Frescoes in the Virgin Peribleptos Church referring to the origins of the archbishopric of Ohrid
Authors: Todic Branislav 
Published: November 2007

In the year 1294/95, in the church of the Virgin Peribleptos in Ohrid, figures of the apostles Peter and Andrew were painted in the bottom register of wall paintings of the south wall, in front of the altar space (fig. 1), while those of St. Clement of Ohrid and St. Constantine Kabasilas appeared on the opposite, north wall (fig. 2). Their choice and placement on such a conspicuous location have already been the subject of interest of scholars who attempted to explain their iconography and unveil the reasons behind their appearance in this Ohrid church. The image of apostle Peter is related to the text of Mt. 16, 18 and this apostle is thus represented as carrying a church on his back while trampling on Hades who, at the same time, is being pierced by an angel bearing a lance. From above, Christ, shown in bust, addresses St. Peter with the gospel text written out in fresco above his image. This rare representation could be interpreted as an image referring to the founding of the church on earth by Christ. The gospel text which inspired it was one of the main arguments in the primacy doctrine of the Roman church. In Byzantium, on the other hand, the equality of all apostles was underlined, and Peter shared his place of honor with Paul and, at times, Andrew. This can explain the presence of the latter by Peter's side in the mentioned Ohrid church. On the opposite wall we find figures of saints who held in particular reverence in the Ohrid area, namely those of Clement and Constantine Kabasilas. St. Clement (whose relics were treasured in Ohrid) was a bishop in nearby Velika in the X century, and his cult developed shortly after his death. On the other hand, at the end of his lifetime Constantine Kabasilas, an archbishop of Ohrid from the middle of the XIII century, was very devoted to the emperor Michael VIII and that seems to have decisively contributed to the early development of his cult. We can basically except the opinion of those among the scholars who associated the images of the mentioned saints with Christ's founding of the church on earth and the spreading of Christianity among the Slavs. However, since the archbishopric of Ohrid had no direct apostolic origins, and since even St. Clement was actually its founder, the wall paintings of the Virgin Peribleptos should be viewed in a somewhat different light. It is well known that the Archbishopric was founded by emperor Basil II who, in the second sigillium (1020), associated it with the earlier existing Bulgarian archbishopric. However, in the XII century, if not already at an earlier date, the archbishopric of Ohrid began to be associated also with Justiniana Prima, the archbishopric founded by emperor Justinian in 535. The first to include it in his title was the archbishop of Ohrid John Komnenos, in 1157, and many of his successors followed his example. Formulas such as Bulgarian and Prima Justiniana which appear in their titles were of a legal and canonic nature and were used in defending the autocephalos rights of the Archbishopric from both the Roman and the Constantinopolitan church. This prompts us to explain the wall paintings of the eastern part of the naos of the Virgin Peribleptos as a result of intentions of the archbishops of Ohrid to underline the ties of their church with Justiniana Prima and the Bulgarian archbishopric. The image of the founding of the church upon St. Peter is not only a universal image of Christ's founding of the church on earth but also a reminder that the archbishopric of Ohrid was formed on the territory of ancient Illyricum which once belonged to Rome and was handed over as a result of an agreement between pope Vigilius and emperor Justinian for the purpose of founding the autocephalos church of Justiniana Prima. Supposedly, the independence and high rank of the archbishopric of Ohrid found justification in those facts. In his letter to patriarch Germanos II (from the 1220's), the archbishop of Ohrid Demetrios Chomatenos goes on to say that the emperor Justinian, in establishing the hierarchy of the most ancient and great patriarchal sees, called the pope of old Rome the first among priests, the patriarch of Constantinople the second and directly after him made mention of the see of the Bulgarian archbishopric, i.e. Ohrid. In the fresco decoration of the Virgin Peribleptos these references to the Roman and Constantinopolitan church were substituted by images of their founders, a common procedure in Byzantine iconography. Just as it did in Chomatenos's letter, the presence of the apostle Andrew was there to point out that the church of Ohrid belonged to the Orthodox world. The second argument upholding the ancient origins and independence of the church of Ohrid - reflected by both the title of its prelates and the wall paintings of the Peribleptos - is based on its ties with the ancient archbishopric of Bulgaria. That is why its archbishops strove to develop the cults of "Bulgarian" saints, primarily that of St. Clement. The text of his vita (XII century), ascribed to Theophylaktos of Ohrid, celebrates him as the most commendable missionary of the Bulgarian people, and in the Catalogue of Bulgarian archbishops (from the same century) he is mentioned in such a manner that one gets the impression that Clement was the first prelate of the territory of the future archbishopric of Ohrid. Such a calculated treatment of St. Clement was especially intensified in the XIII century, as attested in particular by his synaxarion vita and service, in which he is referred to as the thirteenth apostle. A similar phenomenon developed also in the decoration of the church of the Virgin Peribleptos in which Clement plays the role of the first prelate of Ohrid and the perpetuator of the activities of the apostles painted on the wall opposite his image. In order to express clearly and most thoroughly the idea of the origins and the nature of the Archbishopric, it was also necessary to include in this group an image of one archbishop of Ohrid and so the choice fell on Constantine Kabasilas, whose memory was still alive and who, moreover, was the only actually canonized archbishop of Ohrid. Finally, we should also inquire why this ideologically colored fresco decoration appeared in 1294/95 in the church of the Virgin Peribleptos. The theory of the supposed origins of the archbishopric of Ohrid greatly gained in importance in the course of the events related to the Union of Lyon. This time it was suitably used in an attempt to abolish the Serbian archbishopric and the Bulgarian (Trnovo) patriarchate, founded at a somewhat earlier date and for the most part on the one-time territory of the archbishopric of Ohrid. Such pretensions appeared openly in the charter issued by emperor Michael VIII to the archbishopric of Ohrid (1272) and in his memorandum to the pope, read at the Council of Lyon in 1274. Moreover, in 1282 the Serbian king Milutin conquered vast Byzantine territories so that certain administrative units of the archbishopric of Ohrid were not only dislocated within a different state but also became a part of a different, Serbian church. So while the Byzantine emperor attempted to recapture these territories by military force, the archbishop of Ohrid, Makarios, strove to demonstrate visually on the walls of the church of the Virgin Peribleptos the supposed origins of his archbishopric and thus also to claim its rights, through the images of the apostles Peter and Andrew and saints Clement and Constantine Kabasilas. Because of its political engagement, this painted decoration remained unique in medieval art and should thus find explanation in particular ideological and political motives.