Written by Prof.dr. Nebi Dervishi. Translation Petrit Latifi

The Monastery of Saint Naum is a medieval church. In the foundations of the present-day Church of Saint Naum, located 30 km. away, south of Ohrid, on the shores of Lake Ohrid and near the Albanian-Macedonian state border, the remains of an old church of Saint Archangel Michael with triconch foundations have been found, which was built by Naum of Ohrid, known in Albanian church history with the name Oshnari, in the year 896.

Writing about an event from a time distance of more than 1100 years, when the founder of the Church of Saint Archangel Michael, the illustrious Naum (Oshnari), lived, is a complex and difficult task.

Geographer Manrert writes: “We know and understand much better the coasts of America and Africa as well as the depths of Asia than the regions so close to Europe, i.e. Epirus, Illyria and Macedonia.” Meanwhile, the researcher G. Grote concludes: “The geography of the areas where in ancient times the great peoples lived: the Illyrians, Macedonians and Thracians is still barely known to us today”. These two statements are quoted by M. Dhimica in the old two-volume geography dedicated to ancient Macedonia and Albania, published in 1870 in Athens.

I bring these quotes because often, speaking about the natural beauties of the region, we also mention the monastery of Saint Naum, but not many details are known since the time of its foundation in 896, especially the details of its separation from the Arbër land.

To talk about Saint Naum, we are forced to return to the dark twilight of the early Middle Ages. After the division of the Roman Empire in 395, the Balkan Peninsula entered the framework of the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium. The rule of this empire, with the interruption of the barbarian invasions that continued on the peninsula until the fall of the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, to the Turks in 1453, was continuous.

The barbarians Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Huns, Avars, Slavs and Normans, going through a strange flux and reflux, left no other traces or memories, except for the destruction of each other’s works and ruins.

The first leader of the Bulgarians, the Tatar Ishperih Khan (pagan) founded the First Bulgarian Kingdom in 679. Boris of the Bulgarians (852 – 893) after embracing the Christian religion in 865, having been baptized by Michael III, the emperor of Byzantium, took his name. The brothers Cyril and Methodius were from Thessaloniki.

Their father, Leo, was Greek and this is a fact known even to the Bulgarians. Some believe that their mother was Slavic and taught her sons her language. Others believe that Slavic had also penetrated Thessaloniki, where the two brothers had the opportunity to learn this language.

Cyril and Methodius were learned men and had a good command of Slavic. Cyril, before becoming a monk, was called Constantine, and, being a layman, was called to serve as a librarian in the imperial palace of Byzantium, while Methodius was entrusted with a high office in the internal imperial administration in Asia Minor.

The interest of the Byzantine emperor sought to bring all the southern Slavic regions under his political influence, through religion. This also corresponded to the desire for religious propaganda that the patriarch of that time, Photius, nurtured. The emperor and the patriarch, appreciating Cyril’s extensive culture, thought of sending him to Bohemia and Moravia to combat Catholicism that had spread among the Slavs of those regions.

To give success to the man they had in mind, they decided to entrust him with the creation of the Slavic alphabet and the translation of the Gospel, thus giving the Moravian and southern Slavs the opportunity to read the holy book in their own language, which Catholicism would not allow because it considered Hebrew, Greek and Latin to be suitable and permissible languages.

Cyril fulfilled this order by deriving the Slavic alphabet from Greek letters and for specific sounds he created special signs in the image of Hellenic letters. This alphabet, which saw the light of day in 855, was called “glagolitic”. Cyril died in 869, although he was younger than his brother in Rome, who had gone there to escape the intrigues of his Catholic enemies in Moravia. Methodius died in 885 in Velegrad as Archbishop of Bohemia and Moravia.

The students of Cyril and Methodius were: Gorazd, Angelar, Laurentius, Clement and Naum. We note that Laurentius and Clement are Latin and not Slavic. This proves that these students were found where Cyril and Methodius carried out their activity, in Moravia and Bohemia. With the victory of Catholicism in those regions, they fled to avoid being sold as slaves in the markets of Byzantium and found refuge in Velegrad, where the representative of Tsar Boris Michael I received them with great honors as foreigners.

If they had been Bulgarians, they would have gone to Bulgaria long ago. Clement and Naum were summoned by Tsar Boris to Plish, the capital of the Bulgarians. Clement had recently developed the “Glagolic” alphabet, which he named “Cyrillic” in honor of its first compiler. Clement was later named was bishop of Dembrica and Velika with his seat in Ohrid, while Naum remained with Boris as an advisor on religious and linguistic matters or to relax (885 – 893).

