Bulgaria

BULGARIA. - Balkan state situated between Yugoslavia, Greece, Romania and the Black Sea.

I. GEOGRAPHY

Autonomous from Turkey (1878), independent as a kingdom (tsar) from 1908, it was constituted as a republic on Sept. 15, 1946. The territory (110,842 sq. km.), which has undergone various changes in the last thirty years (after the Second World War it was enlarged by the recovery of Dobruja, ceded by Romania), is divided in two by the mountain arc of the Balkans, which cross it from W. to E., ending at the Black Sea. To the N. extends a broad plateau which the Danube isolates from the neighboring Wallachian plain; to the S. a series of intermontane depressions, the largest of which is that of Plovdiv (Philippopolis); beyond them other mountain masses rise to the west and south (Rila, Pirin, Rhodope, Strandzha). The vocation of the country is agricultural-pastoral; with a prevalence (as regards economic value) of industrial crops (tobacco, sunflower, roses, strawberries) over cereal crops and of sheep rearing over that of all other animals. Poultry farming is of great importance; notable are the advances of modern industry (textile, milling, rubber), which tends to make ever wider use of national products.

The population (7 million inhabitants in 1947; density 63 per sq. km., the highest among the Balkan States) is made up for more than 4/5 of Bulgarians, for the most part Orthodox (more than 100 thousand are the Pomaks or Islamized Bulgarians, who live in the mountainous regions of the S.); after them the most notable ethnic element is represented by the Turks (today less than 10% of the total), gathered especially in the northeastern regions. Then come the gypsies (2%), the Romanians, the Jews (less than 1%), the Armenians, etc. The urban centers (in our sense) are few and small. The capital, Sofia (400 thousand inhabitants with the suburbs), occupies an eccentric position with respect to the State. Varna (70 thousand inhabitants) and Burgas (36 thousand inhabitants) are the main ports, Plovdiv (100 thousand inhabitants) the major center of southern B.

Before the proclamation of the republic, the State, while recognizing as national the Greek Orthodox Church of the Slavic rite, to which 85% of the population belonged, tolerated all the other cults. The Muslims were fewer than a million, the Catholics more than 50 thousand, settled especially in southern B.

Giuseppe Caraci

II. HISTORICAL PROFILE OF CHRISTIANITY FROM ITS ORIGINS TO THE PRESENT

1. From the origins to the Turkish conquest (864-1393)

Like all national autocephalous Churches, the Bulgarian Church followed the same vicissitudes as the nation. Its geographical extent varied with the borders of the Bulgarian State; its independence and its more or less pronounced subjection to the patriarchate of Constantinople were related to political events.

The territory occupied today by the Bulgarian Republic was evangelized from the earliest centuries. In the 4th century it formed part of the prefecture of Illyricum and depended on the Western empire. Ecclesiastically it depended, at least in part, on the Roman patriarchate even after the emperor Gratian, in 379, had ceded the eastern Illyricum to his colleague Theodosius, emperor of the East. Not without difficulty did the popes succeed in maintaining over this region their jurisdiction, which they exercised through the archbishop of Thessalonica, who for this reason had been invested with the title of vicar of the Apostolic See. The patriarchs of Constantinople sought to undermine this jurisdiction stealthily and several times attempted to establish their own there. They were well satisfied on the day when Leo the Isaurian, as a reprisal against pope St. Gregory III who had condemned
the iconoclasts, de-creed the annexation
to the patriarchate of
Constantinople of
the part of eastern
Illyricum that re-mained to the
Byzantine empire (732).

Rome did not cease
from protesting
against such violence and
from duly asking the
Byzantine emperors
for the restoration of its
rights over these
regions. Its claims be-came particularly insistent in
the second half of the
9th century when the Bulgarians, a tribe of Turkish
or Finnic origin, after having secured
an independent kingdom in that region, were converted
to Christianity.

