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Ohrid

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Template:Infobox Macedonian city

Floor mosaic in the Polyconhous Basilica
The house of the wealthy Robevi family

Ohrid is a city on the eastern shore of Lake Ohrid in Republic of Macedonia. It has about 55,700 inhabitants. It is the seat of Ohrid municipality. The city is rich in picturesque houses and monuments, and tourism is predominant. It is located east of Elbasan and Tirana in Albania, southwest of Skopje, and west-northwest of Resen and Bitola. There are several explanations for the origin of the name Ohrid. According to one of them, the name Ohrid is entirely Slavic and it is derived from the expression "na hrid" which means "on a hill". Indeed the town of Ohrid is built on a hill.

In 1980, Ohrid and Lake Ohrid were accepted as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

Name

In the Macedonian and the other South Slavic languages the name of the city is Охрид and in Albanian the city is known as Ohër or Ohri. See also other names. Historical names include Dyassarites which is of Illyrian origin [1], and the Greek names Lychnidos (Λύχνιδος), Ochrida (Οχρίδα) and Achrida (Αχρίδα), the latter two of which are still in modern usage.

History

The contemporary city of Ohrid is a descendant of the antique town of Lychnidos. This was confirmed by several Byzantine sources in which it was written "the town is situated on a high hill near the large lake of Lychnidos, by which also the town was named Lychnis, previously known as Dyassarites1 (from Illyrian "oesserites", people living on the lake shore). The Lake of Ohrid, the ancient Lacus Lychnitis, whose blue and exceedingly transparent waters in remote antiquity gave to the lake its Greek name; it was still called so occasionally in the Middle Ages. It was located along the Via Egnatia, which connected the Adriatic port Dyrrachion (today Durrës) with Byzantium, it was a town in the Macedonian empire of king Phillip II of Macedon who probably had a fortress on the hill even before the samuil fortress was erected.2. Archaeological excavations (e.g., the Polyconhous Basilica from 5th century) prove early adaptation of Christianity in the area. Bishops from Lychnidos participated in multiple ecumenical councils.

The Bulgarians conquered the Byzantine city of Ochryd in 867. The name Ohrid first appeared in 879. Between 990 and 1015, thie City was the capital of the Bulgarian Samuil's Empire. Above the city still remain the ruins of the stronghold of Czar Samuil of Bulgaria. From 990 to 1018 Ohrid was the seat of the Ohrid Patriarchate. The Byzantine conquest of the city in 1018, however, led to downgrading of the Patriarchate to an Archbishopric and to its placement under the authority of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. In the conflicts of the Illyrian tribes with Rome it served the former as a frontier outpost and was later one of the principal points on the great Roman highway known as the via Egnatiana. The higher clergy after 1018 was almost invariably Greek, including during the period of Ottoman domination, until the abolition of the archbishopric in 1767. At the beginning of the 16th century the archbishopric reached its peak subordinating the Sofia, Vidin, Vlach and Moldavian eparchies, part of the former Peć Patriarchate (including Peć itself), and even the Orthodox districts of Italy (Apulia, Calabria and Sicily), Venice and Dalmatia.

As an episcopal city, Ohrid was an important cultural center. Almost all surviving churches were built by the Byzantines, the rest of them date back to the short time of Serbian rule during the late Middle Ages.

Ohrid is credited as being the birthplace of the Glagolic alphabet.

Bohemond and his Norman army took the city in 1083. In the 13th and 14th century the city changed hands between Despotate of Epirus, Bulgaria, Byzantine Empire and Serbia. At the end of the 14th century it is conquered by the Ottomans and remained under them until 1912. Because of the Turkish pressure, the Christian population had significantly declined in the first centuries of their rule. In 1664 there were only 142 Christian houses. The situation improved in the 18th century when Ohrid developed into an important trade center on a major trade route. At the end of this century it had around 5 thousands inhabitants. Towards the end of the 18th century and in the early part of the 19th century, Ohrid region, like other parts of European Turkey, was a hotbed of unrest. Semi-independent feudal lords such as Mahmud Pasha Bushatlija and Djeladin Beg controlled Ohrid and openly defied the central government by not submitting taxes and by using tax money to bolster their own private armies. By the end of 19th century Ohrid had 2409 houses with 11900 inhabitants out of which 45% were Muslim while the rest was mainly Orthodox Christian. Before 1912, Ohrid (Ohri) was a township center bounded to Bitola (Monastir) sanjak in Bitola (Monastir) province.

Ecclesiastical history

The Annunciation from Ohrid, one of the most admired icons of the Paleologan Mannerism from the Church of St. Climent.