Naum did not leave a written work, but he developed intense religious activity. After Clement became bishop, Naum withdrew into solitude on the shores of Lake Ohrid, near the sources of the Black Drin. In 905 he founded the monastery that is known today by his name, but which he himself had baptized Saint Archangel. He died in 910 and his body was buried in this monastery.

From that time until 1912, the monastery of Saint Naum was administered by the Orthodox, by the Patriarchate of Istanbul, with the exception of the years 1870 – 1874 when it was administered by the Macedonian Orthodox who were associated with the Bulgarian Exarchate. During the Serbian occupation, the high priest of this monastery was always Albanian.

Various international conventions and acts such as the London Ambassadorial Conference of 1912-1913, the Florence Protocol, the Paris Conference, the League of Nations and the International Court of Justice in The Hague recognized Albania’s truncated right to Saint Naum.

What does the London Ambassadorial Conference say about Saint Naum?

The decisions taken by the London Conference on the borders of Albania in 1913 also mention Saint Naum. But Albania’s ill-wishers interpreted that part of the protocol as unspecified as to which state the monastery would remain.

The London text states: “… The provinces… with the entire western shore of Lake Ohrid, the shore which extends from the village of Lin to the monastery of Saint Naum.”

The International Commission charged with the demarcation of the borders between Albania and Serbia arrived in October 1913 and operated from Lin to Mount Korab. Due to the winter, it suspended its work until the spring of 1914. From May 1914, the Border Commission worked in the Shkodra sector, until the outbreak of World War I (August 1, 1914) it was forced to leave Albania. Therefore, the International Commission for the Albanian-Serbian border did not have time to work in the sector of the Monastery of Saint Naum.

Thus, the text of the protocol, as will be mentioned in the following pages, and especially the words “up to the Monastery of Saint Naum” left the meaning in doubt since it did not expressly state that it belonged to Albania. According to the analogies that will be mentioned in the chapter on the High Court of The Hague, Saint Naum was understood to be within Albania (by analogy with the Greek border, Ftelja).

The solution of this problem was also delayed by the Paris Peace Conference in 1921. It reconfirmed nothing but that of 1913, i.e. it left the issue in abeyance. This was the reason why the members of the Boundary Commission submitted this issue for resolution to the Conference of Ambassadors.

The final decision

The Conference, on December 6, 1922, decided that the monastery of Saint Naum should remain with Albania. And this was a final decision. The Yugoslav government belatedly protested this decision, demanding its annulment. Then the Conference turned to the Council of the League of Nations to find out whether the main allied powers had fulfilled the mission that the Assembly of the League had assigned them on October 2, 1921, a mission that had to do with Saint Naum.

Since the issue was of a legal nature, the Council of the League of Nations turned to the International Court of Justice in The Hague for an advisory opinion. This, considering that as drafted with the 1913 text it could not be precisely indicated where the border line would pass in Saint Naum, judged that the issue would be resolved only after the decision of December 6, 1922, a decision that it considered necessary to end the conflict, because, being early, the decision of 1913 and incomplete that of 1921, the decision of 1922 appeared more than necessary (on the eve of the decision of 1922 it was the Kingdom of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that had asked Albania to prefer the future decision).

Albania was convinced, but when the decision did not please Yugoslavia, it protested. Also, the Hague Court expressed the opinion that with the decision of 1922, the main allied powers had completed their mission. The decision of 1922 was definitive. On December 31, 1924, a few days after the overthrow of the democratic government of Fan Noli in Albania, the Conference, according to the defined border line, recognized the monastery of Saint Naum to Albania, but at the same time recognized a large part of the monastery districts, such as Lubanište, Trepezica, up to 750 meters before the gates of the monastery, to Yugoslavia.

Alarup remained with Albania. The border climbed high up the Galičica mountain. Consequently, the surface of Lake Ohrid was also divided between the two states, but by moving the border towards Saint Naum, although it remained in Albania, the largest water surface remained with the Yugoslav state.

Ahmet Zogs decision to give the monastery to Yugoslavia

The events of 1925 will show the unexpected turn of counter-revolutionary color in the issue of Saint Naum, an issue, previously, completely resolved in favor of Albania, which Zog of this 1926 would contain few events regarding the issue of Saint Naum, but in July of that year the signature for the donation of Saint Naum would be finally cast.