13 results
Apostle Lectionary
The Apostle Lectionary, written on parchment in the second half of the 13th century, is one of the important linguistic sources delimiting the early (Preslav) from the later (Athonite) redaction of this liturgical book. The lectionary contains the portions of scripture, the lessons, to be read at divine service on particular days of the church calendar. This manuscript is remarkable for the completeness of the readings from the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, and for its detailed menologion, a monthly calendar indicating the feast days of saints that ...
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National Library of Bulgaria
Dobreisho Gospel
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 ...
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National Library of Bulgaria
Banitsa Gospel
The Banitsa Gospel, written on parchment in Church Slavonic in the late 13th century, is one of the manuscripts testifying to the end of the anonymity of Bulgarian men of letters at around this time. The colophon indicates that the scribe who made the manuscript was the priest Ioann at Saint Nicholas Church in the village of Banitsa (presumably in the Vratsa region of present-day northwestern Bulgaria). The characteristic script and the ornamental illumination, elaborated in black, red, and yellow ink, reflect a local manuscript tradition. The menologion (calendar) includes ...
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National Library of Bulgaria
Menaion for June-August with Synaxarion
This parchment manuscript of the Menaion for June–August with synaxarion (a collection of brief biographies of the saints) can be dated to the second half of the 13th century. It is important as the earliest known manuscript to include the service of Saint Ioakim Osogovski (Joachim of Osogovo), hermit and founder of the monastery known as Sarandapor. His memory, celebrated on August 16, was popular in Bulgaria and elsewhere in the Balkans during the Middle Ages and in the period of the Bulgarian National Revival of the 18th and ...
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National Library of Bulgaria
Bashkioi Copy of “Slaveno-Bulgarian History”
This handwritten copy of Paisiĭ Khilendarski’s Istoriia slavianobolgarskaia (Slaveno-Bulgarian history) was made in 1841 by the priest Vasilii Manuilov. In addition to the main text, the manuscript contains accounts of two miracles of the Holy Mother. First published in 1762, Paisiĭ’s history encouraged the Bulgarians, who had been under Ottoman rule for centuries, to discover their national consciousness and to embrace the Bulgarian language. The work was so influential that it was copied by hand and excerpted many times without Paisiĭ being identified as the author or his ...
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National Library of Bulgaria
Miroslav's Gospel
Miroslav’s Gospel is a liturgical work that is considered the most important and the most beautiful of Serbian manuscript books. It was created around 1180 by two student monks for Duke Miroslav, the brother of Stefan Nemanja, grand prince of the medieval Serbian state of Rascia. Written on parchment in Cyrillic uncial (the Cyrillic script that developed from Greek in the 9th century), it is a monument to early Serbian literacy. The work is decorated with approximately 300 stylized miniatures of outstanding beauty, and is representative of a group ...
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National Library of Serbia
Bulgarian Dream Interpreter, Printed for the Curiosity of Readers
Published in 1844, Bulgarian Dream Interpreter is an early Bulgarian astrological publication, part of a Balkan tradition of apocryphal and astrological works. It was intended to assist readers in interpreting their dreams by providing an alphabetical list of dreams and interpretations. The work is anonymous, but the publisher was Zaharia Carcalechi, a noted Bucharest journalist and publisher who produced works mainly in Romanian, but who also published 12 Bulgarian-language books in the period between 1840 and 1850.
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Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Bulgarian Phrasebook for Those Who Would Like to Speak Greek
Bulgarian Phrasebook for Those Who Would Like to Speak Greek is an 1845 phrasebook and manual for writing business letters in Greek for use by Bulgarians. It was not the first such business aid published in Bulgarian, but it is significant because of the importance of its author, Konstantin Fotinov (circa 1790–1858), a Bulgarian educator and editor of the first Bulgarian periodical, Liuboslovie (Philology). Fotinov recognized that in order to compete with the Greeks in the area of commerce, Bulgarians needed to be conversant in Greek, which was widely ...
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Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Bulgarian Arithmetic
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 ...
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Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Brief Interpretation of the Holy Church, and How Many Holy Vessels and Vestments are Kept There, and of the Everyday Services, of the Divine Liturgy, and of the Holy Church Mysteries
Brief Interpretation of the Holy Church, and How Many Holy Vessels and Vestments Are Kept There, and of the Everyday Services, of the Divine Liturgy, and of the Holy Church Mysteries is a Bulgarian translation of a liturgical work originally written in Greek. Shown here is the second edition. In 1837, when the first edition of this work was published, very few Bulgarian books existed for educational or even religious purposes. The Greek original is by the Hellenistic educator, Demetrios Nikolaos Darvares (1757–1853); the translation is by Raino Popovich ...
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Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Grammar of the Slavic Language
Ivan N. Momchilov was a noted teacher and textbook writer during the 19th-century era of the Bulgarian National Revival. As a teacher, he recognized the need for a basic primer for his pupils on Church Slavic, and set about writing such a work. His 1847 Grammar of the Slavic Language was Momchilov’s first textbook and the first Church Slavic grammar to be published in Bulgarian and by a Bulgarian. It was compiled using several other grammars as its foundation, namely those by the Russian Ivan Stepanovich Peninskii, by the ...
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Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
The Acts and the Epistles of the Apostles
The Acts and the Epistles of the Apostles, also known as the Apostle, is the first dated imprint published on the territory of present-day Ukraine. Written in Church Slavic, the liturgical language of the Orthodox Church in Russia, Ukraine, and other Slavic-speaking countries, it was printed in 1574 at the Saint Onuphrius Monastery in Lviv by Ivan Fyodorov (circa 1510-83). One of the fathers of printing in the East Slavic region, Fyodorov graduated from Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, and later worked in Moscow, where he published liturgical works using ...
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V.I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine
The Kiev Missal
Dating from the second half of the tenth century, the Kiev Missal is generally held to be the oldest Old Church Slavic manuscript with a coherent text. The manuscript is a seven-folio text in Glagolitic script that contains parts of a Roman-rite missal (Sacramentarium), a book of texts used by a priest during mass. Written in three different hands, it includes a reading from the Epistle to the Romans by the Apostle Paul (Chapter XIII, verses 11-14 and Chapter XIV, verses 1-4), a prayer to the Blessed Virgin from the ...
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V.I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine