Devol (Bulgarian: Девол) also DeabolisorDiabolis, (Greek: Δεάβολις) was a medieval fortress and bishopric in western Macedonia, located south of Lake Ohrid in what is today the south-eastern corner of Albania (Devoll District). Its precise location is unknown today, but it is thought to have been located by the river of the same name (today Devoll River), and on the Roman Via Egnatia road. It is first mentioned in historical sources in John Skylitzes' account of the Byzantine-Bulgarian Wars under Emperor Basil II, whose general Eustathios Daphnomeles is said to have subdued some of the last Bulgarian resisting forces concentrated in Deabolis in 1018.[1] The place is also mentioned in a 1019 charter granted by Basil to the Bulgarian church, as a kastron (castle) under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Kastoria.
Plan of the medieval fortress Devol
It is not precisely known when Deabolis became a bishopric. Saint Clement of Ohrid (ca. 840–916), an eminent medieval Bulgarian writer, is supposed to have been its bishop around 900, according to the saint's vita written by Theophylact of Ohrid some 200 years later; however, the first independent contemporary documents confirming its status as a bishopric are of a later date.[2]
The place Deabolis/Devol on the Devoll river should not be confused with a different medieval fortress likewise called Deabolis, or Devolgrad, situated further east in today's Macedonia, near Kavadarci.[7]
^Kazhdan, Alexander, The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Vol. 1, p. 616f., citing Skylitzes, Synopsis of Histories 360.43, 60.
