They earnestly desired to have the Bible and the church-services in their own vernacular language, while the Greek Patriarch and his bishops insisted upon using only the ancient Greek.

The people desired to have their children taught in the schools through the language of their own homes, while the bishops insisted that the instruction should be in the Greek language.

They desired that their bishops and other ecclesiastics should be chosen from among themselves; but the Patriarch forced upon them Greek bishops, men of a foreign tongue, and foreign habits and sympathies, whose whole aim was to keep the people under the galling yoke of ecclesiastical tyranny.[1] [1] _Missionary Herald_, 1858, p.

322.
What the Bulgarian people specially desired was ecclesiastical independence; and, in order to be freed from their forced dependence on the Greek Patriarchate, their leading men sometimes inclined to go over to the Pope.

This of course was favored by the intrigues of the Jesuits, and politically by all the power of France.