/ world today news/ On May 24, we celebrate the Day of Bulgarian Education and Culture and of Slavic Writing. On this day in Bulgaria, the national holiday of enlightenment, culture and the creation of the Glagolitic script by Cyril and Methodius, also known as the “Thessalonica brothers”, is celebrated.
Cyril and Methodius wrote the first translations of the holy scriptures in Glagolitic. The first known evidence of the celebration of the holiday was found in an Armenian chronicle of 1813, which mentions the celebration of the holy brothers on May 22, 1803 in Shumen. For the first time, on May 11, 1851, at the diocesan school “St. St. Cyril and Methodius” in the city of Plovdiv, on the initiative of Nayden Gerov, a celebration of Cyril and Methodius – the creators of the Glagolitic alphabet – was organized. May 11 was not chosen by chance by Nayden Gerov — it is the common church holiday of the two saints. In our revival literature, the first notices of the celebration of Cyril and Methodius on May 11 are found in the “Christomatiya slavskogo yazaka” from 1852 by Neofit Rilski.
In 1857, the day of the “holy brothers” was honored in the Bulgarian church “St. Stephen” in Constantinople, together with a service for St. Ivan Rilski. The following year, 1858, this day was also celebrated in Plovdiv with a solemn service in the Church of the Holy Virgin, and then the teacher Joakim Gruev delivered an exciting speech about the life and work of Cyril and Methodius. The holiday began to be regularly celebrated in Shumen and Lom, and from 1860 also in Skopje. Since 1863, May 11 has been established as a church holiday of the holy co-apostles Cyril and Methodius. In Sofia, the holiday was organized by teacher Sava Filaretov.
During the struggles for church independence from the beginning of the 18th century, the historical work of Cyril and Methodius was not only a stimulus, but also a case study against the Greek Ecumenical Patriarchate. It becomes a symbol of future independence, as noted by Hristo Botev in one of his articles. The holiday goes beyond the church-school framework of its celebration and becomes a national holiday. After 1878, the celebration of Cyril and Methodius developed in two directions. In free Bulgaria, it is limited to a school holiday. In Macedonia and Odrinsko, however, it retains its functions as a demonstration of the Bulgarian language in its struggle against Turkish rule, as well as against the assimilationist efforts of Serbian and Greek propaganda. The feast of Cyril and Methodius gained special importance after the First World War.
With the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1916, the holiday celebrated by the state and the church was celebrated on one day – May 24. After 1969, secularization took place by separating the ecclesiastical from the secular calendar, therefore today there are two holidays – ecclesiastical (May 11) and secular (May 24). May 24 was declared an official holiday of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria by a decision of the Ninth National Assembly on March 30, 1990, and since November 15, 1990, it has been an official holiday of the Republic of Bulgaria, when the People’s Republic of Bulgaria was renamed the Republic of Bulgaria.
The earliest records of celebrating May 11 as the day of the Holy equal apostles and educators Cyril and Methodius date from the 12th century, and they were recognized as saints as early as the end of the 9th century. Separately, the memory of St. Cyril is celebrated on February 14, and of St. Methodius on April 6 (the days of their deaths). The All-Russian Synod on the occasion of the celebration of the thousandth anniversary of the Moravian Mission of St. St. Cyril and Methodius made the following decision: “In memory of the millennium, since our father’s language was initially sanctified through the Gospel and Christ’s faith, to establish annually, starting from this year 1863, May 11 as a church holiday of the Reverend Cyril and Methodius! ” After that, the holiday is celebrated in all Orthodox Slavic countries.
The general feast of St. St. Cyril and Methodius was also celebrated by the Bulgarian church in the following centuries, and during the Renaissance it also became a school holiday of letters. The feast of St. St. Cyril and Methodius is celebrated during the Renaissance not only in Bulgarian lands, but also abroad – among Renaissance immigration in Romania and Russia, among Bulgarian students abroad, among Bulgarians exiled in Diyarbekir. In 1856, Joakim Gruev proposed the day of St. St. Cyril and Methodius to be celebrated as a holiday for Bulgarian students.
In 1892, Stoyan Mihailovski wrote the text of the school anthem with its first verse “Go, people reborn”. The hymn is entitled “Hymn of St. St. Cyril and Methodius” and includes 14 verses, of which the first six are most often performed today. Panayot Pipkov created the music for the anthem on 11.05.1900. May 11 is celebrated by the Orthodox Church as the feast of St. Cyril and Methodius, while May 24 has established itself as the feast of Slavic writing, Bulgarian education and culture.
May 24 is also celebrated in Russia as a holiday of Slavic writing and of the holy brothers Cyril and Methodius. It was celebrated there for the first time in 1986 at the initiative of the Murmansk writer Vitaly Maslov. In Murmansk is the northernmost point, where there is a monument to St. St. Cyril and Methodius. The brothers are canonized as saints for the translation and popularization of the Bible in the Old Slavonic language (gained popularity in its Russian edition as Church Slavonic, Church Slavonic) and spreading Christianity among the Slavs. They were declared by the Pope to be patrons of Europe. The Orthodox Church also honors them as one of the holy Seven.
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