The first nationwide movement was for enlightenment. Educated Bulgarians started to finance the building of Bulgarian schools. In spite of Ottoman resistance, Bulgarians founded their own schools and started publishing textbooks. In that they received substantial aid from the American Protestant missionaries, who provided the first and only printing establishment in the Ottoman Empire in Smyrna (now Izmir), capable of printing Bulgarian Cyrillic. The Greek revolt against the Ottomans in 1821 also influenced the small Bulgarian educated class. But Greek influence was limited by the general Bulgarian resentment of Greek control of the Orthodox Church in Bulgaria. It was the struggle to revive an independent Bulgarian church which first roused Bulgarian nationalist sentiment. When some Bulgarians threatened to abandon the Orthodox Church altogether and form a Bulgarian Uniate church loyal to Rome, Russia intervened with the Sultan. In 1870 a Bulgarian Exarchate was created by an edict of the Sultan, and the first Bulgarian Exarch (Antim I) became the natural leader of the emerging nation. The Patriarch of Constantinople responded by excommunicating the Bulgarian Exarchate, which reinforced their will for independence.