The Age of Tanzimat and Freemasonry

Constitutional movements in the Ottoman Empire began at the dawn of the 18th century. The nineteenth century was the climax of the chaotic socio-political history of the Ottoman Empire. Westernization and modernization gained momentum and opposition to radical change emerged in the form of nationalism or Islamism, and the 19th century was the battlefield of these two opposing currents. Many Ottomans, according to Prof. Orhan Okay ((Osmanli Devleti ve Medeniyeti Tarihi, ed. By Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, IRCICA – Islam Tarihi, Snat ve Kultur Arastirma Merkezi, 1998, 2:198), yearned for a new political system that would provide more opportunity for participation in politics and government of the people, as well as more freedom of expression of ideas, freedom of speech and thought. Along with democracy and the concepts of human rights and civil liberties, the Ottoman Empire was attacked by positivism, evolutionism and materialism. As early as 1789-1808, Sultan Selim III envisaged the establishment of an assembly of advisors called Meclis-i Meshveret, in the context of the New System (Nizam-i Cedid), which he wanted to introduce with the aim of establishing a constitutional government. The “Sened-i Ittifak”, or Charter of Alliance, is the most important document in terms of the constitutional order of 1808, which limited the power of the sultan, but delegated powers to a senate body called the Ayyan. In the 1830s, Sultan Mahmud II founded military engineering schools, imperial medical and music schools on a Western model. As part of his policy of centralization, he seriously changed the structure of the central government and the bureaucratic apparatus – a complete reorganization of the scribes and officials in the palace and the Sublime Porte. Ministries and three councils were created in 1838, the first of which, the Majlisi Vala’i Ahkam’i Adliyye = Supreme Council of Legislators, discussed “useful reorganizations” (tanzimat hayriyye). The proclamation of Sultan Abdul-Mejid I (23.04.1823–25.06.1861, succeeded his father Mahmud II on 2 July 1839), the Gulhane Hati-Sherif of 1839, was the formal beginning of the era of The Tanzimat, characterized by reforms and reorganizations. This proclamation, the work of the great reformer and Grand Vizier Rashid Pasha, was intended to help the military and social modernization of the empire in order to compete with the European Great Powers. When Kossuth and other refugees from the Hungarian Uprising of 1849 sought refuge in Turkey, the sultan categorically refused to hand over the conspirators to Austria and Russia for execution. After his death in 1861, he was succeeded on the throne by his brother Abdul Aziz (1830–1876, Sultan of Turkey from 1861 to 1876). The Gulhane Edict was followed by the Hatti-Humayun of 1856, guaranteeing complete equality of religions, and the Nationality Law of 1869, which provided for universal Ottoman citizenship, regardless of religious or ethnic affiliation. In In 1875, the Fermani-Adalet or Imperial Edict of Law was promulgated, regulating the independence of the courts and guaranteeing the security of judges. The most serious step was the adoption in 1876 of the Kanuni Esasiye or the first Constitution, which marked the beginning of the First Meshrutiyet (First Constitutional Period). The main concept of this first constitution was the recognition of a parliamentary system and the guarantee of basic rights and privileges for all subjects.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Pasha himself recommended to the Plovdiv plenipotentiaries to request Paisii of Smirna as metropolitan. This is indicative of the benevolent attitude of the state authorities towards the new Plovdiv metropolitan. The bishop was an important figure as a people’s advocate (millet-vekilin) ​​before the authorities and participated in the Governing Council (idare mejlisi) as a representative and responsible for the Orthodox subjects. In the Ottoman Empire, reforms began with Hati-Sherifa of 1839 and were reconfirmed with Hati-Humayun of 18.02.1856, which was presented at the Paris Congress of the Great Powers of 26.02. s.g., at which the peace treaty was signed, canceling the rights of Russia under the Küçük-Kainardzhik Peace Treaty (1774) to protect Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Until 1861, the Plovdiv mutesarif was Azis Pasha, a friend of the Bulgarians and protector (undoubtedly on the instructions of the Sublime Porte) of Bishop Paisii. On 20 Dec. 1859, in his response to Azis Pasha, Paisii expressed strong support for the reforms of the Tanzimat era, defended the demands of the Bulgarians, referring to Hati-Humayun: “Finally, I assure you that as much as The wise and humane laws of our autocratic and all-merciful Lord Sultan Abdul-Mejid-khan (may his years be multiplied and his state remain forever invincible and victorious) unconditionally tolerate all nationalities, all creeds and all languages, just as our faith tolerates every nationality, every creed and every language, even more so – with equal reverence use all languages ​​as an instrument with which we praise God and pray for the life of our king, his nobles and ministers.” In the