How the Cyrillic alphabet developed and was adopted in Bulgaria
Since 2007, the Cyrillic alphabet has been an official script of the European Union and is used today in Bulgaria and in other countries. The complex history of the Cyrllic alphabet dates back to the 9th and 10th centuries, intertwined with many countries in the Slavic area.
As of 2019, around 250 million people in Eurasia use Cyrillic as the official script for their national languages. Its variations are used in several Slavic (Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian) and non-Slavic (Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Gagauz, Mongolian) languages.
Based on the more ancient Glagolitic phonetic alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet generally assumes its graphic forms from the Greek (Byzantine) alphabet, while adding letters adopted from the Glagolitsa for sounds that are exclusive to Slavic language.
A brief history of the origins of Slavic writing
Up until the 9th century, the Slavic inhabitants of Eastern Europe had still not developed a writing system. Proto-Slavic was a common language between many Slavic populations which was only spoken.
It descended from a branch of the Proto-Indo European language (to this day, we have no actual direct testimony of this and it has never been fully reconstructed). Gradually, this language evolved into numerous variations from which today’s Slavic languages originate.
The Glagolitic script (Glagolitsa) was created by Constantine, named Cyril after he became a monk. It is widely recognised that the Glagolitic script (that is written with letters in angular form and in rounded form) was actually pioneered in the 9th century by Cyril and his brother Methodius, who, as Greek missionaries, were appointed to evangelise the Slavs in the Slavic language. They first went to Moravia to spread religion in a language understandable to its inhabitants.
In 867/8 Pope Adrian II accepted in Rome the saintly brothers, lately known as the Holy Brothers or Apostles to the Slavs, and approved their missionary work and the use of the Slavic language in liturgy. The Slavic books were laid on the main altar of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome and Slavic was used during worship in the basilicas of Saint Peter, Saint Andrew and Saint Paul.
Even if the Glagolitsa is the very first Slavic alphabet, the first written documents that have been retrieved from the Slavic area are written, as commonly agreed, considerably later. Many scholars date the earliest extant Glagolitic manuscripts to the late 10th and early 11th centuries, or even to the 12th century. Among these, the Vatican Codex Assemanianus is the oldest witness to the cults of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius whom, in 1980, Pope John Paul II declared co-patron saints of Europe.
Another early document is the Baška Tablet, which was found in Croatia and assumingly dated to 1100 AD. It is regarded a predecessor of the Croatian angular Glagolitsa, definitely discerning from the rounded Glagolitsa, used by the South Slavs on the Balkan Peninsula.
How has the Cyrillic alphabet changed over centuries?
Created by St Cyril, the unique Glagolitic script might have been used in the 9th century for the liturgical books of the recently christianised First Bulgarian Empire. It is there where the disciples of St Methodius found shelter after the downfall of the Cyrillo-Methodian - and Byzantine - mission in the West.
However, very soon the Glagolitsa was replaced by the Cyrillitsa, a political act whose grounds are still debated by historians and philologists.
The Cyrillic script has adapted to changes in Slavic spoken language and developed regional variations to suit the features of national dialects and languages, and has been the subject of both academic and political reforms ever since its creation.
In 1708, the Cyrillic script used in Russia was heavily reformed by Tsar Peter the Great after his return from the Russian Grand Embassy visit in Western Europe. These new letterforms were called the Civil script, and the reforms aimed to draw the whole alphabet closer to those of the Latin alphabet. To further simplify it, several archaic letters were abolished and new letters designed by Peter himself were introduced.
Another notable reform was theorised by Serbian philologist Vuk Karadžić at the end of the 18th century, when he updated the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet by removing some graphemes no longer used in the spoken language and introducing graphemes specific to Serbian. This distancing it from the Church Slavonic alphabet in use prior to the reform.
During the 1920s, after the Russian Revolution, the Russian language and, consequently, the alphabet endured more changes and updates. More letters were abolished to further draw near spoken and written language, eliminating many homophones which were deemed no longer serving their purpose.
Similar changes affected the Cyrillic alphabet and Slavic phonetics in Bulgaria.
Two reforms took place in 1923 and 1945 which gradually removed old, inherited Slavic letters in the name of modernising and simplifying the language. Both reforms came from Russian influence, with the latter taking place after the socialist revolution of 1944.
Day of Slavonic Alphabet, Bulgarian Enlightenment and Culture
In 1891, the Eparchial School in Plovdiv celebrated for the first time the day of Saints Cyril and Methodius, as a civic holiday on 11 May.
The event set an example for schools in other Bulgarian towns and marked the beginning of the holiday, which since the Bulgarian Liberation is celebrated as the most beloved school holiday.
Since 1916, the Gregorian calendar was established in Bulgaria as the state and civil calendar. This moved the day of Saints Cyril and Methodius from 11 May to 24 May. This date acquired greater importance, and became known as the Day of Slavonic Literature and Bulgarian Culture
After 1968, the Church celebrates the saints' day on 11 May, with the 24 May being the Day of Bulgarian Education and Culture and the Slavonic Script. Nowadays, the celebration of 24 May is established as a national symbol, vividly expressed in the current official name of the holiday - Day of the Holy Brothers Cyril and Methodius, of the Bulgarian alphabet, education and culture and of Slavic Literature. It was adopted by a decision of the Bulgarian National Assembly, voted on 9 December 2020.
Celebration of Bulgarian culture and Cyrillic beyond national borders
The Cyrillic alphabet was the focus of one of ten co-creation events organised by the EU initiative #WeAreEuropeForCulture (2019-2020), aiming at showcasing European cultures with co-creation workshops and pop-up exhibitions in hybrid form, that also sourced content from Europeana. The Bulgarian event of the series, organised in Sofia by NALIS Foundation, showcasing heritage photographs as well as physical artworks created by children with a hearing impairment.
The exhibition was organised by NALIS Foundation in collaboration with the Association for Culture and Empathy “Storks”, and the Association of Parents of Hearing Impaired Children (APHIC) for supporting hearing disorders.
NALIS Foundation
The main objective of the National Academic Library and Information System Foundation (NALISF), founded in 2009, is the technological upgrade of Bulgarian academic and public libraries, museums and galleries. This includes the digitization of the card catalogs of the university and public libraries, important GLAM collections, the establishment of a unified on-line national library catalogue and access to their resources.
Since 2015 NALIS has been a content provider in Europeana, offering a beautiful collection of photographs promoting Bulgarian culture, heritage, landscapes and traditions. After being collected from a vast network of partners, more than 15,000 photographs were digitised and made accessible for the first time in Europeana: the contribution from NALIS has been crucial to expand the content available to the public and to enhance the representation of Bulgaria. Browse their collection, aggregated by Photoconsortium in the context of the Europeana Photography project.