As mentioned in the previous text, despite Turkish rule, Vodocha remained Christian, and it is still the seat of the Strumica Diocese. As we know from travel writers who visited the Strumica Valley during that time, the region was known for its vineyards. The landscape and the water field would slowly begin to change, leading to the impoverishment of the village. Numerous taxes were introduced, including usury, which amounted to one-tenth of the yield and production. The hardest tax for the people to bear was the “blood tax,” or devshirme, which involved the forcible seizure of Christian children to fill the ranks of the janissary corps. This tax was collected until the beginning of the 19th century when the janissary corps was abolished as a military order. Unfortunately, there is no data on how many Vodochans ended up as janissaries.
Various ornaments for women’s clothing were found in Vodocha, highlighting the unique nature of the tax that affected the village and the Strumica Valley. In May 1566, an extraordinary tax was demanded of the kadis in Strumica, Štip, Skopje, and about a dozen other neighbouring Macedonian, Bulgarian, and Serbian areas. They were ordered by the population to gather a total of 223,690 sheep, which were to be sent to Belgrade in preparation for Sultan’s attempt to conquer Vienna. The Strumica Kadi was obliged to provide a flock of 25,900 sheep for this contingent, nearly emptying the valley of sheep.
An Akce, a Turkish coin used as a means of payment, was found in Vodocha, providing insight into the village’s function and production during that time. According to Turkish ledgers from 1570, the village produced 60 loads of wheat, 46 loads of mixed grain, sorghum, silk, vegetable crops, onions, cucumbers, leeks, pumpkins, grapes, wine, fruit (especially cherries), nuts, almonds, hay, grass, and pigs. Bees were also kept in the village. The inhabitants themselves, voivodes, pashas, and spahis in Vodocha, had a total of 19 mills. Due to the strong water from the river that comes out of the gorge valley in the field, there were a large number of mills around the village. According to calculations from the Turkish ledgers, in the 14th century, the village of Vodocha earned income and paid an annual tax in the amount of 13,928 Akce.
During this period, Turks in the region, including Strumica, introduced a new type of draft animal, the buffalo, which was previously unknown in Macedonia. For the first time, the Vodocha field was introduced to new crops, such as cotton, rice, and sesame, and later tobacco (brought from America) and poppy plants spread. Watermelons were also brought to the region for the first time. This period, at the beginning of the 1500s, is also marked by the appearance of the first “adjustment”Hajduks” in the area. There were probably “Hajduks” among them, considering that quite experienced soldiers lived in the village, as can be seen from the archaeological findings.
Jewellery found in Vodocha, in the grave of a girl from a noble family, indicates that the population of the village continued to live in fairly good financial conditions. The ring found in the grave of the young noblewoman suggests that the population remained predominantly Christian and continued to cherish the age-old cult of the mother goddess with great respect.
The ring, with its floral motif, shows a deeply rooted symbolism (which has points of contact with the motif of the lily, the lotus, etc.), and in the Christian culture, it overlaps with an appropriate religious meaning. Its meaning can be translated as “Rose of the Heavens,” which is identified with the Virgin Mary, another in a series of evidence of how strong the cult of fertility and the mother goddess was.
An interesting fact about Vodocha can be found in the writings surrounding the abolition of the Ohrid Archbishopric that occurred in 1767. With its abolition, the Patriarchate of Constantinople further strengthened its positions both in Macedonia and Strumica, and religious services began to be performed in Greek. Those writings point to the fact that Slavic worship and Church-Slavic literacy were almost destroyed in the first two or three decades of the 19th century. And yet, even at that time, the service in the Old Slavic language, according to the claim of the Bulgarian Metropolitan Gerasim, was held only in the village of Vodocha, while the Veljusa Monastery was in the hands of the Patriarchate.
Vodocha remained one of the strongholds of the Ohrid Archdiocese even after its abolition. The abolition of the Ohrid Archdiocese also contributed to the decline in the significance of Vodocha as the seat of the Strumica Diocese. The period after 1760 is characterized by fewer archaeological finds around the monastery, which can be attributed to the fact that Greek propaganda was not particularly interested in Vodocha, which continued to be the seat of Slavism in the valley. Such a development of events would transfer Vodocha to the margins of the valley and slowly begin to bring the village into a long period of stagnation.
It is known that in the 14th century, the monastery suffered a catastrophic fire, but two strong earthquakes would be fatal for the village and the monastery. One of them, as recorded by Priest Marko of Novo Selo, occurred on August 21, 1863, early in the morning. The second earthquake occurred in 1931 and destroyed the monastery.