most serious study of the life and work of Paisius of Plovdiv, published in 1948 by the later Bulgarian Patriarch and Academician Cyril, a letter from K. D. Moravenov dated May 10, 1861, is cited regarding the unusual delay in Thessaloniki during the convoying of the Athonite exile from Plovdiv via Samokov to Mount Athos, and according to rumors at the time, Paisius’ stay there was extended by telegraphic order from Ali Pasha. Apparently, the government intervened in an attempt to stop the execution of his sentence. Later, it was precisely the affair with the Bulgarian bishops that cost Joachim II the patriarchal throne at the council convened against him in January 1863, and the government’s letter informing him of the Sultan’s order to deprive him of his patriarchal dignity was not delayed. It seems that the Turkish authorities wanted to satisfy the requests and rights of the Bulgarians. This is also enshrined in the Rescript of the Reform – Islahat Ferman of 18.02.1856, where, according to the text published by the Ataturk Institute for Contemporary Turkish History at the Bosphorus University, it says the following: “…to all subjects without distinction of class or religious affiliation, for the security of their person and property and the preservation of their honor, are today confirmed and strengthened, and effective measures will be taken to give their full and complete result… My Sublime Porte will take energetic measures to ensure that every sect, regardless of the number of its followers, has complete freedom in the management of its religion.” The Ali Pasha we are considering is Mehmed Emin Ali Pasha (1815-1871), who was Grand Vizier in 1852 and was at the heart of the Hatti-Humayun of 1856, and he presented to the Bulgarians the firman signed on February 27, 1870 (8 Zilhije 1286 AH) for the establishment of an independent Bulgarian church hierarchy in the form of the Bulgarian Exarchate. During the Cretan Uprising after the Manifesto of the Cretan National Assembly of 28.08.1866, when Gorchakov presented the Memorandum of Reform in Turkey to the French government on 6/18.04.1867, the Western powers united around the broad and efficient implementation of Hatti-Humayun, the Grand Vizier Ali Pasha went to the island of Crete to implement the reforms in the governance of the island, and Fuat Pasha sent in mid-June of this year a Note to the Constantinople ambassadors to continue the work of Gulhane.

This was also the time of the birth of a movement for the unification of all peoples of the world – Bahaism. In the Lawhu’r-Rais, written in Arabic in the summer of 1868, on his way to Gallipoli, Bahá’u’lláh addressed Ali Pasha, declaring that the exile to which he had been sent would not stop the spread of the Bahá’í Faith, accusing him of conspiring with the Iranian ambassador, and predicting great disasters for the Ottoman Empire and the loss of Edirne (Muluk, 205-225), and in the Lawh-i Fu’ad he predicted to Fuat Pasha that “God will withdraw His right hand” from the Sultan. Mehmed Emin Fuat Pasha was a great friend of the Bulgarian people and an Ottoman statesman-reformer (1815-1869), who started out in the same way as Ali Pasha and the other remarkable Ottoman reformer Midhat Pasha (born in Razgrad, a freemason in various European lodges, governor of Ruse, a Turkish reformer, he was especially active from 1869 to 1872, when he was Minister of Justice in the government of Mohammed Rashid Pasha during the time of Abdul Aziz. He wrote to the Sultan to establish a constitutional government on the model of Western democracies. Thus, corruption in the country “would be eradicated and with the new laws order, equality and prosperity would be introduced”) from the Bureau of Translators (Tercüme Odası) of the Sublime Porte, established under Mahmud II, who was Minister of the Interior (1849), then of Foreign Affairs (1852-52), Chairman of the Council for the Preparation of the Tanzimat Reforms, Commissioner in Damascus and Lebanon (1860-61), and from November 1861 he was Grand Vizier until 1863, when he was replaced by Mehmed Emin Ali Pasha, but remained Minister of War until 1866, Foreign Minister from 1867 and initiator of Sultan Abdul-Aziz’s European tour in the same year. The construction of the railway from Constantinople to Vienna was decided in 1867, when the Sultan visited the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph. Bahá’u’lláh considered these prophecies of his to be fulfilled in 1876-78, when the Sultan was overthrown by conspirators-constitutionalists, members of the Young Ottoman movement and Masonic lodges and the subsequent Russo-Turkish War, during which Edirne was occupied by the Russian army. In 1876, Midhat Pasha, with the help of the liberal-reformists of the “Young Turkey”, managed to dethrone Abdul-Aziz, a few days after which the Sultan committed suicide. His nephew Murad V ascended the throne, and the liberal journalists Zia Pasha and Namik Kemal became the new Sultan’s private secretaries. The first parliament of the Turkish Republic even discussed the option of adopting the Baha’i religion as an official one with the aim of uniting all citizens – a proposal rejected by Ataturk, although it came from the Young Turk circles closest to him.

