- Bulgarian language
- Bible. New Testament (1)
- Illuminations (1)
- Liturgies (1)
- Miniatures (Illuminations) (1)
- Orthodox Eastern Church (1)
- Readers (1)
Type of Item
This parchment manuscript, of which only a part has survived, is from the first quarter of the 13th century. The year 1221 was written on the manuscript at a significantly later date and may have been copied from an original colophon by a later owner. Known as the Dobreisho Gospel, the manuscript is an important witness to the history and early development of the Bulgarian language. Of particular interest is the rich illumination, including two full-page miniatures of the evangelists Luke and John. The portrait of the latter is accompanied ...
Primer with Various Instructions
Beron’s Primer with Various Instructions is the first modern Bulgarian primer. Used by children throughout the 19th century, it contained, in addition to the rules of grammar, general information about nature and basic arithmetic. The book is better known as the “Fish Primer” for the picture of the whale at the end. Beron is considered the father of modern Bulgarian.
Notable as the first Bulgarian grammar, this book is also culturally significant because of the role that its author, Neofit Rilski (1793–1881), played in the promotion of secular education in Bulgaria and in the establishment of a modern Bulgarian literary language. Neofit, a priest associated with the Rila Monastery, was a leading figure in the 19th-century Bulgarian National Revival and its concomitant education reform. He was the first headmaster of the Gabrovo School, the first secular school in Bulgaria. In the midst of a national debate in the 1830s ...
Arithmetics were a popular genre of textbooks during the era of the Bulgarian National Revival in the 19th century, when it was widely believed that everyone, especially future businessmen, needed to know basic mathematics. Bulgarian Arithmetic was the fourth such text published in this era, in 1845. The author, Khristodul Kostovich Sichan-Nikolov (1808–89), was a monk, teacher, writer, and publicist, often assisted in his scholarly pursuits by the writer, educator, and priest Neofit Rilski. Before writing his own text, Sichan-Nikolov had been involved as the editor of the first ...