Leo of Ohrid

Leo of Ohrid (died 1056) was a leading 11th century churchman and advocate of the Eastern Orthodox view.

He is first noted as holding a position in the Hagia Sophia. In 1037 he was consecrated as autocephalous archbishop of "the whole of Bulgaria", becoming the first Archbishop of Ohrid. Under Leo's auspices in Ohrid was erected the new seat of the Bulgarian archbishops - the cathedral church of St. Sophia.

He presented various ecclesiastical arguments against the western Church. One of his differences with the Western Church was their eating of meat with blood which he felt violated Acts 15:20. His writings were very important in the debates leading up to the schism between the Orthodox and Catholic churches.

A letter that he wrote to Bishop John of Trani in 1053 and intended for the Pope and all the Latin bishops, as an attack in particular on the use of unleavened bread for celebrating the Eucharist, caused relations between the episcopal sees of Rome and Constantinople to worsen, and led to the East-West Schism of 1054 and the existence as separate Churches of the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.

See also

• Azymite

Sources

• The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, vol. 2, p. 1215.