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Rh lasted four years. During those years the situation was further complicated by the question of the Bulgarian Church.

The Bulgars were Turanians who had poured against the northern frontier of the Empire, coming from the middle of Asia, since ithe 6th century. In the year 861 Bogoris, their prince, wanted to become a Christian and to make his people be converted as well. He was baptized by a missionary sent from Constantinople, with many of his people. In 865 Photius wrote an Encyclical to Bogoris and his Bulgars, explaining the Christian faith and the duties of a Christian man. There was as yet no bishop in Bulgaria. A layman from Constantinople came, pretending to be a priest and administering sacraments; then they discovered the fraud and cut off his nose and ears. Others come and set up business as prophets, magicians, and so on. Bogoris seems to have got tired of the Byzantines. He wanted to be free of them and to connect his Church rather with the Latins. So in 866 he sends an embassy to the Pope at Rome and another to the Emperor Lewis the German, King of the East Franks (843–876), at Regensburg. He begs the Pope to send him a patriarch, no less, to rule the Bulgarian Church, evidently wishing to be free of the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople. But Nicholas knows of another way in which the Bulgars may be independent of Constantinople. They have settled in Illyricum, therefore they belong to the Latin Patriarchate. He sends them two bishops, Paul of Populonia and Formosus, who had succeeded the deposed Rodoald at the Portus Tiberis. With them he sends books and sacred vessels and an admirable pastoral letter answering all their questions and again explaining the Christian faith. He promises them, not a patriarch but an archbishop, who shall have the Pallium from himself and shall then rule their Church. Formosus would have liked to be this archbishop; but Nicholas tells him to come back when the embassy is over and to look