqip as an ethnic label was already consolidated in the eighteenth century; it had already appeared twice in 1701 and 1703, next to the old ethnic label in a set phrase referring to the “language of the Albanians” (gjuhën e Shqipëtarëvet).Footnote ⁶⁵ The gradual transfer of the Albanian language label to the Albanian ethnic concept was probably shaped under the influence of seventeenth-century Albanian Catholic prelates, acting in accordance with the community-focused mission strategy of Propaganda Fide (Molnar Reference Molnar2019, 75). Interestingly, the term appeared again in the reprint of Kavalioti’s Protopeiria in 1774, by then as a fully consolidated ethnic label.Footnote ⁶⁶

In current discourses, commentators are eager to debate the ethnic identity and origin of Theodor Kavalioti and the contribution of his trilingual lexicon to a distinct ethnic Vlach and/or Albanian consciousness.Footnote ⁶⁷ Accounts that are more balanced may insist on the irrelevance of ethnic distinctions at that time.Footnote ⁶⁸ In turn, his Vlach, Albanian, or hyphenated Vlach-Albanian identity is skillfully obliterated to promote confusingly an equation of his Rum Orthodox cultural background to a presumed Greek identity.Footnote ⁶⁹

Among the aggressive commentaries that oppose each other in Internet fora, there are claims about the sudden disappearance of the trilingual lexicon immediately after its publication, especially as after only three years Protopeiria was already a “rare book” (Thunmann Reference Thunmann1774, 178). The explanation of this disappearance is not in its being out of stock, but precisely in relation to the Rum Patriarchate, which “launched a fierce campaign to win back its hegemonic Byzantine prerogatives,”Footnote ⁷⁰ in most parts of present-day North Macedonia, North Greece, and South Albania, including the area of Moschopolis.

Ecclesiastical Counteroffensive

It is anachronistic to consider Greek cultural hegemony at this time as an expression of Greek proto-nationalism, or to conceive Albanian-speaking identity as a model for the Albanian nation that arose in late nineteenth century. However, the higher Greek Orthodox clergy promoted Rum ecumenism and ecclesiastical centralization as an instrument against cultural conflicts undesirable for the commonwealth of Rum Orthodoxy. Arguably, Slavic, Vlach and Albanian-speaking Orthodox intellectuals might have similarly construed Greek Orthodox cultural dominance as an impediment to their distinctive linguistic self-awareness.

Rum Church jurisdiction was initially limited to well-defined areas of the Balkans and Anatolia. Many parts of the Balkans in present-day Bosnia, Serbia, North Macedonia, North Greece, and South Albania were under the jurisdiction of the Serbian Patriarch of Ipek (Peja in present-day Kosovo) or the autocephalous Bulgarian Archbishop of Ohrid (in present-day North Macedonia). The Rum Patriarch had no authority over Moschopolis, which was under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Bishop of Korça, who along with the Metropolitan Bishop of Berat in Albania, had been dependent on the autocephalous Archbishop of Ohrid, since the beginning of the sixteenth century.Footnote ⁷¹ Moreover, Ottoman authorities considered the Archbishop of Ohrid a Patriarch (Ohri Patrigi) equal to the Istanbul Patriarch (Konortas Reference Konortas, Gondicas and Issawi1999, 173–174), and never tried to abolish the Orthodox system or modify the traditional territorial jurisdiction of the patriarchates and autocephalous archbishoprics.

However, during the eighteenth century, the increasingly corrupt practices of the Ottoman government carried over into the administration of the Rum Patriarchate, resulting in the outright buying and selling of the highest ecclesiastical offices and corruption of the entire Orthodox church organization, including the Slavic churches (Jelavich Reference Jelavich1954, 147–148). In addition, the Slavic hierarchy of both churches supported and organized a series of anti-Ottoman movements. While the Patriarchs of Ipek were typically Serbian, many Archbishops of Ohrid were Bulgarian, Vlach, or Albanian-speaking, often from Himarra or Moschopolis. Faced with proof of subversive opposition from both Ipek and Ohrid Patriarchs, Ottoman authorities supported the introduction of Greek officials into the organization of both autocephalous churches. In the last three decades of their existence, from 1737 to 1766, the church hierarchy of the Patriarchate of Ipek and the autocephalous Archbishopric of Ohrid were increasingly Grecized (Markovich Reference Markovich2013, 228–230), which resulted in growing financial distress due to the unscrupulous trade of ecclesiastical offices by Greek hierarchs.