Sheikh Abdal-Hakim Murad, in his article “Plovdiv: The Granada of the East”, describes the importance of Plovdiv for Muslim thought throughout the centuries. Great imams and Sufi leaders lived and worked in Plovdiv, and Ali Suavi also worked here, who later, in the late 1870s, became the leader of an uprising against the Sultan and the first Young Turk to die for his democratic ideals. Married to an Englishwoman, he was a teacher-pedagogue with revolutionary ideas, but also a strongly believing Islamic scholar. It was he who organized refugees from Bulgaria in Istanbul (after the Liberation of the country as a result of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78), with the rebels wanting to replace the ruling sultan with his brother (the former Sultan Murad V). Ali Suavi’s dream, expressed in his writings, of a hero emerging from among the Ottoman people who would save their homeland from the authoritarian sultanic institution, came true with the arrival of Mustafa Kemal Atayurk, although the latter did not share his views on Islam and secularism. A magnificent professional characterization of the clergy in the Plovdiv of the Bulgarian Renaissance and especially of the Plovdiv society of dervishes is given to us by Lyuben Karavelov in “Notes on Bulgaria and the Bulgarians” (newspaper “Independence”, issue 46-47, 1874, pp. 330-331; cf. “Description of the Plovdiv Sanjak”, – newspaper “Turkey”, issue 7, 21.08.1865), summarizing at the end: “The dervishes and the dervishes constitute an inalienable belonging of every Turkish city.” In 1865, the movement of progressive Turkish intellectuals “Yeni Osmanlar” /Young Ottomans/ was founded, later called “Young Turks”, whose ideas were later developed and implemented by Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey. In Paris, the core of this movement was supported by the wealthy émigré and former minister Mustafa Fazlı Pasha. Among its members were İbrahim Şinazi, Namık Kemal (1840–1888), Ziya Pasha (1829–1880) – the founders of modern Turkish literature. In Paris, Şinazi collaborated with Lamartine. In 1860, on October 22, he and Ağya Efendi published the first private newspaper “Terjumani Ahval”, later in 1862 – “Tasfiri Esfar”. In Istanbul alone between 1867 and 1878. The periodicals numbered 113. The newspapers explained concepts and new technical terms such as constitution, constitutional monarchy, parliament, even republic. The republican idea was not foreign to them. N. Kemal’s close friend, Mustafa Reşid, wrote: “N. Kemal was not only against tyrannical power, but an enemy of the Sultan, of monarchism.” The members of the movement needed information from France and the USA about the latest developments in democracy in theoretical and practical-political aspects – censorship in the Turkish Empire was so intensified after the translation and publication in Turkey of the “Communist Manifesto” and the “Declaration of Human Rights”. The imperial censorship, especially the censors of the “red” (bloodied) Sultan Abdul-Hamid II, even banned the publication of the chemical formula of water (H2O), since someone could read on it as “Hamid II is zero”. The opposition was forced to be very careful and work in secrecy. For the period described, being a Young Turk, a Freemason and a follower of Sufism was something normal. The Bektashis considered Freemasonry to be a secret society of initiates, similar to their own (both were persecuted by the sultan’s authority) and established close ties, especially between the Melami Order and the Young Turk Freemasons in the Balkans. Col. Sadik Bey (1908, Monastir) reported that a large number of his officers in Macedonia were members of this dervish order. Also the founder of the Ottoman Society of Freedom in Salonika (1906) Bursalı Tahir was initiated into the order of the Sufi Melami. The first lodge in Turkey was founded in 1721. Mahmud I in 1748 banned Freemasonry. Mahmud II in 1826 banned the Bektashi order and disbanded the Janissary corps. The Grand Vizier Mustafa Reşid Pasha in 1839 introduced reforms and restored Freemasonry. The founder and first sovereign commander of the Scottish Rite in Turkey (1864) was Prince Abdulhalim Pasha, brother of the governor of Egypt and uncle of the successor governor Ismail Pasha. In 1869 the Supreme Council of Turkey was recognized by the American jurisdiction of the South. The Turkish historian Abdul Kadim Zalum believes that Ali Pasha, Fuat Pasha, Midhat Pasha and Talaat Pasha were Freemasons.