During this period, around 1860, we find data that liturgy continued to be performed in the Slavic language in the Vodocha church. The most deserving of this was the priest Todor Žilkov, for whom the only other information that exists is that he spent some time in prison in Seres. This period is also characterized by the fact that a large number of schools began to open in the Strumica Valley. With the efforts of prominent villager Dimcho Hadji Penev, in 1866, the first school was opened in Novo Selo. This example would soon be followed by the villagers from Dabilja, Vasilevo, Vodocha, and Sachevo, whose schools were opened in the same year, which means that the first secular school in Vodocha was opened in 1866.
The following period would be distinguished by the great influence of both Greek and Bulgarian propaganda in the entire current basin. With the creation of the Bulgarian Exarchate in February 1870 (sanctioned also by the Sultan in 1872) and especially the establishment of the Bulgarian state in 1873, a new storm would engulf the Strumica valley. The situation would further deteriorate due to the insistence of foreign propagandists to change the character of the revival movement in Macedonia and direct it to their interest.
Knowing the weakness of its positions in Strumica, the Exarchate (until 1897 it failed to appoint its bishop here as well) would always pay special care and attention to the Strumica Diocese. But that didn’t help much. In Sultan’s firman, which sanctioned the act of creation of the Exarchate, the Strumica Diocese remained outside the Exarchate Diocese. With that, Vodocha continued to be the centre of Macedonian church life, without the influence of the Bulgarian and Greek churches.
It is interesting to note that the end of the 1800s, is a time when the church propagandas, managed to exert strong enough pressure on the Turkish authorities to conduct a population census, which they used to their advantage. The population census, titled “Ethnography of the Vilayets of Adrianople, Monastir, and Thessaloniki,” was included in a book published in 1878 in Constantinople, and Vodocha is also mentioned in it. That year, there were 40 houses and 73 inhabitants in the village. The inhabitants are listed under two counts, Christians and Muslims, and all the inhabitants of the village declared themselves as Bulgarians, which was used for all Christians at the time as the census offered no other option.
The Bulgarian propaganda first officially entered the Strumica Valley in December 1897, when the Turkish government issued three berats (for the Strumica, Bitola, and Debar dioceses), resulting in Strumica getting its first Bulgarian bishop, Archimandrite Gerasim (mentioned earlier in the text). He would be remembered as a sinister man who actively worked against Macedonian interests and brought great suffering to the people. Fortunately, at that time, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO) appeared and began to operate in the Strumica basin, enabling the population to resist foreign propaganda to a certain extent. Goce Delchev, who visited the Strumica region several times, contributed to this resistance. In fact, Strumica became fertile ground for the revolutionary activities of VMRO.
Goce first visited Strumica in 1895 on his way from Kukush to Shtip. He stayed in Strumica again, twice in 1897. Thus, Goce’s first biographer P. Javorov reported that around St. Peter’s Day (July 12, 1897), Goce Delchev, with a small detachment, spent several days in Strumica. There is no written evidence of whether he visited Vodocha during that period, but the village’s patron saint’s day was chosen in his honour to be St. Peter’s Day.
Somewhat later, the rich and diverse activities of VMRO would contribute to turbulent events which took place before the Ilinden Uprising, with many imprisonments, arrests, and torture of the population. This would result in the Strumica district being poorly prepared for the beginning of the uprising, and that is why the uprising would not gain much momentum in the Strumica Valley. As mentioned earlier, this was a consequence of the so-called “failures.” The first major failure in Strumica was the so-called “Novoselska Affair,” which occurred in the spring of 1900. The second “failure” would be directly related to Vodocha. Namely, in September 1902, a clash between Turkish soldiers and Andon Kjoseto’s detachment (he was originally from Veles) in the village of Borievo led to a large number of arrests and conflicts throughout the valley. Immediately, 17 people from the village were imprisoned, while four became outlaws and joined the detachments of the Organization.
The initiated police investigation and the judicial process expanded the failure to a series of other villages: Monospitovo, Bosilovo, Kuklish, Dabile, Murtino, Novo Selo, Robovo, Sachеvo, Piperovo, Popchevo, Belotino, Drvosh, Vodocha, Veljusa, Barbarevo, Nivichino, and others. From Novo Selo alone, about a hundred villagers were imprisoned again. In total, 428 people were imprisoned in these raids, but due to the denial of the accusations, only 26 people were convicted and imprisoned in Thessaloniki.
In 1905, another census of the population was conducted, in which, unfortunately, the population was again unable to identify themselves as Macedonian. On this census, a small increase in the village population can be noted since the last one in 1878, so in 1905, 112 residents were recorded, all Christians, who belonged to the Exarchate (Bulgarian Church). During this period, Vodocha was already under the Exarchate, although the monastery was in poor condition, and it is not known whether religious services were held there at that time.