The combination of political unrest with the gradual bankruptcy of the churches enabled Greek ecclesiastical officials to present a strong case to the Ottoman state for the abolition of Slavic churches, arguing that the Rum Patriarchate would be able to keep a closer eye on them, guaranteeing payment of tributes and curtailing resistance to Ottoman authority. In 1766, the last patriarch of Ipek provoked a formal move by the now fully Grecized synod, supported by the Rum Patriarch Samuel (1763–1768), who succeeded in persuading the Sultan to revoke the Patriarchate of Ipek (Jelavich Reference Jelavich1954, 148; Konortas Reference Konortas, Gondicas and Issawi1999, 175). The following year, the same fate befell the autocephaly of the Archbishopric of Ohrid.

Based on contemporaneous documents, some Greek scholars maintain that “the authorities” of these churches “unanimously demanded by application and supplication” their subjection to the protection and association of the Rum Patriarchate, while the Rum Patriarch was reluctant, and “only at the insistence of the authorities” did he decide the question “in conformity with their demand” (Papadopoullos Reference Papadopoullos1990, 89–90). More recent interpretations vindicate Patriarchal policy of assuming responsibility for the pastoral care of both churches. In this view, the “true historical dimension” of this abolishment is justified as “a measure to control the disintegration of these churches,” “for the salvation of their flock,” and “for the defense of Orthodoxy in the Balkans,” which was again supposed to keep in check progressive Islamization (Kitromilides Reference Kitromilides2007, V. 4). This view simply discards important contradicting scholarship, supposed as a rule to rely on irrelevant sources and the historical anachronisms of nationalist historiographies.

The crucial fact is not merely that “the authorities” asked for their own abolition, but that these “authorities” were Greek officials and the Greek hierarchy (Jelavich Reference Jelavich1954, 151–152). Similarly, while the financial bankruptcy of the Slavic churches is emphasized, the rapid changes were mainly aggravated when Grecizing influence became of great consequence. Besides the initiatives that successive Rum Patriarchs undertook in the fields of Orthodox evangelism and Greek education in the Balkans, measures of administrative reforms established new regulations for the administration of the Church. Ultimately, tremendous changes in Church organization from the 1750s onward resulted in the abolishment of the Patriarchate of Ipek and the autocephalous Archbishopric of Ohrid. Unsurprisingly, once in control of the Slavic, Vlach, and Albanian metropolitan and suffragan bishops, the Rum Patriarch gradually replaced completely them with Greek officials.

The powers of the Rum Patriarch extended progressively over the whole Orthodox community of the Ottoman empire after the abolishment of Slavic Orthodox churches. The common view, which identifies Orthodoxy with Greek identity and the Rum Church with authority over the whole Orthodox community in the Ottoman empire, only came to be in the second half of the eighteenth century, when the Rum Patriarchate succeeded in absorbing the independent archbishoprics of Ipek and Ohrid (Konortas Reference Konortas, Gondicas and Issawi1999, 170). The abolishment of these churches had a profound impact on the Orthodox commonwealth. It strengthened the Grecizing process, which meant that by the end of the eighteenth century, the Rum Patriarch became the unchallenged religious leader of all Greek, Slavic, Vlach, and Albanian-speaking Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire.

In this regard, it is argued a straightforward connection of the Grecizing campaign and the abolishment of Slavic Orthodox Churches with the sudden disappearance of Kavalioti’s Protopeiria after its publication (Plasari Reference Plasari2000). In this argument, the Rum Patriarchate’s regressive crusade against Slavic Orthodoxy and the Enlightenment was meant to prevent motivation of the separate consciousness of group identities under Ottoman rule. After the sack of Moschopolis in the aftermath of the abolition of Slavic churches, the Rum Patriarchate replaced all teachers in its school with new priests tasked with applying a significant change to the Orthodox mission (Lloshi Reference Lloshi2008, 300).

This new mission became clear in the teaching and publication deals of a former student of Kavalioti, Daniel Haxhi-Adham (1754–1825), who returned to Moschopolis in 1800–1811 as an official cleric and headmaster of the Metropolitan church school. In 1802, he published a quadrilingual Greek-Vlach-Bulgarian-Albanian glossary, within an introductory teaching book (Εισαγωγική διδασκαλία), reprinted several times in Istanbul in the eight years from its first publication.Footnote ⁷² His commissioned introduction, still debated in current opinionated reconstructions,Footnote ⁷³ was essentially a continuation of the Orthodox missionary work started by Kosmas of Aetolia. It clearly prioritized Greek teaching and education to serve Orthodox politics and the Grecizing of Balkan peoples. To this aim, it opened with an invitation to fellow members of non-Greek-speaking Orthodox minorities to Grecize themselves linguistically and culturally, with the argument that this transformation would open up avenues for social mobility (Kitromilides Reference Kitromilides1989, 153). They were explicitly urged to “rejoice” in learning Greek (romaika), abandon their barbarian languages, and become Greek (romioi). Whereas until the 1770s, a movement to write in Albanian and Aromanian meant to break away from Greek script and language, at the turn of the nineteenth century the promotion of Greek language aimed at driving out the use of Albanian and Aromanian languages altogether (Lloshi Reference Lloshi2008, 304–305). Despite claims to the contrary (Giakoumis Reference Giakoumis2011), it seems that the Grecized clergy worked to eliminate all other languages from the Balkans, recalling the Grecizing pressure of the Rum Patriarchate in the aftermath of the suppression of the ecclesiastical centers of Slavic Orthodoxy.

