Memorial of the liberation of the Bulgarian Church from the Greek Ecumenical Patriarchate after fifteen...

Roman Catholic missionaries first tried to convert the Bulgarians during the reign of Tsar Boris I in the middle of the 9th century. They were unsuccessful, and Boris I led the Bulgarians in their conversion to Eastern Christianity. In 1204 the Bulgarian Tsar Kaloyan (1197-1207) formed a short-lived union between the Roman Catholic Church and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church as a political tactic to balance the religious power of the Byzantine Empire. The union ended when the Latin Emperor of Constantinople Baldwin I declared war on Bulgaria in 1205. The Catholic Church had no influence in the Bulgarian Empire after that date, and the Bulgarian Patriarchate was reestablished in 1235.