Leo Wiener

“ The British and Foreign Bible Society regarded Riggs as a suitable person to supervise the printing of the Bulgarian New Testament, and sent through Mr. Barker, its agent, the newly acquired manuscript to be issued there. At that time there was not a printing establishment in the whole of Bulgaria, and what few books had been printed in Slavic type for the people, had been issued in Servia or Wallachia. Mr. Barker provided Damian, the Greek printer of Smyrna, with a font of Slavic type, and thus created the first Bulgarian typography. ”

“ When the Eastern dialect began to rise in importance, Riggs was among the first to adopt it for his translation of the whole Bible, but previous to the sixties, Neophytos' New Testament and Riggs' religious and ethical tracts formed the basis for all other literary productions.
Among the few Bulgarians who were settled at Smyrna, there was one who was in charge of a Lancasterian Greek school in which some Bulgarian was taught. This schoolteacher, by the name of Fotinov, was destined to become the founder of the first Bulgarian periodic. ”

“ Although the sublimity of the divine thoughts of Scripture does not admit of change, and the giving them another form is a difficult task to the feebleness of human understandings, it is nevertheless of the first necessity that we should at least dissipate the darkness with which the language involves them, and render the latter so clear, as that the Scriptures may become as comprehensible as they can be to the understanding of those who read them. ”

“ The modern Bulgarian is, however, so far changed from the mother tongue, that the people can understand little or nothing of what they hear in church; and numbers of the priests, from want of education, are much in the same circumstances with the people. When, in addition to this, it is considered that the Bulgarians have scarcely any books in their spoken language, it will appear absolutely impossible that they should be anything but what they are—extremely ignorant. ”

“ In the meantime young Bulgaria was rapidly preparing itself to take the place of the foreign teachers and to agitate the intellectual and political independence of the country. It is an interesting fact that when in 1876 Bulgaria had broken out in revolt against Turkey, it was an American who was most active in obtaining their political freedom. ”

“ All the individuals of this nation who acquire any tincture of learning, and they are very few, are necessarily obliged to seek it through the medium of another language. A small beginning is at present being made to the cultivation of the Bulgarian tongue, in which two elementary works have lately been published the one a spelling-book, to which is appended a treatise on arithmetic, and a few partlculars of natural history ”

“ Whatever few schools did exist before the first quarter of this cent, were all taught in Greek; the service was held in that ancient language, doubly unintelligible to the Slavic masses. Under these conditions the inhabitants of Macedonia, nearest to Greece, and therefore thrown in contact with that country, became bilingual, using their own despised dialect only in the narrow circle of their homes, nay, whole cities became completely hellenized. ”

“ The rich and the educated were living abroad in the large capitals of Western Europe, or at Odessa, Alexandria, and in the Phanar quarter of Constantinople. In the Morea, the poverty of the ignorant populace was unparalleled. Capodistria did his very best to introduce a system of primary schools, but the exchecquer was drained, there were to be found few suitable teachers, and scarcely any textbooks in the vernacular, or in that mixed dialect which aimed at making the ancient Greek the literary form. ”

“ And it was perhaps necessary that this should have been done many years ago, in order that the reading of the Holy Scriptures might become more general; but different circumstances which have occurred from time to time, and perhaps a negligence and want of zeal for good thugs, have been the cause, that this measure of public utility has never been undertaken until these our days; nor perhaps would it even now have been undertaken, had not the British Bible Society, with a benevolent zeal, taken it under its care. ”

“ But the seed had been sown, and a rich crop has grown up in the last fifty years, so that now Bulgaria presents the unprecedented example of a nation rising to high culture from a state of crass ignorance within half a century. ”

“ Barker succeeded in 1836 in making "arrangements for obtaining a translation which is likely to prove more satisfactory, and to which Archbishop Hilariou has kindly promised to give his sanction." This new man employed in the task of furnishing the Bulgarians with the new Testament was Neophytos of Ryla, a monastery under Hilarion’s jurisdiction. We have seen how the Archbishop of Ternovo had been influenced by the foreign missionaries to favor religious instruction in the native language of the people ”

“ I send you a specimen of the Bulgarian Monthly Magazine published here. It contains many articles (some of them religious) translated from our Greek Magazine. It is in fact a child of that work, without being sustained in any degree at our expense. This is one instance illustrative of the indirect influence Of missionary exertions in these parts. " So, we see, this first periodical, from which dates the beginning of Bulgarian journalism and belles letters, is "a child of an American direct result of Fotinov's acquaintance with Riggs. ”