State institutions were established in Samuil’s state and vast state and ecclesiastical systems were

formed as well as a standing army. All of this enabled Macedonia to institute the process of tribal
integration into a people in the 10th century. And thus the tradition of Samuil, the founder of an
imperial dynasty, became permanently linked to it.
Samuil’s empire, which was a typical early-feudal state, existed up to the year 1018. In the course of
Byzantine rule (11th and 12th centuries) there were two large-scale uprisings whose ultimate goal
was the renewal of Samuil’s Empire. These endeavors, however, bore no success.
Throughout the entire period of Byzantine rule the Macedonians continued to cherish their ethnic
characteristics – their language, culture and customs. Even in Ohrid itself, the seat of the
Archbishopric, the citizens of Ohrid. as the Greek Archbishop Theophilact himself declared,
continued to communicate in their mother tongue which was for him a “barbarian” one. Likewise
the name Macedonia continued to be used as is testified to in the letters of Theophilact of Ohrid
himself, who stated to the recipients of the letters that he lived “within the narrow confines of our
Macedonia” (13).
And in the following centuries, when the Macedonians had a variety of alien overlords, they
remained as a separate Slavonic people. It is, for example, confirmed in the synodal acts of the
Archbishopric of Ohrid that in the first half of the 13th century, when Macedonia came under the
rule of the Despots of Epirus, the inhabitants of Macedonia continued to declare themselves as
Macedonians (14). Such was the case too in the first half of the 14th century when the greater part
of Macedonia came under Serbian rule. Even the Serbian ruler himself in his law-code (the
Ravenica Transcript) is entitled “the bountiful and Christ-loving Macedonian Czar Stefan the sole
ruler of the Serbian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Dalmatian, Albanian, Hungaro-vallachian and many
other parts and lands” (15). Tzar Dushan, who was corronated in Skopje, is also designated both in
the Sofia and the Zagreb transcripts of the Law-Code as “Macedonian Czar” (16). Such broader
titling of Dushan was, as Ivan Snegarov says, a result of the fact that he had a large number of alien
peoples under his rule (17).
After the collapse of Dushan’s Empire towards the middle of the 14th century a number of
independent feudal states and districts were created in the territory of Macedonia. The chief place
among these was occupied by the Kingdom of Prilep, which was established in 1365 by King
Volkasin (1365 – 71) and which, after his death, was administered by his son Marko (1371 – 1395),
as an independent Macedonian ruler until 1385 and thereafter as a vassal of Ottoman Turkey.
Smaller states were established by Uglesha (Volkasin’s brother), by Constantine and other
independent rulers (18). After the death of Marko and Constantine at the Battle of Rovine (1395), in
which they took part as Ottoman Turkish vassals, the whole territory of Macedonia (with the
exception of Salonica) came under direct Turkish Ottoman rule.