Very few people from all over the world might know where Bulgaria is situated. Most of them can immediately say it’s a Balkan country and its capital is Sofia. So far so good… 🙂 But lots of fellows could barely know much about the country. Just on the opposite, they wouldn’t be aware of the fact that Bulgaria is the cradle and crossroad of lots of various ancient civilizations like the Thracians, Slavs, Proto-Bulgarians (Bulgars) and ancient Romans who have left their imprint and impact over our cultural heritage consisting of long history, fine literature, unique folklore and Cyrillic (Bulgarian) alphabet, of course.

 Our country is the birthplace of the Cyrillic alphabet. Saints Cyril Constantine and Methodius were from Thessaloniki. Methodius was two years older than his brother. Both of them were monks and Cyrillos was given the name Constantine upon his baptism.  They were also Byzantine diplomats and civil servants who invented the 38-letter Glagolitic in 855 AD which was the first Slavic alphabet.  Cyrillos created it using some Greek, Armenian and Hebrew letters as well as some original ones. Later it was used as a basis for the invention of the Cyrillic alphabet which was much simpler.

The two brothers were sent on a mission by Byzantine Emperor Michael III to the Central European Kingdom of Great Moravia (occupying today’s Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Lower Austria) in 864. They had to Christianize and teach the Slavs to read and write. Since then the two brothers from Thessaloniki have been considered Apostles to the Slavs by all Slavonic nations and even by non-Slavonic ones.

Unfortunately, after the two brothers’ death, their disciples were chased away from Great Moravia by the Germanic clergy at the end of the 9^th century AD. The Glagolitic alphabet was brought by St. Kliment Ohridski and St. Naum Preslavski to the First Bulgarian Tsarstvo (Empire, Kingdom) in 886. Saint Clement of Ohrid and Saint Naum of Preslav were Bulgarians, Byzantine scholars and two of the disciples of St. Cyril and St. Methodius.

They developed the new Bulgarian (Cyrillic) alphabet at the Preslav and Ohrid Literary Schools,  which they named after their master – St. Cyril, i.e.  Cyrillic.  It was based on the Glagolitic alphabet. Actually, it was the Old Bulgarian language which is today’s Church Slavonic. Moreover, later Bulgarian scholars, missioners and clergymen spread it out among the other Slavic nations. They brought the Old Bulgarian language out of Bulgaria and thus it became the basis of other languages such as Russian, Serbian, Slovenian and Croatian as well as it turned into a universal Slavonic literary language.

Once  brought to today’s Russian and Serbia in the 11^th – 12^th centuries, the Old Bulgarian language  was used as the only solid basis for the formation of Old Russian and Old Serbian literacy and literature. Glagolitic alphabet was also transferred and used as cryptography mainly in today’s Russian lands. As to Romania (and even Moldova), Cyrillic alphabet was also in use because present-day Romania was under the Bulgarian rule and within of the First Bulgarian Tsarstvo at that period of time.

That’s why Bulgaria is supposed to be the birthplace of the Cyrillic alphabet. Its developed version is used by more than 300 million people from twelve various countries in Eastern Europe and Northern & Central Asia. They are Slavic ones but there’re some non-Slavic sates, too, like Mongolia which adopted it in the 1940s as a result of the Russian cultural influence there. And one last very important fact here. The Cyrillic alphabet has been among the official alphabets of the European Union since January 1, 2007 when Bulgaria became part of it.

Happy May 24 … the National Day of Culture in Bulgaria … to all of us 🙂