Its first known bishop was Zosimus (c. 344). In the sixth century it was destroyed by an earthquake (Procopius, Historia Arcana, xv), but was rebuilt by Emperor Justinian (527-565), who was born in the vicinity, and is said to have been called by him Justiniana Prima, i.e. the most important of the several new cities that bore his name. Duchesne (Les églises séparées, Paris, 1856, 240), however, says that this honour belongs to ancient Scupi (Skopje), another frontier town of Illyria. The new city was made the capital of the prefecture, or department, of Illyria, and for the sake of political convenience it was made also the ecclesiastical capital of the Illyrian or southern Danubian parts of the empire (southern Hungary, Bosnia, Serbia, Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia). Justinian was unable to obtain immediately for this step a satisfactory approbation from Pope Agapetus or Pope Silverius. The Emperor's act, besides being a usurpation of ecclesiastical authority, was a detriment to the ancient rights of Thessalonica as representative of the Apostolic See in the Illyrian regions. Nevertheless, the new diocese claimed, and obtained in fact, the privilege of autocephalia, or ecclesiastical independence, and through its long and chequered history retained, or struggled to retain, this character. Pope Vigilius, under pressure from Emperor Justinian, recognized the exercise of patriarchal rights by the Metropolitan of Justiniana Prima within the broad limits of its civil territory, but Gregory the Great treated him as no less subject than other Illyrian bishops to the Apostolic See (Duchesne, op. cit., 233-237).

The inroads of the Avars and Slavs in the seventh century brought about the ruin of this ancient centre of religion and civilization, and for two centuries its metropolitan character was in abeyance.

But after the conversion of the new Bulgarian masters of Illyria (864) the see rose again to great prominence, this time under the name of Achrida (Achris). Though Byzantine missionaries were the first to preach the Christian faith in this region, the first archbishop was sent by Rome. It was thence also that the Bulgarians drew their first official instruction and counsel in matters of Christian faith and discipline, a monument of which may be seen in the Responsa ad Consulta Bulgarorum of Nicholas I (858-867), one of the most influential of medieval canonical documents (Mansi, xv, 401; Hefele, Concilieng., iv, 346 sq.). However, the Bulgarian King (Car) Bogaris was soon won over by Byzantine influence. In the Eighth General Council held at Constantinople (869), Bulgaria was incorporated with the Byzantine patriarchate of Constantinople, and in 870 the Latin missionaries were expelled. Henceforth Byzantine metropolitans presided in Ohrid; it was made the political capital of the Bulgarian kingdom and profited by the tenth-century conquests of its warlike rulers so that it became the Metropolitan of several Byzantine dioceses in the newly conquered territories in Macedonia, Thessaly, and Thrace. Bulgaria fell unavoidably within the range of the Photian schism, and so, from the end of the ninth century, the diocese of Ohrid was lost to Western and papal influences.

The overthrow of the independent Samoil's kingdom in the early part of the eleventh century by Byzantine Emperor Basil the Macedonian brought Ohrid into closer touch with Constantinople. At a later date some of the great Byzantine families (e.g. the Ducas and the Comneni) claimed descent from the Kings, or Cars, of Bulgaria. In 1053 the Metropolitan Leo of Ohrid signed with Michael Caerularius the latter's circular letter to John of Trani (Apulia in Italy) against the Latin Church. Theophylactus of Ohrid (1078) was one of the most famous of the medieval Greek exegetes; in his correspondence (Ep., 27) he maintains the traditional independence of the Diocese of Ohrid. The Bishop of Constantinople, he says, has no right of ordination in Bulgaria, whose bishop is independent. In reality Ohrid was during this period seldom in communion with either Constantinople or Rome. Towards the latter see, however, its sentiments were less than friendly, for in the fourteenth century we find the metropolitan Anthimus of Ohrid writing against the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. Yet Latin missionaries appear in Ohrid in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, mostly Franciscan monks, to whom the preservation of the Roman obedience in these regions is largely owing.

The Latin bishops of Ohrid in the seventeenth century are probably, like those of our of own time, titular bishops. The ecclesiastical independence of Ohrid seeming in modern times to leave an opening for Roman Catholic influence in Bulgaria, Arsenius, the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, had it finally abolished in 1767 by an order of the Ottoman Sultan Mustapha III. At the height of its authority, Ohrid could count as subject to its authority ten metropolitan and six episcopal dioceses.

Buildings and museums (selection)

View of Ohrid from Samuil's Fortress

There is a legend supported by observations by Ottoman traveller from 15th century, Evlia Celebia that there were 365 chapels within the town boundaries, one for every day of the year. Today this number is significantly smaller. However during the medieval times, Ohrid was called Slavic Jerusalem.

Note: Besides being a holy center of the region, it is also the source of knowledge and pan-Slavic literacy. The restored church at Plaoshnik, previously destroyed by the Ottoman army, was actually one of the oldest Universities in the western world, dating before the 10-th century.

There is a nearby airport, Ohrid Airport that is open all year round.

Recurring events

  • Ohrid Summer Festival, annual theater and music festival from July to August
  • The Balkan Festival of Folk Songs and Dances, annual folklore music and dance festival in the beginning of July
  • Balkan music square festival, music festival in August in which participate ethno musicians from the whole Balkans

Sister cities

Places in the Ohrid district

  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  • Template:Wikitravel
  • Ohrid including information in English
  • Ohrid - MIMI including information in English
  • Municipality of Ohrid
  • Ohrid Summer Festival
  • Macedonia Tourism Portal
  • ohrid @ macedonia :: general informaton website
  • Ohrid Photo Gallery
  • [2]
  • [3]
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