It was king Boris or Bogaris (852-89) who took the initiative
for this conversion. To all appearances, he would have wished at
first to ask for Baptism from the Franks, with whom
he had stipulated a political alliance in 862 against Rati-slav, king of Moravia. But on the point of opening hostilities
against the latter, the Byzantines, victorious over the Saracens in Asia
Minor and allies of Ratislav, who had asked them for
missionaries (Sts. Cyril and Methodius), made hostile demonstrations
against the Bulgarian coast. To extricate himself,
Boris asked for peace from the emperor Michael III and promised
to have himself and his people baptized by the Byzantine
missionaries, whose dispatch he requested. And so toward the end of 864 or
at the beginning of 865, Boris received Baptism, having
as godfather Michael III himself, whose name he took. Christianity was imposed on the Bulgarian subjects and those who
refused were massacred without pity (F. Dvornik,
Les Slaves, Bizance et Rome, au XIe siècle, Paris 1926,
pp. 184 ff., 226 ff.).

Thus the Bulgarian Church was born, but in schism,
since at that very time the schism of Photius was in full swing,
Photius having been deposed by pope St. Nicholas I, in solemn
form, in 863. Boris's conversion to Christianity had
been sincere but not disinterested.

The aim of the Bulgarian Kan was to make himself in all things
like the Byzantine «basileus» by giving Bulgaria its political and religious
independence. He wanted for his
new Church a patriarch who could confer on him the
imperial consecration and thus make of him a true tsar,
a true «basileus». But the Byzantines refused to
grant him this and Photius sent him as missionaries
simple priests with a pompous dogmatic letter.
Discontented with this, Boris then turned toward Rome
and as early as 866 asked pope St. Nicholas I for an archbishop
and bishops to establish in his kingdom a complete hierarchy;
but his desires were only partly fulfilled. The two bishops sent
by the Pope to Bulgaria, Formosus
of Porto and Paul of Populonia, could only be
provisional, since they were already provided with an episcopal
see and at Rome the canon of the Council of Sardica was still strictly
observed, which forbade the translation of bishops from one see to another. Thus although
Boris insisted on having as archbishop and
patriarch Formosus, to whom he felt bound by particular affection, he always met with a refusal
from Nicholas I, just as he was likewise denied the deacon Marinus
whom he had designated after the recall of Formosus.
The prince, greatly vexed, took advantage of the meeting
of the Eighth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople (869-
870) to have the question of the Bulgarian Church definitively settled. It was
examined in an extra-conciliar meeting, diligently prepared
in advance by the Byzantines, and which was attended only by the
emperor Basil I, the patriarch Ignatius, the legates of the Pope, the
representatives of the patriarchs of the East and the Bulgarian
deputies. On the question of whom the Bulgarian Church
should depend on, whether on Rome or on Constantinople, very skillfully the Byzantines proposed as arbiters of the question the representatives of the three patriarchs of the East,
already won over to their cause. In vain the Roman
legates sought to assert the ancient rights of the Popes over
eastern Illyricum. Their complaints were passed over
by recalling that the Bulgarian territory had for a long time
formed part of the Byzantine empire, and the Bulgarians
allowed themselves to be convinced. Boris expelled the
Latin missionaries and replaced them with the archbishop Joseph and the
ten bishops sent by the patriarch Ignatius (870).
Pope John VIII exerted all his energy and
his diplomacy to induce the Byzantines and Bulgarians to
change their decision (872-82). If he won his case
with the Byzantines, at the Photian Council of 879-80, he
lost his effort with Boris, who would not
listen to reason.

The Bulgarian prince, moreover, was far from being
satisfied with the Byzantines, since they always refused him
not only the patriarch he requested, but also the title of
tsar for himself. In 886 the disciples of St. Methodius, driven
out of Moravia by the German clergy, had taken refuge with
him, and he took advantage of the occasion to rid himself of the Byzantine
clergy and to introduce into his kingdom the Slavic
liturgy.

It was one step further toward complete autonomy, which ended by being recognized both by Rome and by Constantinople: by Rome, before 924, under Boris's successor, Simeon (893-927), if one is to give credence to the Bulgarian king Kaloyan in his letter to Innocent III, dated 1202 (cf. A. Theiner, Monumenta historiae Slavorum meridionalium, I, Rome 1863, pp. 15-20); by the court of Byzantium in 945, under tsar Peter (927-69).

