Introduction - Part 01

In the year 313 AD, from the great imperial city of Milan, Emperor Constantine I, together with his co-Emperor Licinius, dispatched a series of letters informing all provincial governors to stop persecuting the Christians, thus revoking all previous anti-Christian decrees. All properties, including Christian places of worship, seized from them in the past were to be restored. This so-called “Edict of Milan”, by which the Roman Empire reversed its policy of hostility towards Christians, was one of the most decisive events in human history. What brought on this sudden reversal?

Rational thinkers believe that Constantine had the foresight to realize that Christianity was a growing power and could be harnessed to work for the good of the empire and not against it. Christianity was a result of changing times and harnessing its power was of far greater benefit than following the current policy of attempting to destroy it. (For more information on the triumph of Christianity please read chapters fourteen and fifteen of my book “History of the Macedonian people From Ancient times to the Present”, published in 2005.)

I need to mention one more thing here which Constantine did for Christianity which I think is important but not well known. For communication reasons Constantine chose a new capital for his empire and located it at Byzantium, today’s Istanbul.

One of Constantine’s priorities after seizing power was to find a suitable location for his capital where communication would not be a problem. Although Solun was contemplated for its cosmopolitan Macedonian culture, economy and defenses, Constantine opted for the city Byzantium. Byzantium withstood Philip II’s siege and survived. So, from a strategic point, Byzantium offered some advantages over Solun. Byzantium was located on the waters of the Bosporus, linking the Mediterranean with the Black Sea. It was the centre of the Roman world, linking east with west. From a military perspective, ships could easily be dispatched east or west up the rivers and outflank every barbarian advance. Even Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Aegean and Adriatic coastlines were within a reasonable striking distance from Byzantium. From a commercial perspective, Byzantium was a lot closer to the eastern trade routes

than Rome or Solun. In other words, Constantine chose Byzantium by careful planning and design, which in the long term gave his empire the advantage it needed to survive for nearly a millennium and a half, until 1453 AD.

In 324 AD, Constantine began the construction of his new capital, the “City of Constantine”. This would be a Christian city fit for Kings that would not only rival, but would surpass the glory of Rome. To this day the Macedonian people call this city “Tsari Grad”, the “City of Kings”.

Power was where the Emperor was, and the Emperor was now in his own city in the hub of activity just at the edge of Macedonia. Although this was not purely a Macedonian city, it had the elements of Macedonian culture and tradition. It was a very un-Roman city in language and culture and not only imitated the Macedonian cities of Alexandria and Antioch (cities built by the Macedonians) but with time surpassed their cultural and academic achievements. Constantinople or Tsari Grad, as it was known to the Macedonians, was going to be the power base of a new empire, a revival of Alexander the Greats’ old empire with a Christian twist. “This ‘Eastern’ or Byzantine empire is generally spoken of as if it were a continuation of the Roman tradition. It is really far more like a resumption of Alexander’s…” (Page 414, H.G. Wells, The Outline of History, Garden City Books, New York, 1961.)

While Constantine was building his new city, his mother Helena undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and was instrumental in the building of the Churches of the Nativity at Bethlehem and Eleona on Jerusalem's Mount of Olives.

On November 8th, 324 AD Constantine formally laid out the boundaries of his new city, roughly quadrupling the territory of old Byzantium. While his architects were designing his new city, Constantine and his army, numbering about 120,000 troops, were established in Solun. Even before moving to Solun in 324 AD, Constantine had the old Solun harbour renovated and expanded to fit his fleet of 200 triakondores galleons and about 2,000 merchant ships.

By 328 AD the walls of Tsari Grad were completed and the new city was formally ready for dedication in May 330 AD. Soon after the city was opened, Constantine ordered the construction of two major churches, Sveta Sophia (Holy Wisdom) and Sveta Eirena (Holy Peace) and began laying the foundation of a third church, the Church of the Holy Apostles.

Unlike Rome, which was filled with pagan monuments and institutions, Tsari Grad was essentially a purely Christian city with Christian churches and institutions.