Freemasonry is a movement with a religious and philosophical orientation and a hierarchical structure of carefully selected men, striving for mental and moral perfection with freedom of opinion and tolerance towards the views of their fellow believers. Freemasonry is a humanitarian community, which is not a religion or a religious and philosophical system, nor a church, but a higher ethical institute, built on three basic principles: 1. Brotherly love – every true Mason treats the opinions and understandings of each individual person with patience and respect; 2. Charity – Freemasons show charity not only towards their loved ones, but also towards the whole society, through charity and providing personal assistance; 3. Truth – Freemasons strive for truth, which is why they strive to achieve a high moral standard in their lives. In the first Masonic “Constitution” of the London preacher James Anderson, he recommends to the brothers not to be “neither foolish atheists nor irreligious freethinkers”, as in the spirit of deism, the Masons honor God as the “great architect of the universe”, allow the confession of any religion and a kind of educational laboratory of the Republic, a laboratory of ideas and concepts related to human rights and civil liberties, humanistic doctrines of solidarity and equality between citizens (“solidarism” of Leon Bourgeois), as Lanessan writes from the Lodge of the Rights of Man (c. 19th century): “True democracy, gentlemen, is not to recognize others as equal, but to make them so.” The noted jurist Esmain, author of “The Elements of Constitutional Law,” characterized the Declarations of the Rights of Man and the Citizen as follows: “They are a direct product of the philosophy of the 18th century and of the movement of the spirits which it set in motion and developed. These are the main axioms deduced from a just and rational political organization, which the creators of the new constitutions, intended to implement it in life, proclaimed.” Ziya Pasha (1825-1880, emigrated in 1867 to Paris, and then via London to Geneva) wrote with the self-confidence of a European and an Ottoman as early as 1865: “Please, look at the countries of the European continent. Is there any other absolutist government besides the Russian State? Are the power and greatness of the French and Austrian Emperors, the Italian and Prussian Kings, and the British Queen less than those of Russia? And if European public opinion is entirely in this direction, and the Sublime State (Baba-Alieto, the Sublime Porte) is considered a European state, then it will be impossible for us to stand against the entire (Western) world!”

Rakovski, the “Bulgarian Garibaldi”, was an initiated member of the Greek, Belgrade and Bucharest lodges. He assisted in the formation of the Bulgarian lodge “The Secret Company of Faithful Friends” in Constantinople in 1861, modeled after the Carbonari in Italy. The founders were Stoil Popov and Yosif Dainelov. Vasil Levski (the tonsured disciple of grandfather Paisii Plovdviski) was also a member of it, initiated by Stoil Popov from its very foundation, to which Levski says in a letter that he had sworn since the summer of 1861. Other participants were Stefan Ilich, Dimitar Geshoglu, Marko Balabanov, Dr. Stambolski, hadji Ivancho hadji Penchovich, Kiro Popov, Atanasaki Stoyanovich. Later, on 27.05.1866, a Secret Bulgarian Central Committee was established in Bucharest. Its initiator was Ivan Kasabov, an assistant to G. S. Rakovski. The creation of the organization was influenced by the idea of ​​Romanian liberals for a “holy coalition” between Bulgarians and Romanians and for the creation of the “Vlach-Bulgarian state” or “United Danube States”. The idea failed, but supported by the Odessa Bulgarian Board of Trustees, the TCBC continued to work. It was planned to create a revolutionary network in Bulgaria and among the emigration. The activists of the TCBC were inclined to various political combinations. In 1867, they sent to Sultan Abdulaziz and the Great Powers a Memoir on the creation of a dualistic Turkish-Bulgarian monarchy, on the model of Austria-Hungary. In this way, the TCBC believed that the political liberation of Bulgaria would be achieved. According to the Memoir, our country should receive full administrative autonomy with a Christian sultan’s viceroy, a National Assembly, its own army, a constitution, and an independent Bulgarian Church.