But the days of the Bulgarian empire were numbered, because the Byzantine emperor Basil II, called the Bulgar-Slayer, set himself relentlessly against it. From 986 to 1018, in five successive campaigns, he annexed it piece by piece. With political independence, Bulgaria lost its religious autonomy. The first Bulgarian patriarch, who had been forced to change his residence seven times as a result of the vicissitudes of war, had finally established himself at Ochrid. It was precisely here that Basil II established the center of the new autonomous Greek-Bulgarian archbishopric incorporated into the Byzantine Church, and under this name it lasted from 1020 until the Turkish conquest in 1393, though undergoing transformations. The most important took place following the re-establishment of the Bulgarian kingdom (1186-1393) and the creation of the second Bulgarian patriarchate at Tirnovo (1204-1393). Like those of the 10th century and for identical reasons, the Bulgarian princes turned toward Rome with the aim of obtaining for themselves the imperial crown and for their Church autonomy. After laborious negotiations and with the official union with the Church of Rome, Pope Innocent III granted both the one and the other to Kaloyan in 1204. The union with Rome was already broken by 1232, and efforts to re-establish it failed miserably. The principal attempt was made on the occasion of the unionist Council of Lyons, under Michael Palaeologus, in 1274. The patriarch Joachim of Tirnovo joined with John Bekkos of Constantinople in 1277, to recognize the supreme authority of the Holy See.

2. The patriarchate of Ochrid (1393-1767)

The patriarchate of Tirnovo maintained itself until the Turkish conquest (1393). The Bulgarian Church fell back under the religious jurisdiction of the Greeks and was annexed once again to the autonomous archbishopric of Ochrid (v. ACRIDA), which was adorned with the pompous name of patriarchate and subsequently underwent many transformations and amputations. From the second half of the 17th century the "ecumenical" patriarchate interfered more and more in the affairs of the archbishopric. The Greeks most often supplanted the national candidates for the bishoprics, and the Hellenization of the region was pursued relentlessly. The prelates sent from Constantinople displayed a barbarous zeal in destroying every monument of ancient Bulgarian literature, and only the lower clergy, chosen from among the population, remained attached to the Slavonic alphabet. Finally, in 1767, this phantom of Ochrid was officially incorporated into the "ecumenical" patriarchate.

3. Emancipation (1767-1872)

The nationalist excesses of the Phanariot prelates provoked in the Bulgarians a violent reaction at the beginning of the 19th century, when the Balkan nations began to shake off the Turkish yoke. By means of the book and the school, Bulgarian patriots succeeded in a few years in awakening the national sentiment. Their success was rapid, and as early as 1860 they felt strong enough to enter directly into struggle against the "ecumenical" patriarchate and to demand radical reforms in the administration of the dioceses where the Bulgarian population was in the majority. The Turks, arbiters between the two parties, since both the Bulgarians and the Greeks were their subjects, ended after ten years by yielding to the demands of the Bulgarians. An imperial firman of 11 March 1870 created a Bulgarian exarchate independent of the "ecumenical" patriarchate, which however energetically rejected this new arrangement.

For two years attempts were made in vain to reach an understanding. No longer able to make use against the Bulgarians of spiritual weapons, the Phanar strove to convene a council of all Eastern Orthodoxy and condemn the recalcitrant, but only the Greek-speaking autocephalies answered the appeal. The Synod met at Constantinople in Sept. 1872 and decreed the separation of the Bulgarians from the Orthodox communion, treating them as schismatics and as phyletists, that is, as racists (not as nationalists, as this name is often translated). The Bulgarians had in fact made themselves guilty of a grave canonical innovation, by creating Bulgarian bishops in localities where Greek bishops already existed. Their exarch himself had established his residence opposite the Phanar. Now, from the very origins of the Church, the basis of ecclesiastical jurisdiction is territory, not race or tribe (τῶς). A single bishop in the same diocese — that is the rule which the Bulgarians openly violated. But it must be said that the Greeks themselves had provoked this illegality by reserving for themselves the majority of the episcopal sees where the majority of the population was of Bulgarian race. Despite this illegality, therefore, the decree of the Synod of Constantinople was accepted only by the Greek-speaking autocephalies.

