Acts 16:9 ....And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, "Come over into Macedonia, and help us".

The historical sources are not clear whether representatives from Macedonia attended the First Ecumenical Synod of Nicea in 325. However, the Second Synod at Serdica in 343 was attended by Parigorius, the first Metropolitan of Skopje, and his suffragan the Bishop of Ulpiana (present-day Liplyan); both supported Orthodoxy. The presence of Parigorius proves that there were organized bishoprics in Macedonia headed by metropolitans and bishops since the first decades of the 4th century. In the 5th century the church in Macedonia was well-organized. Of the two metropolitan's dioceses in Thessaloniki and Skopje, the diocese in Thessaloniki was more influential due to its foundation by the Apostle Paul.

During the reign of the emperor Justinian I (527-565), who came from the village of Tauresium in the Skopje region, a new town was built near the emperor's birthplace, named Justiniana Prima after him. The Metropolitan of Skopje was appointed an autocephalous Archbishop. Cathellian was the first Archbishop of the Archdiocese Justiniana Prima, at the time the third by honour among the local Orthodox Churches, after Rome and Constantinople. The other archbishops were: Benenat, Paul, John I, Leon and the last one John IX, who in 680-81 took part at the Trullo Council in Constantinople.

The Christianization of the Slavs in the Balkans and the development of Slavic liturgy and literacy gave a completely new quality to the development of the church in Macedonia. Prince Boris of Bulgaria, after the establishment of the Bulgarian state incorporating a part of Macedonia, ordained Clement as Bishop of Dremvica and Velika (893) with a residence in Ohrid, wherein Clement became the first Macedonian-Slavic bishop. The religious service in his bishopric was, of course, held in the language of the Macedonian Slavs, and Ohrid became an educational, literary and a church center.

Once the Samoils' state was established, the necessity for an independent Macedonian church became imperative. Until the time of Samoil, the church in Macedonia had been under the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Patriarchate founded by Tsar Symeon without the approval of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. At that time eparchies are recorded as existing in the Macedonian towns of Voden, Meglen, Serres, Ohrid and Skopje. The success of the komitopulis' uprising and the wresting of Macedonia away from Byzantine rule (the Bulgarian Empire had fallen in the meantime) demanded that ecclesiastical authority be independent of Byzantine authority and lie close to the secular authority of Samuil, both geographically and ideologically. The centre of the church moved to Prespa on the island of Achilles, where Samuil built a magnificent church to house it. The relics of St. Achilles were brought from Larissa, which Samuil conquered in 985.

Somewhere in the late 10th century when Samuil transferred his capital from Prespa to Ohrid, he likewise moved the residence of the archbishopric, known hereafter as the Archbishopric of Ohrid. As Samuil's empire expanded, the jurisdiction of his church was extended as well. The first archbishop of the Archbishopric of Ohrid was Philip, who retained this position from its foundation until the murder of Gavril Radomir in 1015. When Ivan Vladislav took the throne, Philip was dismissed from his post.

With the fall of Ohrid under Ottoman rule at the close of the 14th century the Archbishopric of Ohrid was legalized before the Turkish authorities and strengthened its rights, as had the Patriarchate of Constantinople after 1453, and for a period in the 15th century both the territory of Serbia and a part of Bulgaria came under its ecclesiastical jurisdiction.


In the 20th century, during the period of the Second World War and the course of the military actions of the struggle for Macedonian statehood, the Macedonians put the question of an autocephalous church. In 1943, when the national liberation movement became a massive uprising and when the first liberated territory was established in the village of Izdeglavje in the Debar district of the Ohrid region, the First Assembly of Macedonian Clergy was held on 21st October and a decision was taken to form an Archpriests' Governership with the aim of its developing into an autocephalous Macedonian church.

The Macedonian Orthodox Church is administered by an assembly and consists of the Eparchies of Skopje, Prespa and Bitola, Debar and Kicevo, Bregalnica, Polog and Kumanovo, Vardar, Strumica, the American and Canadian Eparchy and the Australian Eparchy, while a European Macedonian Eparchy is in the process of formation.