Границата между варварството и цивилизацията (За метаезика на културните понятия по време на Първата българска държава)
The Borderline between Barbarism and Civilization (The Metalanguage of the Cultural Concepts during the First Bulgarian Kingdom)

Summary/Abstract: Two historiographic traditions which differed chronologically are examined in the text. The one was the Byzantine of the 6th c., and the other the Old Bulgarian of the 9th-10th c. The common thing that linked them was the profoundly existing element of evaluation. For instance, according to the Byzantine authors, the Slavs of the 6th c. were people without common sense, without customs, they lacked organization and were uncivilized. They stood outside their Byzantine organized society. In 864 after the conversion to Christianity of the Bulgarian people, the borderline was changed, i. e. the Bulgarians with their qualities entered the cultural model of the Byzantine community. They had already adopted Christianity, were civilized and fought against the unconverted and uncivilized, i.e. they entered the model created by Byzantium and built up their own. They established their own internal and external boundaries, so that they repeated or built up, imitating the Byzantines, their own cultural model, they took up the position of organized and civilized people, they possessed order, unlike those who lacked it and were neither enlightened nor Christians. These examples were valid also for the Bulgarian literature of the 9th and 10th centuries. In point of fact the Old Bulgarian writers followed the models created by the Byzantine authors of the 6th c. and adopted and further developed them. The Bulgarian literature of the 9th-10th c. was very rich in proofs of being civilized and not, and in this way created its own model which was similar to the Byzantine but in practice was turned into its own.

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