So, in essence one would think that Tsari Grad is an important, if not the most important, landmark of Christianity, where Christianity was essentially born, given its glory and ever lasting life? But, unfortunately, today Tsari Grad, or Istanbul as the Muslims call it, is a Muslim city. The European powers, especially England and France, who at the time when they were dividing the Balkans into small fragments and creating politically polarized little states from Philip’s Macedonia could not find it in their hearts to allow Tsari Grad to exist as a Christian city. They could have given Tsari Grad to any of the little Orthodox Christian states they carved out of Macedonia and allowed it to remain the capital of Christianity, like it deserved to be. But, no! They had to shackle it under Muslim authority in hopes that it would be forgotten once and for all so that Rome, the mostly pagan city, would take its place as the shining light of Christianity. They made sure that Orthodoxy was pushed down and Catholicism was raised to take its place. But, so far, it has not worked for them.

While the Macedonians and later the Romans had no interest in local affairs, other than harvesting taxes, Christianity showed great interest in everyone irrespective of social status. In Jesus’ eyes all people were created equal, in the image of God. The common people could identify with the Christian God and this had appeal for them. In contrast, deities of the Roman faith imitated “the all-powerful” Roman emperor sitting on his throne, far removed from the common man.

By making contact directly with the native people of the empire, the Christians began to institutionalize the local languages by giving

them life through the written scriptures and through educating the masses to read and write. Unfortunately at the turn of the new millennium, in Europe at least, there were only three scripts available upon which to base the written word and these were Aramaic, Koine and Latin. Most local languages had far richer sounds than the existing written scripts could accommodate and in time had to be refined. For the Macedonians, this would take a few centuries but eventually a single refined universal script would emerge and bring Macedonia back to her former intellectual glory.

With time Christianity introduced the gospel to every race in every corner of the Roman Empire and with it came the written word, formalization and later the institutionalization of the modern written languages. The Macedonian language, to which history refers as the language spoken by Alexander’s soldiers, was no exception.

Period of Decline

There are some who believe that the period between 27 BC and 180 AD was a period of wasted opportunity. It was a period of spending rather than of creating, an age of architecture and trade in which the rich grew richer and the poor poorer. It was an age when man’s soul and spirit decayed. There were thousands of well-built cities supplied by great aqueducts, connected to each other by splendid highways and each equipped with temples, theaters, amphitheaters and markets. The citizens of these great cities were well refined in attitude and mannerism, indicative of a civilized society. All this unfortunately was achieved on the backs of slaves who came from the vastness of the Roman Empire, including Macedonia. The slaves provided the manpower to build the cities, aqueducts, roads, temples and theaters. The slaves provided the labour to cultivate the soil and feed the masses. They also provided the bodies that fuelled the blood sport that entertained the Roman citizenry. It is unknown how many slaves suffered cruel deaths to civilize the glorious Roman Empire, the pride of the west, but I am certain the numbers were horrendous.

It is often asked, “Who were the Roman gladiators, who were the Christians fed to the lions, and who were the slaves that gave their lives to build the Roman Empire and entertain the Roman citizen?” Although history provides us with no answers, all we need to do is look at the aftermath of every Roman victory and count the numbers enslaved.

Macedonia was the last nation in Europe to fall into Roman hands but the first en masse to fall into Roman slavery. While the middle class Macedonian, among others, supplied the Roman Empire with enlightenment, the Macedonian slave, among others, supplied it with the necessary labour to build its so-called civilization. Even though Macedonia, more so than any other nation in the history of the Roman Empire, had contributed to its development, modern Roman history mentions nothing of the Macedonians. The Macedonian people have received no credit for their contribution and the willing and unwilling sacrifices they made for the success of the Romans.

Even though it is well-known that the Roman Empire was built on the foundation of Alexander the Great’s Macedonian Empire, its modern inheritors refuse to give Macedonia and the Macedonian people the credit the Macedonians deserve. Today’s modern westerner speaks of the Roman Empire’s accomplishments with great pride, forgetting that without Macedonia’s contributions their precious empire would be an empty shell.

Every historian knows that the only contribution that the lumbering Roman Empire should be credited with is the construction of roads, cities and aqueducts. In terms of government it had none. At its best it had a bureaucratic administration that kept the peace but failed to secure it. The typical Roman was so overly preoccupied with pursuing “the loot” that he forgot to implement any free thinking and apply knowledge. He had an abundance of books but very few were written by Romans. He respected wealth and despised science. He allowed the rich to rule and imagined that the wise men could be bought and bargained for in the slave markets. He made no effort to teach, train or bring the common people into any conscious participation of his life. He had made a tool of religion, literature, science and education and entrusted it to the care of slaves who were bred and traded like animals. His empire, “It was therefore, a colossally ignorant and unimaginative empire. It foresaw nothing. It had no strategic foresight, because it was blankly ignorant of geography and ethnology.” (Page 397, H.G. Wells, The Outline of History, Garden City Books, New York, 1961) This is only a tiny sample of what an eminent western scholar and author thinks of the contributions of the Roman Empire.

