This paper attempts to analyse political fragmentation of the Orthodox Christian communities along the ethnic lines in the late Ottoman Balkans during the Patriarchist-Exarchist confrontation. Throughout the Ottoman Empire, people known as Rums comprised the urban élites of the Orthodox Christian communities in the cities as well as skilled shopkeepers and artisans of regional market centres, and peasants in the villages and fishing towns. These people regarded themselves neither Greek nor Bulgarian, but heirs of the Roman Empire; and Orthodox Christianity played an important role in their identity-formation. After the recognition of the Bulgarian millet distinct from the millet-i Rum by the Sublime Porte in March 1870, Greek and Bulgarian national identities competing with each other started to be constructed by the nationalist intelligentsias. Following the establishment of the Bulgarian Principality in 1878, the Bulgarian Exarchate became an apparatus of the nation-state. Sought for aid and protection from the nation-state, the Exarchate, in return, supported the régime and its national ideals in the Principality and autonomous province of Eastern Rumelia. In other words, this nationalized church became an instrument of the Bulgarian nationalism; however, the Patriarchate’s vision remained closer to that of the Ottoman reformers of the Tanzimat. Besides, establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate prepared the ground for the Macedonian Question, a series of political and military conflict, in the late Ottoman period. The most sinister effects of this nationalist conflict under the guise of an ecclesiastical rivalry between the Patriarchists and Exarchists were felt in the regions with mixed populations in Macedonia. As nationhood was articulated as a normative standard in the 19th century, the new notions of secular statehood and nationality disrupted religiously-defined collective identities and Orthodox ecumenism in the south-eastern edge of Europe. At long last, the shared past of the Orthodox peoples, which prevailed over a chiliad, were shattered by the rival nationalisms of the nascent nation-states.