This idea of ​​an Ottoman-Bulgarian kingdom at the end of the century was revitalized by Prime Minister Stefan Stambolov, but unfulfilled due to the murder in front of the Sultan’s palace of his special diplomatic agent for negotiations with the Turkish authorities. The contradictory assessments of the Memoir caused turmoil in the TCBC and due to ideological contradictions the committee disbanded in 1868. The successors of the TCBC were the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee, the Bulgarian Society and “Young Bulgaria”. We find data on a similar secret patriotic Bulgarian group 20 years earlier in Kiril Plovdivski, who quotes the memoirs for 1852-69 of Dr. Hr. T. Stambolski (vol. I, p. 61) regarding the studentship of Hilarion Makariopolski at the Royal High School in Athens between September 24, 1838 and 1841. There, the future Bulgarian hierarch already then became a member of a secret society of Bulgarian pupils and students in the Greek capital, who swore to bring about “good luck and outcome of the enterprise”, in which participated John (Dr. Ivan) Seliminski, Konstantin Ioannidis (Dr. Konst. Mishaikov) and his brother, a student at the University of Athens Peter Ioannidis (b. 1805, the future Metropolitan Panaret of Xanthi and Plovdiv, who took over the chair after the death of Paisios of Plovdiv). Paisius himself (born 1810) was at the same time a student at the University of Athens for three years and would also have participated in such a student corporation on a Western model with strictly conspiratorial and patriotic tasks similar to the Carbonari and Masonic initiatory societies.

Archimandrite Peter (Troitsky), rector of the Russian embassy church in Constantinople (August 1858-August 1860) wrote in June 1859 that Bulgaria was disturbed by the propaganda of Catholics and Protestants. Catholic propaganda was directed by Catholic France. In Plovdiv on December 14, 1847, Andrea Canova was ordained bishop of the Plovdiv Catholic cathedral by the Italian Capuchins (until August 10, 1868), after the Ligurians from the congregation of St. Alphonse Liguora (1836). A Committee for the Catholic Unification of Bulgaria was formed in Paris. Its program stated that in the East a 4-million-strong people wanted to unite with Rome. In December 1860, Pope Pius IX ordained Joseph Sokolski as archbishop, and on December 30, 1860, the act of unification (union) was signed in Zharigrad and handed over to the apostolic vicar Brunoni. So today in Bulgaria we celebrate 150 years of the Uniate movement, which today numbers 13 Eastern and 7 Western rites around the world. At the head of this Committee are Polish emigrants, driven from their homeland by the Russian yoke, zealously supported by their compatriots in the Ottoman capital Tchaikovsky – Sadik Pasha, M. Drashki – Ata Bey and others. A natural ally of the newly established Bulgarian Uniate Church was the Turkish government, because the movement for unification was directed against Russian interests and influence among the subjects of the empire. In Plovdiv, some of the Bulgarian priests, after the exile of Metropolitan Paisios, embraced the union, exhorting the people that the union was the only possibility for liberation from Greek spiritual oppression, because the government authority gave them protection and assistance. Metropolitan Kiril of Plovdiv quotes a letter from K. D. Moravenov dated 17.05.1861, in which he writes that “the Grand Vizier would force the Bulgarians to accept the union.” (From Arch. N. G., II, 43-44). This may be the logical explanation for the delay of several days in Thessaloniki in transporting the Plovdiv kyriarch to his exile on Mount Athos. The government is looking for options to satisfy the Bulgarians’ demands for an independent national church, and the latter are ready for anything regarding their church structure after the loss of their three national leaders – Hierarchs Hilarion, Avksentiy, and Paisii.