Ironically we refer to the Romans as civilized and to the Macedonians as barbarian, knowing full well that Macedonia employed no slaves and Rome built its entire empire on the backs of slaves.

Without getting into the grossness of the Roman excesses and coliseum blood lusts, I believe I made my point that “the Roman Empire was neither civilized nor did it contribute as much as its western proponents would have us believe”.

“Macedonian king Perseus was defeated at the Battle of Pydna in 167 BC. After that Macedonia was divided into four parts and put under Roman domination. Macedonia was deprived of external independence but was allowed to retain internal self-governance. The four parts (meres, partes, regiones, T. Liv., XLV, 30, 2) were forbidden from mutual marriages, from trade and from mining the gold and silver mines. All prominent Macedonians older than 15 years old had to leave Macedonia ‘voluntarily’, under the threat of death, in order to prevent renewal of the country and rebellions from taking place against foreign dominance.”

It has also been said that a large segment of the Macedonian population fled Macedonia during the Roman-Macedonian wars, especially when Macedonia was defeated. These people went north. Of course there was no other direction to go because Macedonia, at that time, bordered the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Adriatic Sea to the west, the Black Sea to the east and the Danube River to the north.

Taking the safest route out, the Macedonians escaping the horrors of wars fled north across the Danube River.

A lot of Macedonian people fled north! And where did they go? We are told they went north of the Danube River, where the Slavs were later found.

So, my first question is “What happened to these Macedonian people?” To these many Macedonian people who fled “north”?! Could they be the “Slavs” who later returned to Macedonia and found people there speaking the same language?

My second question is “How far north did these Macedonians go?” Did they go as far north as Siberia? If they did then that would explain why there are toponyms and people’s names in Russia that are exactly the same as the ones existing in Macedonia. Or is this a coincidence?

And most importantly: if these Slavs “from north of the Danube” and the Slavs from around Solun spoke a Slavic language then what does that tell us?

It tells us that there was a linguistic relationship between the Macedonians in Macedonia and the Slavs north of the Danube! Or is this too a coincidence?

Now we need to ask ourselves, how did this “linguistic relationship” come about and did the Macedonians who fled Macedonia during the Roman-Macedonian wars speak a Slavic language or a “Greek” language as the westerners and Greeks would have us believe? If the Macedonians spoke “Greek” then why does “no one” north of the Danube River speak “Greek” today… or at any other time in recorded history? There is no trace of “Greek” anywhere north of the Danube.

If I was asked: “Did the Macedonians fleeing the Macedonian-Roman wars speak Greek?” I would have to say “no” because if they did there would be some “traces” of Greek found somewhere north of the Danube. And there are none!

Many ancient authors have claimed that Alexander the Great and his Macedonians spoke another language outside of the Koine language and that language was not only unique to the Macedonians but was also their mother tongue. So, is it not possible that the “mysterious” language the ancient Macedonians spoke was in fact the Slavic language?! Why is this “constantly” dismissed by the Greeks and our western friends?

It was Herbert George Wells who said that the barbarian invasion of Europe started with the rise of the Great Wall of China. Migrating tribes of Mongolian nomads, who spent their summers on the Siberian plains and their winters in east central China, could no longer do so because the Great Wall of China prevented them. Unable to go to their traditional lands, the Mongolian tribes were forced to change their wintering patterns. Unable to cross into eastern central China, the Mongolian tribes began a westward movement putting pressure on the people whose lands they invaded. By the time the Great Wall of China was finished in the 6th century AD, many of the Mongolian tribes had abandoned their traditional eastern migrating patterns and were moving westward.

This westward Mongolian movement had a cascading effect on the local people who were forced to migrate southwards from beyond the Danube River. It is my belief that these people did not move willingly but were pushed out as a consequence of this great wave of tribal migration. Who these people were and where they came from are still controversial questions, which hopefully will be answered in time with proper research. In the meantime, there are two emerging theories.