The Slavic Church, the Romanian Church and the Arabic-speaking Churches of Syria took no account of it and remained in communion with the Bulgarian Church. The result was that from 1872 onward, the unity of ecclesiastical communion among the various autocephalies of the Byzantine rite disappeared, given that the Bulgarian schism dragged on until recent times. It is strange that ecclesiastical communion was maintained between the Greek Churches that excommunicated the Bulgarian Church and the autocephalies that remained in communion with that same Church.

4. The present situation

The organization of the Bulgarian Church did not change substantially at once after the constitution of the exarchate in 1870. The organic statute promulgated at that time was reorganized in 1895 and remained in force although certain provisions have been rendered obsolete by events. Since 1870 in fact the Bulgarians have become a completely independent nation, they are almost all gathered within the territory of their kingdom and can no longer make themselves guilty of phyletism, while, in our own days, various other autocephalous Churches have created phyletist bishoprics in various places. The single city of New York counted in recent times as many as seven dissident bishops of different races. The Bulgarian schism ought therefore to disappear, since its foundation had come to be lacking. Indeed, recent negotiations between the "ecumenical" patriarchate and the Bulgarian Synod to re-establish the union have had a happy outcome. On 22 Feb. 1945 the Holy Synod of Constantinople lifted the excommunication of the Bulgarian Church, recognizing its autocephaly.

The Synod is permanent, composed of five bishops and presided over by the senior metropolitan who governs the Church; the four bishops other than the president are renewed every four years. There are eleven eparchies or dioceses, whose titulars are elected by the Synod from two candidates presented by a mixed diocesan assembly. A new organic statute fully in conformity with the present political situation is still awaited. The nominal number of the faithful was in 1937 5,128,298 out of a total population of 6,077,934 inhabitants.

5. The Bulgarian Catholic Church

The Catholic Church counts in Bulgaria some thousands of faithful divided into two groups: one of the Latin rite and the other of the Byzantine-Slavonic rite.

The first, by far the more numerous, is made up for the most part of the descendants of the Paulicians and *Bogomils (v.) converted in the 17th century by the Franciscans who came from Bosnia, whence their name of Pavlicani. Persecuted for a long time by the Turks, they were able to reconstitute themselves in the course of the 19th century and today form the diocese of Nicopolis (16,500 faithful in 1930) and the apostolic vicariate of Sofia and Philippopolis (24,500 faithful in 1930). The parochial service is ensured by the Friars Minor Capuchins, aided by various Latin Congregations, male and female.

The Byzantine-Slavic group originated in 1860, when the Bulgarians were beginning to shake off the yoke of the "ecumenical" patriarchate. The number of conversions rose at a certain point to 60,000, but this movement was nipped in the bud by secret intrigues of the Russian government, which had the first head of the united Church removed, Giuseppe Sokolski, a venerable hegumen whom the Pope himself had consecrated (1861). Those who remained faithful to the union were grouped in 1883 into two apostolic vicariates: that of Thrace and that of Macedonia, with their respective seats at Adrianople and Salonica. An apostolic administrator resided in Constantinople with the title of archbishop as representative to the Turkish government. This organization disappeared after the Balkan War of 1912-13 and the World War of 1914-18. At present the Catholic Bulgarians of the Byzantine rite, about 6,000 in number, scattered throughout Bulgarian territory, obey an apostolic administrator who resides in Sofia. Since 1948 the Bulgarian government, dominated by the communists, has subjected Catholics to a severe regime of harassment.

Martino Jugie

III. THE BULGARIAN RITE

The rite in use among the Bulgarians is the Byzantine one; it differs from the rite in the Slavic language used in Russia and Serbia only in certain liturgical observances of its own or of Greek origin and in the celebration of certain regional feasts. In its history the following periods may be distinguished. When Tsar Boris decided (870) in favor of the Church of Constantinople, the Byzantine rite, already introduced by Greek priests, became definitively established in the country; but, with the arrival of the disciples of St. Methodius, expelled from Moravia (ca. 886), the Slavic language gradually took the place of the Greek language, and at the beginning of the reign of Tsar Simeon (893) St. Clement, the first bishop of the Slavic language, completed the Slavic version of the liturgical books.

