Joachim III of Bulgaria

Joachim III of Bulgaria
Patriarch of Bulgaria
Church	Bulgarian Orthodox Church
Installed	c. 1282
Term ended	1300
Predecessor	Macarius
Successor	Dorotheus
Personal details
Nationality	Bulgarian
Denomination	Eastern Orthodox Church

Joachim III (Bulgarian: Йоаким III) was the Patriarch of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church between c. 1282 and 1300, when the Second Bulgarian Empire reached its lowest point of decline during the reign of the emperors George Terter I, Smilets and Chaka. He was executed for treason by emperor Theodore Svetoslav in 1300. The Church did not recognize his guilt and his name was included in the list of Bulgarian Patriarchs in the Book of Boril. His seat was Tarnovo, the capital of Bulgaria.

Between 1272 and 1274 Joachim was included in the Bulgarian delegation that visited Constantinople to discuss the proposal of Pope Gregory X to the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus to end the Great Schism that divided the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church since 1054. In Constantinople Joachim established contacts with the future Pope Nicholas IV, the leader of the western delegation, and it is likely that initially he was inclined to support a union between the two Churches. However, the Bulgarian empress-consort Maria Palaiologina Kantakouzene (r. 1269–1279), a niece of Michael VIII and in a lifelong feud with her uncle, urged the Church to oppose the Byzantines, who were inclined to negotiate with the Catholics. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church, that considered itself a centre of the Orthodox Christianity ever since the fall of Constantinople to the armies of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, strongly opposed the proposed union and the apparent willingness of the Byzantines to make concessions. The then Bulgarian Patriarch Ignatius was called "pillar of Orthodoxy". It seems that Joachim remained loyal to the position of the Bulgarian Patriarchate, which explains his quick rise in the church hierarchy.

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