Arseny II (Archbishop of Ohrid)

Archbishop Arsenius II - the last autocephalous archbishop of Ohrid ( 1763 - January 16, 1767 )

Before accession to the Ohrid throne, he was Metropolitan of the Pelagonian Ohrid Archbishopric (after 1759 - 1763). He was elected to the Ohrid chair contrary to the intention of the Ecumenical Patriarch Johnnikius III to put his protosinkella hieromonk Ananias.

In January 1767, he signed a letter to the Ecumenical Patriarch Samuel I on the abdication of the Ohrid Department with reference to the heavy debts of the archbishopric. On January 16 of the same year, dioceses with the Bulgarian population on the rights of the Prespan Metropolis were transferred to the Patriarchate of Constantinople; The Pelagonian diocese was left to Arseny, on June 24 of that year also subordinate to the Patriarchate.

Subsequently, he was exiled to the Athos Zografsky Monastery , where he lived until the end of his honor in honor of the Bulgarian monks Athos.

In the first half of the 19th century, his name became one of the myths used by the Bulgarians in their struggle for separation from the Ecumenical Patriarchate . In the 1870s, the Bulgarian poet Grigor Pirlichev wrote two songs about the fighters for Bulgarian church independence as the continuers of the Arseny case.