The first and more popular theory is that these people were descendents of the first Europeans. They are identified by many names. The second theory is that these people were a mixture of the indigenous people from those regions and the descendents and remnants of Alexander the Greats’ settlers and soldiers as well as those Macedonians who fled Macedonia as a result of the Roman occupation. It is well-known that Alexander the Great established many cities and outposts wherever he campaigned in order to support his military needs. Settlers were brought from Macedonia and given lands to farm. When Alexander’s empire collapsed, instead of returning home many of his people remained at their outposts and permanently settled the new lands. Many of the subsequent people who fled Macedonia because of harsh Roman rule also went north and some joined the original Macedonian settlements.

Archeological digs in India have revealed that Macedonian estates were still in existence two centuries after Alexander’s empire collapsed. It is conceivable then that the Macedonian settlers of Europe also remained on their estates, living undisturbed for centuries, and migrated northward as their populations expanded. Being already civilized, the Macedonians had a well-established language and culture, which they disseminated among the native populations where they lived and from which they employed their workers.

These are, however, only theories and much evidence is needed to validate them.

But, at this point, let us digress and take a step back for a moment and think about this: If these people who western historians called

“Slavs” were not Macedonians why then did historians of the 6th century AD say that when they came to Macedonia in wagons with their families and tried to invade Solun they found a common tradition and language in the local people in the surrounding villages?

History offers no evidence of savage battles between Slavs and the 6th century descendants of ancient Macedonians nor does it show records of any massacres taking place. In fact history portrays the Slavs as peaceful people who, more often than not, were able to co-exist with other races in Macedonia. Outside of the unknown author of book II of the Miracles of St. Demetrius, who portrayed the Slavs as savage, brutish and heathen barbarians, there is little evidence of Slavs causing atrocities in Macedonia. “On the other hand, however, one gets the impression that the Slavs were a familiar presence. They are repeatedly called ‘our Slavic neighbours’” by the people of Solun. (Page 61, Florin Curta, The Making of the Slavs, History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region c. 500 – 700, Cambridge, New York, 2001) Slavs it seems, contrary to popular belief, were on good terms with the inhabitants of Solun, supplying them with grain and other goods.

“Our present day knowledge of the origin of the Slavs is, to a large extent, a legacy of the 19th century. A scholarly endeavor inextricably linked with forging national identities….” (Page 6, Florin Curta, The Making of the Slavs, History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region c. 500 – 700, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)

“Instead of a great flood of Slavs coming out of the Pripet marshes, I envisage a form of group identity which could arguably be called ethnicity and emerged in response to Justinian’s implementation of a building project on the Danube frontier and in the Balkans. The Slavs, in other words, did not come from the north, but became Slavs only in contact with the Roman frontier.” (Page 3, Florin Curta, The Making of the Slavs, History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region c. 500 – 700, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)

The Slavs, as opposed to other hordes that invaded the Balkans in the first millennium AD, became very important during the 19th century, particularly in 1833 when Slavic languages were recognized as Indo-European. Like the English language of today, the Slav language of the 19th century linguistically linked many nations together. Some of the 19th century Slav academics, however, intentionally or unintentionally interpreted this linguistic commonality as an ethnic commonality, ethnically linking all Slavs together. In other words, if one spoke Slav then one must have belonged to the “Slav tribe”, which in modern terms is the same as believing that if one spoke English then one must belong to the “English tribe”.

Perhaps they did belong to the same tribe, perhaps they did not. Most likely they did not belong to the same tribe, just like all English speakers don’t belong to the “English tribe”. Having said that, one has to believe that there is or has to be some other kind of link between the Macedonians living in Macedonia, not only to the so-called “Slavs” who invaded or “returned” to Macedonia from beyond the Danube River, but also to all the people in Eastern Europe who spoke and still speak the Slavic language. If there is no connection between the Macedonians, Ukrainians, Poles, Russians, etc., etc., in other words between all the Slavic speaking people from the Mediterranean Sea to Siberia, then why do these people have a common language, common traditions and, most importantly, common names and toponyms? How does a Russian acquire a Macedonian name if he or she has no connection to Macedonia? And that’s not all. There are place names in Russia which are identical to place names found in Macedonia? Are these all “pure” coincidences?