In the 14th century the important corrective activity of the patriarch Euthymius of Tarnovo and his school, based on a profound knowledge of Greek, renewed the Slavic text, preferring a language close to that in use in the Russian lands and therefore widely diffused. In the following period the rite of the Bulgarian Church, governed by a Greek hierarchy, accepted certain particular usages of the Greeks, but from the 17th century it came under the influence of the liturgical books printed in Russia. The last period, begun a few decades ago, displays a greater independence and a bold spirit of adaptation to modern needs: the rubrics in Bulgarian only alongside the text of the prayers in Church Slavonic, the celebration of the divine liturgy without a deacon as the norm, the abbreviated marriage and funeral rites, the abbreviated and updated baptismal rite.

Alfonso Raes

IV. CHRISTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY

Because of its geographical position, B. marks an obligatory passageway in relations between the East and the West. For this reason B. has in the past undergone the influences of the various artistic tendencies that migrated from the East toward the West and vice versa. This explains the simultaneous appearance and development in B. of the most varied architectural forms found in early Christian architecture.

The most fertile period of Christian construction, before the descent and stabilization of the Bulgars, is the 4th-7th centuries. From the vast and rich sampling of early Christian churches and basilicas, scattered here and there, one realizes that in B. all the styles and forms of ancient Christian architecture are represented, with their original elements both pure and mixed, so as to form a more or less pleasant and harmonious whole.

Classified by type, the early Christian basilicas of B. present various characteristics with little local uniformity. A form of rare exception for the East is that of the basilica of Klisseé-Kőj (6th century) with a Latin cross plan, with a narthex and a façade flanked by two rectangular structures, which form respectively the baptistery and the vestiary, the latter provided with a vast atrium.

The Roman basilica type, with small changes, is instead represented by the group of basilicas of Hasar Sindgirlij (4th-6th centuries), some of which have three naves and others one. But they differ from the Roman ones because they have the narthex instead of the atrium, and some present the form of a polygonal apse on the outside rather than circular, as Roman ones generally are. Types of cruciform basilicas, domed with three naves and three apses, the central one of which is polygonal on the outside, are those of the Cervo di Pirdop, of Aboba and of Pririnč Tepé. In that of the Cervo di Pirdop, the façade is flanked by the baptistery with its own small apse and by the vestiary, communicating with the narthex by means of appropriate doors. Of the so-called Mozarabic type is the basilica of Ciobàn-Déré, with a single nave, in which the horseshoe-shaped apse stands out.

The prototype of the centrally planned basilica is represented by the church of St. George of Sofia (4th century) but more simply by the one called the red basilica of Perustiza (7th century), with a central plan with dome, two opposing semicircular apses and a double narthex.

Highly characteristic is the basilical type of the group of Mesembria with three naves and five apses; the most conspicuous example of which is that of the sea basilica. Clearly Hellenistic in its overall design, this basilica, through its architectural forms, and more especially through the particularity of its apses, exerted a great influence on later basilical constructions, after the stabilization of the Bulgars in the Balkan peninsula.

At Tropeos is found the Syrian basilical form, with its characteristic two towers on the façade, which at Bèlovo are transformed into two conspicuous domes. Both are of the 6th century.

The Ravenna type of basilica with a circular apse on the inside and polygonal on the outside, with windows on the various sides of the polygon, is found at St. Sophia of Sofia (6th century), where however the windows are in two orders superimposed one on the other.

Other characteristics of the early Christian basilica in B. are the doors of the apse, as at Hissar and at Mesembria, and also the arches projecting on the façade and on the various sides, as at Pirinč Tepé and here and there.

Giuseppe Gagov

V. ART

Recent discoveries have revealed in the region a flourishing prehistoric civilization connected with Asia Minor and the Aegean, attested by the tumuli, often with a chamber under Hellenic influence, by idols of Cycladic type, by dolmens, by anthropomorphic rock drawings (Backo Rivo) and by pottery. The iconography of indigenous deities shows Thracian elements, which persist down to the Roman age; even the type of the horseman was represented according to the modes of Greek art. From the 6th century B.C. the Greek influence made itself more strongly felt (tumuli of the Thracian dynasts of Duvanlij) and continued also in the Roman age with a predilection for the Praxitelean type, especially on the coasts of the Black Sea. With the Roman penetration new cities arose such as Oescus and Nicopolis, whose remains still show the signs of ancient splendor, while the disturbance produced by the subsequent decline of Roman power is clearly revealed by the monuments of the 3rd and 4th centuries, especially the stelae, which depart ever more from classical taste.

