Filologičeskaja dejatel’nost’ tyrnovskich knižnikov XIV veka i vosstanovlenie kirillo-mefodievskogo nasledija / The Philological Practice of the 14th Century Tărnovo School and the Rescue of the Cyrillo-Methodian Legacy

The present survey analyzes the rich literary production during the reign of Ivan Aleksandăr (1331-1371). Scholars usually explain the activity of the “Tărnovo School” as the outcome of a generic “protection of culture” on the part of the imperial family and ruling classes of that time. Actually, typology and content of texts copied during the forty-year reign of Ivan Aleksandăr clearly show the aim to recover the cyrillo-methodian tradition and the legacy of the first Bulgarian Empire, namely, the “Slavonic” and monastic roots of literary culture. As a matter of fact, the last decades of the second Bulgarian Empire are characterized by the dialectic between this sort of “return to the past” and the influence of the contemporary byzantine culture.