Many of the Poles who participated in the November Uprising of 1830-31, the Hungarian Revolution of 1848-49 and the January Uprising of 1863-64 chose the emigrant life and dispersed through the then Ottoman Bulgaria to Great Britain and the USA. The great Polish statesman and diplomat of the 19th century, Prince Adam Czartoryski (1770-1861), developed his own program for restructuring Europe, stopping repression and building a community of free and independent peoples, including a restored Poland. The movement created in London and Paris, whose goal was to create a Polish army abroad, became known by the name of its headquarters in the Hotel Lambert, and supported the national liberation aspirations of the Eastern European peoples. The Polish political activist and writer Mikhail Tchaikovsky (1804-1886), also a participant in the uprising of 1830-32, was a member of the Polish Democratic Society from 1834, and of the Polish People’s Confederation from 1836. In 1838 he sided with Prince Adam Czartoryski, operating from the Lambert Hotel. In 1841 he founded the first permanent representative agency of the Lambert Hotel in Constantinople, which became the center and organizer of anti-Russian propaganda and activity in the Balkans, Ukraine and the Caucasus. In 1850 he entered Turkish service, devoted himself entirely to Turkish politics, converted to Islam and changed his name to Sadik Pasha. During the Crimean War, he organized 600 Cossacks into a military corps, taking command of them in the offensive against Wallachia in 1855. His collaborator was the Polish emigrant V. Moshinsky, a freemason and carbonari, who attended all European freemason gatherings, including the Turkish and Turkish-Bulgarian lodges in Bulgaria. A staunch opponent of Russia and a friend of Turkey, who had connections with Georgi Zhivkov, he attended the meetings of the Bulgarian Red Cross in Bucharest and probably helped write the Statutes of the Bulgarian Red Cross and Red Cross, similar to the Carbonari in Italy.

In 1861, an attempt was made in Tsarigrad/Istanbul along Protestant lines to directly intervene in the church struggles of the Bulgarian people (for the attitude of the Protestants towards the church struggle, in addition to the notes in Missionary Herald, vol. 62, pp. 68, 313; for Long’s opinion, see Tsarigradski v-k, XIII, 36, 01.09.1862; and the special study J. Clarke, Protestantism and the Bulgarian Church Question in 1861, – Essays in the History of Modern Europe, edited by D. C. McKay, New York, 1936), about which Manyo Stoyanov provides us with important information (“Beginning of Protestant Propaganda in Bulgaria”, – Proceedings of the Institute of History of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, VOL. 14-15, 1964, pp. 52-55). Just at the time when the situation of the Bulgarians was the most difficult, the leading bishops were sent into exile, the Uniate movement, supported by the Turkish government, was advancing, and the Russian representatives supported the Greek Patriarchate, the branch of the English Evangelical Alliance in Constantinople (Evangelical Alliance) sent a delegation (the delegation consisted of Dr. Yul. Menlingen, the Sultan’s physician, the Armenian Protestant pastor H. Sahadjian and Dr. L. Riggs), which met with the Bulgarian leaders Todor Burmov, Nikola P. Tapchileshov and Dr. Zach. Strumsky and suggested that they turn for assistance to the alliance, which in turn would insist on the governments of the Protestant states in Constantinople, first of all the English one, to intercede before the Sublime Porte for the settlement of the Bulgarian-Greek dispute. For the Bulgarians at that time, help from wherever it came was expensive”, as Burmov writes, and therefore the three Bulgarian leaders mentioned submitted a petition to the Evangelical Union, signed by 33 Bulgarians and two bishops, in which they set out their demands in the struggle and asked for support. Based on this petition, the Constantinople branch of the union wrote to the chairman in London, K. Erdlis, who spoke on the matter with the English Foreign Minister John Russell and the Turkish representative in London, Musuris, and wrote to the English representative in Constantinople, H. Bulwer. The diplomatic representatives and the other Protestant countries in Constantinople (Holland, Norway and Sweden), who became interested in the matter, were also spoken to, and some of them spoke to Ali, but nothing followed. The English representative Bulwer expressed his sympathy for the Bulgarian people to the Bulgarian representatives, but stated that he was uncomfortable interfering in the internal politics of Turkey. His colleagues – representatives of the other Protestant countries – showed solidarity with him. Bulwer, and probably the other diplomats too, understood that the hopes of the missionaries were in vain, especially after the collapse of the union (Bel. While the correspondence with London was being conducted, Dr. Riggs, who knew some of the Bulgarian leaders, tried to win them over to his Protestant understanding of the church. For example, to Dr. St. Chomakov, who was in Constantinople at that time, he proposed that the Bulgarian church be organized like the Protestants on only two principles: 1) the Bible as the only rule of faith and morality and 2) the complete separation of the church from the state (A. Shopov, Dr. St. Chomakov, p. 471). What is more, according to the aforementioned study by Clark, a few days