The oldest proto-Bulgarian monuments (5th century) are the entrenched camps of Sumen, Aboba, Preslav and Pliska, which the Bulgars learned to build from the Chinese, some remains of palaces (Madara) that show their Sassanid origin especially in the internal divisions, numerous pottery wares and funerary statuettes of wood and stone such as are still found among the Chuvash, the Yakuts and the Kirghiz, the Horseman of Madara, twenty-three meters high, carved on a rock, and that finely worked gold vessel known under the name of the "treasure of Attila" (Vienna museum). Under Tsar Simeon (897-927), Preslav became a most beautiful city, especially for its great basilicas and for the "Golden Temple," which was decorated inside with mosaics of glazed terracotta tiles with a difficult technique imitating Assyrian work and of manifest Byzantine influence. After a period of decline due to political conditions, art began to flourish again in the time of the Wallachian king Kalogan, crowned in 1204: in place of the great basilical constructions there arose single-nave churches with or without a dome, or cruciform ones with a dome of Byzantine influence and especially with two stories (Ivan Asen, Boyana, monastery of Bačkovo), of which the lower served as a tomb; down to the whole of the 14th century mural painting was cultivated to a notable degree religious painting (frescoes of 1259 at Boyana); even miniatures, though they often took pleasure in a naive realism of popular flavor (Gospel of Pop Dobrejko of the 13th century, National Library of Sofia), followed Byzantine models (Psalter of Moscow of the 14th century; Bulgarian translation of Manasses of 1345, Vatican Library; Gospel of Tsar Ivan Alexander of 1356, British Museum).

With the Turkish occupation (1393-1877) and the consequent isolation, architecture, both civil and religious, declined, exploiting to the most exasperating conventionalism the forms of the monastic art of Mount Athos, and only in painting was there an influence of the early Italian Renaissance (16th-century fresco of Poganovo). After the Peace of Adrianople (1829) the churches took up again the basilical type with or without a dome (monastery of Rila, 1834-37), and religious painting flourished at Razlog, at Kruševo and especially at Samokov, where Hristo Dimitrov worked, who in 1770 had studied in Vienna, together with his sons.

After him Stanislao Dospevski, who graduated in St. Petersburg in 1857, was an active portraitist, landscape painter and painter of icons. Having achieved independence (1878), Bulgarian art felt the Western influence and particularly that of Italian, French and German painting, either directly or through Czech and Polish painters who had emigrated here. The school of painting founded in Sofia in 1896 was followed in 1921 by the Academy of Fine Arts, which largely influences the cultural development of young artists.

Fabia Borroni

VI. LITERATURE

The origin of Bulgarian literature goes back to the second half of the 9th century, to the years in which the Bulgarians, through the work of Prince Boris, were converted to Christianity (865).

The first texts reflect religious culture and in fact were born in churches and monasteries. For five centuries (9th-14th), this literature remained within the ecclesiastical framework (versions of Holy Scripture, hagiographies, sermons, prayer books). Byzantinism contributed to the formation of Bulgarian Christian civilization. Ancient Bulgarian literature in turn exercised a notable influence on Russian literature (v. RUSSIA). Among the noteworthy things of the era of Simeon (897-927) one usually cites the Sbornik of that same tsar, a didactic florilegium, the Šestodnev [*Six Days, Hexaemeron] of Joan Ekzarch, a philosophical-religious compilation, the polemical treatise O pismenech (On the Letters) of the monk Chrabár, a defense of the Slavic alphabet against the attacks of the Byzantine clergy. To be remembered still, among others, are the presbyter Kozma, the patriarch Euthymius and his pupil Grigorij Camblak. The first Bulgarian empire was overthrown by Byzantium in 1018, the second was destroyed by the Turks in 1393. With the Turkish invasion began a period of oppression, lasting five centuries (14th-19th) until 1878: the Bulgarian people vegetated in the wretched existence of subjects of the Turks, having lost even their own name. The Turks, moreover, lacking a culture of their own, did not intervene in the spiritual life of the Bulgarians. Nevertheless, popular poetry was alive in these dark centuries: ritual songs (whose content is linked to the primitive religion of the Bulgarians), love songs, laments on slavery, epic compositions on the chajduti*, generous brigands who waged a harsh struggle against the Turks and the Phanariots. During the Turkish domination, the Croatian language, especially in its Ragusan forms, exercised an influence on the Bulgarian Catholics.