As mentioned earlier, the “Slav phenomenon” is largely a political phenomenon with little historical significance. The reasons attributed to the Slavs as opposed to the Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Avars, etc., as being the culprits for the invasions and devastation of the Balkans is to explain the wide use of the Slav language. In other words, the “Slav phenomenon” is a modern 19th century creation designed to explain the prevalent use of the modern Slav languages. In other words the Slavs, as westerners claim, violently invaded Europe all at once, killed off all the indigenous people and replaced

them. And, as dominant conquerors, replaced their local languages with their own. This “theory” however not only defies logic but lacks much evidence.

It is most unfortunate, however, that modern scholars choose to ignore the evidence that links the 6th century Slavs to the ancient Macedonians.

“Archeological research has already provided an enormous amount of evidence in support of the idea that the Veneti were Slavs.” (Page 13, Florin Curta, The Making of the Slavs, History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region c. 500 – 700, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) Accepting the hypothesis that the Veneti and the Slavs were connected not only provides linguistic continuity for the modern Macedonians to the ancient Macedonians but also identifies the so-called “elusive” Macedonian language of ancient times. With this in mind, we cannot ignore claims that the Slav language was most probably spoken by Alexander’s Macedonian soldiers and settlers and was spread throughout the vastness of the uncivilized regions of Eastern Europe and northern Asia. Also, it would not be far fetched to hypothesize that Alexander’s Macedonians colonized parts of European Russia, which would attest to the many common toponyms that Macedonia and European Russia share.

By the end of the seventh century AD, Islam, seated in Damascus, was becoming a great power extending from the borders of India and Tibet to Spain and from southern Egypt and Arabia to Armenia. Islam, a powerful new religious force originating in Arabia, was taking over the near-east in rapid conquests following the Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632 AD.

By this time both the Persian and Byzantine empires had been weakened by their mutual wars and were experiencing devastating defeats at the hands of the Muslims. While the Persian Empire quickly succumbed to the Muslim assault, the Byzantines were only saved because of Tsari Grad’s strong triple wall fortifications. The defensive wall construction of Tsari Grad was commissioned around 410 AD and was completed by 500 AD. The inner wall was about twelve metres high and about five and a half metres wide, defended

by ninety-six polygonal towers rising more than ten metres above the wall. The second wall was about ten metres high defended by another ninety-six towers. On the outside was a moat about twenty metres wide and about six metres deep. Beyond the moat was a third low wall designed to act as a retaining wall for the moat. Also, one had to cross ten gates before entering the city. The outer walls were approximately five and a half kilometres long and extended about a kilometre and a half beyond the original Constantinian wall. The large area between the walls was never built up and was used for farming and to supply the city with secure sources of water. The existence of open farmland inside the city walls was a vital factor in the city’s ability to resist sieges. Used to grow crops and graze animals, the land provided the city with a limited but secure source of food.

Europe and Christianity were saved because the Byzantines were able to withstand many waves of Muslim onslaught. Had Tsari Grad not been built to withstand the greatest of sieges, Islam would have overrun all of Europe, as it did Asia. Christianity and the world as we know it today would not have existed in the same way.

At the same time, being left in a weakened state the Byzantine Empire experienced an onslaught of attacks from invading hoards including, as mentioned earlier, Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Avars, etc.

A large Bulgar invasion force entered Byzantine territory and occupied several regions of northern Macedonia. Bulgar encroachment continued up until Boris’s reign. By then the Bulgars had occupied a large part of the Strumitsa region and parts of central Macedonia to the Vardar valley. Finally in 864 AD the Byzantines intervened, but instead of pushing the Bulgars out they settled for peace. The peace treaty did not free Macedonia but it did put an end to Bulgar expansionism for a while. According to the terms of the treaty Boris was also obliged to accept Christianity as his state religion.

It is natural to assume that the invading hoards such as the Huns, Avars and Bulgars spoke non Slavic languages. But then we have today’s Bulgarians speaking a Slavic language, which of course is a consequence of the original Bulgars being assimilated by the

indigenous Slavic speaking population who lived south of the Danube River. “The Bulgarians had adopted Slavic language and culture. It is paradoxical that the Bulgarians, a Turkic people who adopted Slavic language and customs, took a significant role in standardizing Slavic writing.” (Page 197, John Shea, Macedonia and Greece The Struggle to Define a New Balkan Nation, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1997) The reason the Bulgars adopted the Slavic language was due to the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Slavs, most of them being Macedonians. The true Bulgars and their Turko-Tartar rulers were only a small minority and their language and culture, for the most part, disappeared in a few generations after their arrival in the Balkan region.

