Wisdom for the Slavs

This is the western facade of the medieval, 11^th Byzantine cathedral of St. Sophia in Ohrid in modern Macedon (F.Y.R.O.M.). It was dedicated, according to the Byzantine tradition, to the Wisdom of God which in the case of Ohrid, reflected the fact that the city was one of the first, major centers of learning and culture in the early medieval Bulgarian Empire. Here, from the 9^th C. onwards monks and scholars educated in Constantinople and Thessaloniki organized a school which was so prominent that it is sometimes referred to as a form of a medieval University. Their goal was to create a Slavic cultural centre where ancient Latin and Greek texts brought from the cities of the Mediterranean would be translated into the new Slavic alphabet invented especially for the Orthodox Slavs by Cyril and Methodius. Through this, the school of Ohrid introduced the knowledge of the Roman and Greek worlds to the Slavs of the Balkans and provided the Bulgarian realm with an educated class of scholars capable of organizing a state with public offices, tax systems, libraries etc.

However, Bulgarian golden age did not last long and it was also in Ohrid that the Bulgarian Tsar Samuel confronted his mutilated army when it returned to the city after being defeated by the Byzantine emperor Basil the Bulgar Slayer in 1014. According to the popular story, the Byzantine emperor ordered thousands of Bulgarian soldiers to be blinded and left only one man out of every hundred with one eye so he could guide the rest home. The story goes that when the Bulgarian leader so this, his heart broke and he died in Ohrid. Soon afterwards, the city was conquered by the Byzantines and the Bulgarian Patriarchate in Ohrid was converted to a Greek archbishopric. The school lost its prominence but the few surviving manuscripts and inscriptions in the city, like the one visible on the facade of the cathedral (just above the Romanesque inspired colonnade) may serve as a reminder of the time when some of the wisdom the ancient world was being translated here for the converted Slavs.