The awakening announces itself at the end of the 18th century. The rebirth took its start from the monasteries of Athos (Chilandar and Zografu) and of Rila. And the first men of letters were precisely monks, such as Paisij, patriarch of the new culture, author of a famous Slavo-Bulgarian History of the People, of the Kings and of the Bulgarian Saints (1762). The majority of the monks limited themselves to a work of compilation. Interesting nevertheless in this period is the autobiography of the bishop Sofronij entitled Life and Sufferings of the Sinner Sofronij (1804). But more than monastic and Byzantine culture, it was foreign influences and the work of patriot emigrants acting from abroad that awakened Bulgarian literature. Coinciding with the rebirth of the people, it preserved throughout the first period a patriotic and moralizing tone and a utilitarian character. The writers were concerned with nothing other than rousing the people from their centuries-old sleep. The Bulgarians then had before them two problems: ecclesiastical autonomy from the Greeks (achieved only in 1870 with the creation of a Bulgarian exarchate at Constantinople) and independence from the Turks (obtained through the revolution of 1866, the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78 and the related Treaty of San Stefano).

To the rather naive and clumsy writings of the beginning of the 19th century there succeeded in the second half of the century works with artistic aims, although very often modeled on foreign and especially Russian models. Before the liberation of the country the major figures, rich in an adventurous romanticism with a typically Balkan background, were Georgi Rakovski (1831-67), revolutionary and publicist, Petko Slavejkov (1827-95), father of Bulgarian poetry, collector and cultivator of folk songs, Ljuben Karavelov (1837-79), who, educated in the school of the radical Russian writers (Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov), gave in the story Bulgarians of Other Times a picture of the beginning of the 19th century, with the two caricatural types of Grandpa Liben and Chadzhi Gencho. The revolutionary era between 1860 and 1870 is reflected in the work of Christo Botev (1848-76), one of the greatest Bulgarian poets, although he left only about twenty poems in all, significant documents of an epoch and a milieu. From Russia he went to Romania to prepare the insurrection; and from Bucharest, together with Ljuben Karavelov, he spread among the Bulgarian "intelligentsia" the radical ideas learned from the Russian writers. Botev sang of idealized heroes and brigands, while he censured the faint-hearted: in his verses the sentiment of the fatherland is exalted. Like certain heroes of his own poems, Botev died at the age of twenty-eight: in 1876, at the head of a band of two hundred volunteers, he secretly embarked from a Romanian port on the Austrian steamship "Radetzky," and, while the ship was going up the Danube, he seized it, heading for Bulgaria, to make contact with the people in revolt, but the enterprise failed and Botev fell killed. After the liberation, for more than twenty years, Bulgarian literature was dominated by the name of Ivan Vazov (1850-1921). He is the author of numerous stories of a predominantly realistic basis (the best of which is Nono Joco guardo), of the novel Under the Yoke, translated into many European languages, of the lyrical collections The Banner and the Gusla, The Torments of Bulgaria, Fields and Forests, Italy, etc., of various epic-lyrical poems, and of an Epic of the Forgotten, intended to exalt the greatest figures of the national revival. To Vazov's circle belonged Konstantin Velichkov (1855-1907), the greatest Bulgarian Italianist, the first translator of Dante, Stoyan Mihaylovski (1856-1937), who cultivated the ideal of a Bulgaria civilized in the Western manner, Kyril Christov (1875-1945), a poet of erotic tendencies in the manner of Stecchetti and of lyrical landscapes. The first reaction against Vazov's pathetic style was that of Aleko Konstantinov (1865-97) in the book Bay Ganyu (1894), a comic work in which, with an irony that often passes into sarcasm, he sought to ridicule the defects of the Bulgarian emerged from centuries of servitude. Meanwhile the Europeanization of the country proceeded at an accelerated pace. At first the Bulgarians had modeled themselves on Russia, the poets drew inspiration from Pushkin, Batyushkov, Koltsov, from the Ukrainian Shevchenko, and even Western ideas had penetrated through Russia. Now, instead, the Bulgarian "intelligentsia" turned also to France and Germany. In the twenty years from 1895 to the First World War, three poets gathered around Krástev's journal Il Pensiero renewed the atmosphere: Pencho Slavejkov, Yavorov, Todorov. Pencho Slavejkov, son of Petko Slavejkov, drew inspiration from Heine and Nietzsche. He is the author of the collections Dream of Happiness and On the Island of the Blessed and of the unfinished poem The Blood-Stained Song. Under the influence of Slavejkov was formed Peyu K. Yavorov (1877-1914), creator of the modern verse in Bulgarian poetry and close to the themes of the French symbolists. Petko Yu. Todorov (1879-1916) published the Idylls and some dramas. Yavorov and Todorov are considered the initiators of Bulgarian symbolism, to which also belong Todor Trajanov (1888), singer of Regina mortua and of Hymns and Ballads, Ljudmil Stoyanov (1888) with Visions at the Crossroads and Sword and Word, Nikolay Raynov (1886) with the Legends of the Bogomils, Dimcho Debelyanov (1887-1916), fallen at Thessalonica, author, among other things, of the Legend of the Wanton Queen, Nikolay Liliev (1885), author of fragile and melancholic verses (Birds in the Night and Moon Spots). Of the poetry written between the two world wars let us recall the poem September by Geo Milev, a revolutionary close to German Expressionism and Russian Cubo-Futurism, who perished after the troubles of 1923, and the lyrics of Christo Yasenov, a collectivist like Milev, although his art is very close to intimist confessions. Dmitar Polyanov draws inspiration in his civic verses from the Russian Nekrasov, E. Bagryana is formally close to the Russian poetess Akhmatova. Among the narrators K. Petkanov, G. Raychev, Elin-Pelin, Yordan Yovkov, G. Karaslavov have had success. The modern