Revival of the Macedonian language and culture

It is important at this point to mention that Christianity would not have been effectively spread to all the people throughout the world had it not been for the idea that “God’s word” must be told in the language the people understood. In other words “God’s word” had to be told in the language all the people spoke and not just the educated class. Also “God’s word” had to be told the “same way” to all the people in all the languages. But in order to do that, “God’s word” had to be standardized and written down because it was nearly impossible to remember everything and in the exact same way. Therefore scripts were very important to have. One can see why there was a great need to develop written scripts for every language spoken by Christians and potential Christians. In other words it was almost impossible to pass on “God’s word” to the people and keep it the same in all languages without it being written down. So, once again, one can see why many scripts were needed to educate the priests who disseminated “God’s word”.

It was during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Michael III (842-867) that Solun had definitely established itself as the religious and philosophical centre of the Byzantine Empire. This was the time when Kiril (Cyril) and Metodi (Methodius) set off on a series of missions to spread the doctrines of Christianity to various places in Eastern Europe and Asia where the people spoke dialects of the Slavic, or should I say Macedonian language.

I just want to mention here that, by the eighth century AD, the Macedonian eparchy was controlled by a Macedonian Archbishopric with its centre located in Solun and bishoprics existed in eighteen towns including Lerin, Kostur, Voden and Serres.

The brothers Kiril and Metodi were Macedonians, natives of Solun, who were acclaimed as the apostles of the southern Slavs and the fathers of Slav literary culture. Kiril, the younger of the two, was given the name Constantine when he was baptized. It was much later that he received the name Kiril.

It is worth mentioning at this point that, according to historic accounts, Solun had never before been invaded by the Slavs, yet

somehow the people of Solun spoke “pure Slavic”. If, according to modern European history, the ancient Macedonians spoke “Greek”, meaning the ancient Koine language, then where and how did the people of Solun, who were never in contact with the Slavs, learn to speak “fluent Slav”?

Kiril was very fortunate to have studied in Tsari Grad at a young age and received his education from Leo the Grammarian and Photius, a prominent educator at the imperial university. Kiril was an extraordinary student and earned himself the nickname "the Philosopher". After he finished his education he was ordained deacon and later became professor of philosophy at the imperial school in Tsari Grad, where he took over the chair from Photius. Soon afterwards, he retired to the quiet solitude of a monastery. From there, in 861 AD, he was summoned by the emperor, Michael III, and sent on a mission to Christianize the Khazars of southern Russia who lived between the Dnieper and Volga Rivers.

The older brother Metodi was a well-liked, intelligent man who started his career in his father’s footsteps. At first he served in the military in Solun. Later, at age twenty, he became governor of one of the Slav colonies in the Opsikion province in Asia. Then he became a monk and, like his brother, took part in a mission to Christianize the Khazars.

Kiril and Metodi were two of seven siblings. Their father Lev was a prominent Macedonian who served as assistant to the Solun military commander of the Byzantine army.

The careers of the Solun brothers took a turn for the better in 862 AD when Rostislav, the prince of Moravia, sent his ambassador to Tsari Grad seeking missionaries capable of teaching his people to read and write in their own language. Rostislav, fearful of his powerful German neighbours, sought the opportunity to strengthen his alliance with the Byzantines to counter-balance the German missionary influence in his kingdom. Rostislav preferred the ecclesiastical politics of Photius, now patriarch of Tsari Grad, over those of his western counterpart.

When word came that Emperor Michael was looking for capable missionaries, Photius decided that Kiril and Metodi were the most suitable candidates for the job. The Solun brothers, being Slav speakers themselves, knew the Solunian dialect of the Slav language well and accepted the task.

The old-Macedonian dialect was quite well understood by all the Slav tribes. Unfortunately, teaching the illiterate to read and write was easier said than done. Even though the Slavs had a written form of language described as “lines and incisions”, it was not an easy language to learn.