before Hilarion Makariopolsky was sent into exile, Riggs entered into written negotiations with him to conclude a union with the Protestants, because he was informed that Hilarion, in order to save himself from exile, was ready to conclude a union with any church. To Riggs’s proposal that Hilarion sign a declaration that the Bulgarians agree to accept, together with the Evangelical churches, the Bible as the only obligatory rule of faith and church regulation, Hilarion replied (…): “in agreement with the Protestants, we accept the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testaments together with the rites and customs that have existed in our Bulgarian church since ancient times.” Clark claims this based on Riggs’ diary, which we have not seen, and since there are no Bulgarian or other foreign sources, we can neither dispute nor confirm what he says.) It was Plovdiv that was the second target of the Soboryan missionaries in European Turkey. As a city and center of a rich region with an alert Bulgarian population, it was to become, according to the missionaries’ plans, the center of Protestantism in Southern Bulgaria. In the spring of 1859, the American Congressional missionaries William Merriam and James Clark arrived in the city (for the activities of the missionaries in Plovdiv, see their correspondence in Missionary Herald, vol. 53, p. 293, vol. 57, p. 142, etc. with interesting data on the population of the city, and the memoirs of N. G. Enicherev, Vazpominania i mezkolniki, S., 1906, p. 55 et seq., and of Mih. Madzharov, Spomeni okolo epokata 1854–1878, S., 1942). Their first task was to learn the local languages ​​– Clark set about learning Bulgarian, and Merriam Turkish; he also intended to work among the Turks. One of the most striking phenomena of the Bulgarian Revival was the construction of a network of schools covering all the lands on which the Bulgarian nation lived. Protestants energetically joined this process and raised the level of education, giving Bulgarian schools a model to strive for and from which to draw experience. The first Protestant school was opened by them in Plovdiv in 1860. It is noteworthy that this educational institution appeared three years before one of the most prestigious schools of that time – the Constantinople Robert College, founded by Christopher Robert, an American industrialist, and Cyrus Hamlin, an American professor, theologian and missionary in 1863 in Constantinople. Protestant schools in Shumen (1862), Stara Zagora (1863), Bansko (1867), Samokov (1869), Ruse (1873), Troyan (1880) were not far behind.

During this period, new states were created in Europe and the world and constitutional lawmaking was in full swing. The Carbonari (coal miners) were particularly active – a secret political organization (society) operating in Europe since the beginning of the 19th century, mainly in France and Italy. In 1814, the Carbonari managed to introduce the constitution in the Kingdom of Naples by force. The Carbonari organized revolutionary movements in Europe and the Balkans. Bulgarian ties with them were maintained by Teofil Raynov, Todor Kovachev, Georgi Zhivkov, Lyuben Karavelov, etc. In 1825, the Decembrist uprising in Russia; 1830 – the Polish anti-Russian uprising and the revolutions in Paris, Belgium and the Swiss cantons; 1846 – problems in Galicia and the annexation by Austria of the “Warsaw Republic”. The most democratic of the era, the Belgian Constitution, was a model for the first constitutions of the Ottoman Empire, the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia (the Organic Statute in 495 articles with 13 supplements, prepared between 21.10.1878 and 14.04.1879 by a specially appointed mixed European Commission). Between 17.03.1861 and 20.09.1870, the Italian unification took place under King Victor Emmanuel II. The American Constitution became a model and ideal for many European revolutionaries. One of the founders of the USA, John Adams, said: “We have no such government capable of fighting human passions that do not comply with morality and religion. Our Constitution is made only for moral and religious people.” In 1860, Lincoln became President of the USA. Garibaldi, who spent time in exile in the United States (1848-1854) and in May 1860 planned the proclamation of an Italian republic, was the first to be invited to be commander-in-chief of the army of the North. Volunteers from many enslaved European nations volunteered for the civil war on the American continent. The American Civil War took place in North America between April 12, 1861 and April 9, 1865, during the second year of which President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, which came into effect on January 1, 1863, declaring all slaves in the Confederate states free, although in the border states (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri and West Virginia), loyal to the Union, slavery remained legal until December 6. 1865, when the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified, abolishing all forms of slavery and involuntary labor. Meanwhile, new states and territories ratified the US Constitution: on January 29, 1861, Kansas was admitted as the 34th state by an Act of the US Congress, the 35th West Virginia was admitted on June 20, 1863, the 36th Nevada – on October 31, 1864, the 37th Nebraska – on March 1, 1867. Under President Andrew Johnson, the Era of Reconstruction (1865-1869) of the United States of America began.