Bulgarian novel oscillates between the historical theme (the epoch of Turkish domination) and a village realism (little pictures of nature, genre scenes, idyllic descriptions of rustic life). In recent years Bulgarian literature has sometimes expressed aspirations of a distinctly social character. During the Second World War some writers participated, in the last phase, in the resistance against the Germans. Recent poetic production sometimes reflects the influence of Mayakovsky and of other Soviet poets. Increasingly rigid directives are being indicated for literature, which should coincide with the ideological orientations of the new regime.

Angelo Maria Ripellino

VII. SCHOOL SYSTEM

In the years 1945-48 the Higher Council of Education established a series of school reforms, making the Bulgarian school the political centers of the Popular Patriotic Front, from which religious instruction has been banned; the nine Catholic institutes that were attended by over 5000 students were closed, as were numerous foreign schools, except those belonging to diplomatic missions, which however cannot be attended by the children of Bulgarian citizens.

School textbooks printed before Sept. 9, 1944 are not permitted and are replaced with new manuals prepared by the "Directorate of State Editions of the Ministry of the Popular Patriotic Front." The school system of monarchical B. provided for the following types of school: elementary schools divided into three-year progymnasia and four-year municipal schools; gymnasia divided into scientific, semi-classical and classical.

These three types of gymnasium were subsequently modified into scientific and classical. The regulation of Aug. 14, 1941, abolished by the communist regime, established that school instruction should be apolitical, free, and national. Instruction in religion was given in all types of school. There was a six-year teachers' gymnasium attended by students who devoted themselves to the career of municipal teaching; elementary teachers, on the other hand, had to attend two-year teachers' colleges. Education today is divided into preschool and school.

Preschool education is given in 738 kindergartens, 926 children's homes and 2300 summer children's homes.

School education is divided into 6433 municipal schools, 2800 progymnasia, 258 popular gymnasia corresponding to the old type of scientific gymnasium, where Latin and Greek are optional subjects while Russian is compulsory in addition to one of the modern languages of choice (Italian, English, French, German). Vocational schools are very numerous.

There are 3 universities: one in Sofia, founded in 1888, one in Philippopolis founded in 1946, and one in Varna, founded in 1946.

Since 1946 there has been a full professorship in Sofia for Italian philosophy. - See Pl. XIV.

Miroslav Stumpf