Kiril was familiar with the Glagolic script but that was also too complex for illiterate people to grasp quickly. According to Tsarnorizets Hrabar, an advocate of Macedonian literacy, Kiril and Metodi first tried to use the Koine and then Latin alphabets, but proper pronunciation could not be achieved. Slav speech was far too complex to record with just Koine or Latin letters. Kiril was an intelligent man and solved the problem by constructing a new alphabet based on old Macedonian traditions. In other words Kiril used an existing Macedonian alphabet and modified it to make it easier to read and write. He made it phonetic so that each letter represented one and only one sound. Once a person learned this alphabet they could immediately read and write. They could spell words the way they sounded. This is something the English (Latin) alphabet could use today to make it easier to learn instead of spending years learning grammar and how to spell.

The pattern and some letters Kiril based on the Koine alphabet but he enriched it by adding new letters. He borrowed some from the Glagolic script and some he fashioned from ancient Macedonian symbols that had traditional Macedonian meaning. “Peter Hill argues that Old Church Slavonic was more than merely a written dialect. It is naïve, he says, to imagine that this construction of a written language was possible without established tradition. Therefore it can safely be assumed that there was at least some tradition on which Cyril and Methodius could build. Presumably their familiarity with this tradition derived from the fact that they were Slavic themselves.” (Page 198, John Shea, Macedonia and

Greece The Struggle to Define a New Balkan Nation, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 1997)

When it was completed Kiril’s alphabet consisted of 38 letters, each accurately and exactly representing a unique sound in Slav speech. The phonetic nature of Kiril’s language made spelling words very simple. And like I said, one only needed to learn the alphabet to have the ability to read and write. The same is true to this day.

I just want to mention here that there are some references claiming that Kiril was the inventor of the Glagolic script, but they are incorrect. Kiril was familiar with the Glagolic script and had composed Glagolic texts but we now know from recent discoveries of ancient inscriptions that the Glagolic alphabet and other Macedonian alphabets existed before Kiril’s time.

In 862 AD Kiril and Metodi, along with a number of followers, arrived in Moravia in Rostislav’s court. They immediately set out to work and to their surprise Kiril’s vernacular was not only well-understood but also became popular with the Moravians.

The Byzantine missionaries continued their work for a while, with much success, but were soon handicapped by the lack of Christian bishops to ordain their priests.

I mentioned a number of issues here that, no doubt, contradict modern European history, especially the origin of the Slavs and the Slavic language they spoke, upon which I should elaborate.

A friend from the Ljubljana University in Slovenia sent me the following:

“Dear Risto,

… You seem to avoid talking about the connection between the Slavs and the Macedonians. Why is that?

It wasn’t too long ago when Slovenian warriors, fighting in the “Solun Front” during WW I, came into contact with local

Macedonians and your Macedonians were very proud to say that they were not Greeks but Slavs.

Weren’t the Slavs ubiquitous in (Greek occupied) Macedonia? These people who claimed to be Slavs were Macedonians from Greece, not from the Republic of Macedonia.

Also, I get the impression that you missed an important point in Curta’s book, namely his economic analysis of the situation in the Byzantine Empire.

According to Curta, after the worldwide climatic crisis in 535 AD, caused by the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano, and towards 540 AD, more and more peasants were commandeered from the Balkans which was followed by a drastic depopulation of the area. This depopulation was followed by the incursions of “Slavs”, who apparently were familiar with the situation in the region, affecting mainly the towns. These Slavs were coming into Macedonia from the north to plunder it and then were retreating back across the Danube, and not settling in Macedonia. Most of the time they were able to avoid the Byzantine military. But the citizens of Tsari Grad (Constantinople) and Solun soon realized that these Slavs were very similar to the “Slavs”, i.e. to the Macedonians who lived around these cities. No Slavs settled in the region until about 700 AD, which is the upper time limit in Curta’s book.

Following Curta’s presentation, mentioned above, it is my understanding that the intruding “Slavs” were in fact the Macedonians who had escaped and had fled north of the Danube over time. So you can say that there was an influx of Slavic Macedonians out of Macedonia and not foreign Slavs settling in Macedonia.

Good luck with your research.

Regards, your friend from Slovenia”

I would like to thank my dear Slovenian friend for that information and for all the helpful information he has given me over the years.

As for the Macedonian language, no doubt it is an ancient language which has taken root in prehistoric times and has evolved and exists to this day. To me it doesn’t matter where it began and how it got there but from what I have learned it is a language that is closely tied to nature and has all the elements to make it a very old language. That in itself and the fact that there are so many dialects attests to its old, old age.

