THE FRONTIER 17TH CENTURY.
THE LETTERS OF BULGARIAN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS – A PHENOMENON FROM THE PERIPHERY
SUMMARY
Dr Dilyana Radoslavova,
Institute of Literature, BAS
Why frontier? In the history of Bulgarian literature and letters the 17th century is considered to be
the last one of the prolonged mediaeval tradition and a period of changes preceding the era of the
Revival literature. The main change was the appearance of the first new-Bulgarian texts in the socalled damaskini. These were miscellanies based on Damaskenos Studite’s Thesaurus, a 16thcentury Greek vernacular collection of selected sermons and saints’ lives.
In the Bulgarian milieu, unlike in the rest of the Slavic Orthodox traditions, the Thesaurus
gained a popularity as great as it had among the Greeks. It was originally translated into Church
Slavonic probably in the last decades of the 16th century. In the 17th century, among others, the
so-called “Sredna gora” anonymous and non-localised translation became the most widely
disseminated one and a base for the new-Bulgarian version. The damaskini were various in
content and also included non-Thesaurus texts.
The phenomenon has been thoroughly studied from linguistic and text critical point of
view, yet the questions of where exactly the archaic and the new version arose and how and why
did the new miscellanies become so popular remain unanswered. A possible explanation is to be
sought by studying the damaskini as part of the whole 17th-century manuscript tradition and
against the background of the activity of the known scribal centers and scribes, and of the
circumstances this activity was conducted in.
Why from the periphery? The survey shows that, in many respects, the literary activity
took place on the periphery. Socially, the Bulgarian Orthodox Christians had the lowest status of
“raya” (non-Muslims) in the Ottoman theocratic state. They were, to a degree, marginalized in
their own confessional community in the Empire, the so-called “Greek millet” which was
represented to the Ottoman authorities by the Constantinopolitan patriarch. The Bulgarian lands
were divided between three autocephalous churches: the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the
Archbishopric of Ohrid, and the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć. On the wide geo-confessional map
1
the Orthodox Bulgarians were also isolated and far from the cultural achievements of Christian
Europe. For example, there was a ban on book printing in the Empire and hand copying, despite
the supply of books produced by Slavic presses abroad, remained the primary method for
maintaining the liturgical collections of Bulgarian monasteries and parishes.
Scribal centres. The geography of the scribal activity in Bulgarian lands, where the
“Sredna gora” and the new-Bulgarian damaskini circulated, shows that the main literary centers–
in monasteries and settlements– were situated in the eparchial periphery and in a mountain region
shared by the Constantinopolitan Bishoprics of Sofia, Tŭrnovo and Plovdiv. It was also a zone
where the stable Constantinopolitan church structures were crossed by a Serbian church and
literary influence. The book copying flourished in newly established centers at or near
economically growing places with special status and corresponding rights, like, for instance,
guarding mountain passes. Among those were the mining town of Etropole and its monastery
with a scriptorium, and Adzhar, the only well-documented scribal center of a parochial type
where future priests were trained.
Book copyists, donors and commissioners.
The social profile of the scribes shows that
they came from the circles of the lower monastic and white clergy and of the laity. The lack of an
independent Bulgarian state and church left the book commissioning and donating in the charge
of the same circles. It is also apparent that the activity in the parochial milieu gradually grew
from the beginning of the century towards its end. In comparison with the previous tradition, the
collective donations and collective book purchases became a common practice. The great
popularity of the damaskini indicates a change in the attitude toward the book. It was then
read/listened to, for its word was understandable and edifying, for it told intricate stories and gave
knowledge about the world.
The repertoire of books and texts. Tendencies and changes. The great number of 17thcentury archaic and new-Bulgarian damaskini in the overall repertoire of books copied also
indicates the change on macro-generic level of letters. The repertoire, otherwise narrowed to the
most necessary for the liturgy, was renewed with the texts from the Thesaurus and some other
newly translated works. Along with the tendency of renewing the repertoire and the popularising
stream represented by the newly translated works from vernacular Greek, the 17th-century
Bulgarian manuscript production demonstrates a conscious attempt towards archaising and
returning to the classic Old and Middle Bulgarian literary heritage. The latter tendency is to be
detected on the level of selecting texts/translations, on the orthographic and graphical level (script
2
and illumination). In the 17th century the Bulgarian art of book copying had its last flowering
before its decline.
Damaskini’s popularity. The analysis of the centers’ specialization in book producing and
the parallel tradition of the archaic and the new-Bulgarian damaskini suggests that the prime
reason for the popularity of the new miscellanies was neither their new-Bulgarian version, nor the
similar historical and cultural circumstances Bulgarians and Greeks lived in. The reason was
most likely rather practical and connected to the selective structure of the original Thesaurus
which turned out to be a book very appropriate for parochial liturgical practice. According to the
extant data it could be concluded that Damaskenos Studite’s sermons and saints’ lives had a
limited presence, if any, in the repertoire of the monastic scriptoria. The men of letters in centers
like Etropole stuck to the traditional type of books. The damaskini though entered the parochial
milieu– with their archaic version, as various collections compiled according to local needs and
preferences, to be combined with the festal menaion, and probably to be used in education and
for individual reading. While educational and scribal centers like Adzhar kept maintaining the
archaic damaskini tradition until the end of the century, the miscellanies had become popular and
were finally adapted into a new literary language based on the spoken dialects, and widely spread
to be used for preaching among less educated or illiterate believers.
Conclusion. The creativity of Bulgarian men of letters during the 17th c. did not manifest
itself in the creation of original works, but rather in their efforts to preserve the tradition. Their
editorial and compilation work culminated in the shaping of a new comprehensible literary
language with rich poetic potential and stylistics, which combined the classical heritage with
living speech. This also resulted in the formation of a new attitude towards the book and reading,
of a new taste for the written word among Bulgarians.
3