Mihail Boiagi, another disciple of Kavalioti, published a Vlach-Macedonian Grammar in Latin script in 1813,Footnote ⁷⁴ which must have wrinkled a highbrow Greek scholar like Neophytos Doukas (1760–1845), who “wanted to exterminate all the languages of the world, and replace them with his macaronic Greek”.Footnote ⁷⁵ In 1815, endorsing conservative traditionalism in the Orthodox educational system towards non-Greek languages, Doukas urged the Rum Patriarch to initiate a new cultural and educational crusade to absorb the non-Greek speaking groups of the Balkans into Greek culture.Footnote ⁷⁶ Glossed over in the terminology of the Greek Enlightenment, Doukas argued for the mobilization of Greek cultural resources by the Orthodox Church to inspire a sense of Greek patriotism (Kitromilides Reference Kitromilides2010, 48). As Greek language had been confined to small areas, there was nothing more in the Greek interest or better serving of Greek prestige than extending the use of the Greek language through intermixture with people in Wallachia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Epirus, and everywhere else. In this argument, the old ecumenical community of the Balkan Orthodox commonwealth was to be a thing of the past. Those speaking Greek already formed a distinct community, and those speaking Slavic, Albanian, Vlach, or any other language could become members if they adopted the Greek language and culture “for aesthetic or practical reasons” (Kitromilides Reference Kitromilides1989, 156).

Concluding Remarks

In the beginning of nineteenth century, a major impetus for the promotion of liturgical literature in Albanian came from British and American Protestant missions in Albania (Hosaflook Reference Hosaflook2019), which must have also boosted the awareness of a distinct Albanian-speaking individuality. Protestant missions played an important role in making many vernacular languages scriptural. Unsurprisingly, the growing aspiration of Orthodox Albanians to speak to God in their native language pushed them to begin evangelical work in Albania. After a meeting in 1816 between a British missionary and some Orthodox Albanians in Vienna, the British and Foreign Bible Society commissioned Vangjel Meksi (1770–1821) to undertake the translation of the New Testament into Albanian. He had already written a grammar for the Albanian language before the completion of his translation in October 1820, and the Rum Patriarchate did not appear to disapprove of his work. After his death, Grigor Argjirokastriti (from Gjirokastra), Metropolitan Bishop of Eubea (1799–1827) and Archbishop of Athens (1827–1828), edited the translation. It was published in an Albanian-Greek bilingual format. The first Gospel in 1824, the full New Testament in 1827. These texts became widely known among Orthodox Albanians.

With this translation, it seemed that the times of doubt and insecurity had ended for the use of Albanian in church services (Lloshi Reference Lloshi2012). This became clear with a new Albanian translation of the Bible by Kostandin Kristoforidhi (1826–1895), sponsored again by Protestant Missions and published in 1869. Since the early 1860s, he worked on several texts of religious education and language training, including a major Albanian dictionary, published in 1904. He was not inclined to evangelism and was ahead of the Protestant missionaries in the design of a project for the translation and dissemination of the Holy Scriptures in Albanian language (Lloshi Reference Lloshi2005). He translated and published the New Testament in both South and North Albanian dialects, until 1874 when the Bible Society broke relations with him, on the presumption that he did not believe in the divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. Until late in life, he continued to secretly teach Albanian and work independently on religious translations and creative writings, initially in Tirana and then in Elbasan.

If his motivation and his approach did not always coincide with the Protestant missions, the publications that resulted from the collaboration sparked a new interest among Albanians and had a significant impact, not only among Orthodox and Catholic Albanians, but also among Muslim Albanians. Rather than a simple means of accessing the sacred texts and in spite of the tense attitude of the Greek state and the Orthodox hierarchy, the Albanians found a new way of learning to read and write in their native language. Kristoforidhi came to be regarded as an important early activist of the Albanian national movement. Along with other Albanian activists of the time, like Naim Frashëri (see Doja Reference Doja2012; Abazi and Doja Reference Abazi and Doja2013), he tried to promote consolidation of the Albanian language and the establishment of Albanian education. In his mind, a “national awakening” by means of Albanian education was vital for national progress and development, and his biblical translations were the best instrument for promotion of the Albanian language and the cultivation of a national consciousness.