The Macedonian language is truly a people’s language and the mother tongue of every Macedonian born in Macedonia. And unlike other ancient languages, such as Latin and Koine which were languages of institutions and which eventually died, the Macedonian language has survived and thrived, particularly through Christianity when the word of God was in the process of being spread to the common people in the language they understood.

Traditionally the Macedonian language had been an oral language passed on from generation to generation along with the traditions necessary for living. This is why, I believe, there is very little of it recorded. Then, when the time came and the word of God needed to be delivered directly to the common people, the Macedonians were the first to step to the forefront and create a written form. Since then the Old Macedonian language, known to the west as “Old Church Slavonic”, became the language of enlightenment. This was more than just a “mere” language, it was an international language created to serve everyone who understood it. This language has been used in every aspect of life in dozens of countries and for more than one millennium. That much we know for certain. Yet some westerners, including the Greeks and Bulgarians, say “it does not exist”.

My response to that is “look around”, the Macedonian language not only exists but is one of the oldest people’s languages in existence today. It has survived everything that was thrown at it and is still thriving in the Eastern European continent and beyond.

Let us also not forget that the Ancient Macedonians after Philip II’s time were a mixture of people that included Illyrians, Thracians, Paeonians, Phrygians and others and these people were NEVER Greeks. They eventually, over time, also became Macedonians. We also know for a fact that some of the toponyms in Macedonia from

that time had Slavic names and have been repeated from the Mediterranean Sea to Siberia.

So it is easy for me to conclude that, based on its widespread use in Eastern Europe and on the evolution it has experienced, the Slavic language must be a very old language which has probably existed from prehistoric times. This means that the Slavic language was spoken in Macedonia before the Attic and later Koine languages made their appearance.

I have been criticized and ridiculed for saying what I said above, that is, that the Slav language has its roots in Macedonia and that it existed in Macedonia millenniums before the so-called Slavs arrived in Macedonia. Worse than that I have been criticized and ridiculed for saying that the Slavs north of the Danube River were Macedonians. But this is understandable, especially for those who have heard this for the first time.

I was one of those people who ridiculed people for making such “off the cuff” comments because I believed our “mainstream” history to be genuine. But then, from the same history, I found out that I don’t exist as a Macedonian.

One summer day I met Professor Dr. Angelina Markus from Skopje, Macedonia. She was visiting friends here in Toronto. There were rumours that Dr. Markus, during her retirement party on the day of her retirement as a professor, apologized to her students for “lying” to them all these years… for teaching them false history…

When we got talking I asked Dr. Markus, who insisted I call her Angelina, if that was true… if she actually apologized...? She laughed and said yes. So I asked her what lies she told her students. She told me a lot of things… Listening to her, at the time I thought this woman was crazy... But, as it turned out, I was the one who was ignorant… She was just ahead of my time.

The one thing that is of interest to us here, that is also memorable to me, was the questions she asked me: “Tell me,” she said, “why is it that people in Eastern Europe, from the Mediterranean Sea to

Siberia, have common names, common toponyms and a common language…?”

Also tell me,” she said, “why were all these Slavic speaking people as far north as Siberia asking for priests and teachers from Macedonia during the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries AD, when Christianity was making its way up north?”

I had no answers for her…

“You know that the first University in Europe was built in Ohrid, in Macedonia, which educated thousands of priests who were then dispatched all throughout Eastern Europe to bring Christianity and the word of God to the Slavic speakers?” she then said.

Instead of answering the questions she said this to me: “Ask yourself this! ‘Why did the English settlers in the American and Australian continents ask England to send them teachers’…?”

She then said: “When you figure this out you will have your answer…” and laughed loudly.

“Was it because England was their origin and they spoke English?” I asked.

She then touched her nose and smiled.

I should mention at this point that Angelina Markus was married to a Russian diplomat who had opened many doors for her in her research and she knew things of which we can only dream. The diplomatic world, as I later found out, is a totally different world than our ordinary world. While our ordinary world, for example, insisted that “Macedonians do not exist” the diplomatic world had no problem calling the people living in ethic Macedonia, Macedonians. This was especially prevalent during the various conflicts like WW I, WW II, the Greek Civil War and so on.