Bulgaria brings the Cyrillic Alphabet to the European Union
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Few Americans know that the writing they call “Russian” is indeed Cyrillic. With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on January 1st, 2007, the Cyrillic alphabet became the third official alphabet of the EU (after Greek and Latin).

History of the Cyrillic Alphabet

In the early ninth century Europe, there were only two official alphabets in which the Christian texts existed: Greek and Latin. The large Slavic communities – The First Bulgarian Empire, Great Moravia, Serbia, Croatia, Northern Greece, were mostly Christian, but the Scriptures were read and liturgy was conducted in Latin or Greek –incomprehensible for the lay people. There was also another problem – those who didn’t understand the Christian preaching, remained pagan.
To solve those problems, and to weaken the influence of the Frankish priests in his Slavic kingdom, Rastislav, the prince of Great Moravia (Current territory of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungry and Austria) asked the Byzantine Emperor to send him missionaries to evangelize the Slavs. In 862 Emperor Michael III sent to Great Moravia two brothers: Cyril and Methodius.
Born in Thessalonica (modern Greece) in a family with a Greek father and Slav mother, Saints Cyril and Methodius were educated in the oldest European University of Magnaura (in Constantinople), founded in 425 A.D. by Theodosius II, later recognized as University in 849. By the time they were sent as missionaries to the Slavs in Central Europe, they had already made important achievements in theology, philosophy and law.
In 863, Cyril and Methodius had started to translate the Bible into Old Church Slavonic. Saints Cyril  (the Philosopher) and Methodius created an alphabet, called Glagolitic, which was later adapted to the Old Bulgarian language and named Cyrillic to honor Saint Cyril the Philosopher.  The development of the Cyrillic alphabet is attributed to Clement of Ohrid, a disciple of Saints Cyril and Methodius, accompanying them to the mission to Moravia and later establishing the first Old Church Slavonic Literary School in Bulgaria.
In 867, Pope Nicholas I invited the brothers to Rome to praise them for their efforts to spread the Christianity among the Slavs. His successor, Pope Adrian II formally authorized the use of the new Slavic liturgy, despite the protests of the East Franks (now Germany), who claimed clerical control of Central Europe and insisted on the exclusive use of Latin liturgy. Two years after Pope Adrian blessed the Slavonic Bible, Cyril died in Rome in 869. Methodius returned to Moravia to continue the translation of the Scripture and to evangelize in Slavonic until his dead in 885.
After the death of Rastislav in 870, the successor on the Moravian throne changed policy and permitted to the Papal evangelists to persecute the disciples of Saints Cyril and Methodius. In 880 Moravia was officially adhered to the Roman Papacy and the Slavic scholars were jailed or exiled.

The Role of Bulgaria

In 885, the East Frankish bishop prohibited the Glagolitic script and imprisoned 200 disciples of Methodius from the Moravian academy. Four of them, after spending time in jail, traveled East to Bulgaria. Naum of Preslav, Climent of Ohrid, Sava and Angelarius reached the capital of Bulgaria – Pliska – in 866. Welcomed by Tzar Boris I, they were commissioned to educate the future ecclesiastic elite of the Bulgarian Empire.
After declaring the Christianity as official state religion in Bulgaria in 865, Boris I realized that permitting the Byzantine clergy to preach in Greek would create a dangerous cultural dependency by Byzantium. For the Bulgarian tsar, the teaching of the Slavic alphabet and language was a natural way to preserve the sovereignty of Bulgaria, both in political and religious aspects.
Boris I also played a role as patron of the Slavic Arts and Letters by establishing two Literary Schools (academies):  one in his capital, Pliska and another in the region of Ohrid (modern Republic of Macedonia and Albania). The Pliska Literary School was moved to Preslav during the reign of the successor of Boris I, Simeon the Great and continued to be a Slavic cultural, religious and ideological center.
Although the Cyrillic alphabet is credited to Clement of Ohrid, historians and linguists believe that in reality the evolution of the Glagolitic towards Cyrillic had developed much later, in the 10th century A. D., in the Preslav Literary School.  The changes from the Glagolitic to Cyrillic were made to reflect phonetic characteristics of the Old Bulgarian language and thus to fit the needs of thousands Bulgarian scholars, who were translating Greek texts in classic philosophy, Christian Scriptures and other sciences.
Outside of the Bulgarian borders, Eastern Orthodox Christianity was spreading thanks to the Cyrillic alphabet and the literary culture created in Preslav and Ohrid. In the year 972, on the throne of Kiev Russia (Scandinavian – Slavic state, predecessor of modern Russia, Ukraine and Belarus) ascended Knyaz Vladimir I. His choice to Christianize himself and his subjects in 988 was strongly influenced by the fact that opposite to the local pagan cults, the Muslim, Jewish and Roman Catholic religions, the Eastern Christianity of Bulgaria and Byzantium already had accessible Scriptures in a Slavic alphabet.
This legacy of Tsar Boris I and Knyaz Vladimir I had lasting political, cultural, and ideological consequences. The acceptance of the Cyrillic alphabet as official alphabet of the First Bulgarian Empire in 866 and its propagation after 998 A.D. in Kiev Russia made possible the massive Christianization of the Eastern and Southern Slavs.
In addition to the pivotal role that the Cyrillic alphabet played for the Christian faith, its importance is even greater for the cultural development of Europe. Contrary to the situation in the Frankish Empire, where the achievements in sciences and theology were available only to a small elite writing in Latin – in South and Eastern Europe philosophy, religion, arts and literature were taught in a language accessible to larger masses, thus democratizing the Slavic culture.
The medieval kingdoms and empires of Bulgaria, Croatia, Moravia, Russia, and Serbia, created millennia-lasting Slavic Christian Civilization enjoying political, cultural and ideological independence in times when the rest of Europe was still in the shadows and medieval restraints of the Latin doctrine. The Cyrillic Alphabet and the Slavic Civilization later became a natural barrier against the forceful Islamization of the Slavs during the five-century Muslim Turkish Domination of the Balkan Peninsula.

Present

Currently more than 220 million people in Europe and Asia write in Cyrillic. In Europe those counties are Bulgaria, Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro. 60 million people in Central Asia, including Mongolia and Kazakhstan, use the Cyrillic alphabet to write in their non-Slavic languages.
For the second time in history, Bulgaria is preserving and propagating the Cyrillic alphabet beyond its borders. The Bulgarian language together with its alphabet as one of the official languages of the EU, will now make the millennia-old Slavic Civilization available to the rest of the 27 countries of the Union, contributing to the cultural diversity of all member-states.

Rossitza Ohridska - Oslon

Chronology

863 – Saint Cyril and Methodius start to translate the Scriptures in Old Church Slavonic
865 – Christian religion proclaimed by Tsar Boris I as official religion of the First Bulgarian Empire
867 – The Cyrillic alphabet and Slavonic liturgy officially accepted by the Roman Pope
886 – Saint Clement of Ohrid and three other disciples of Saints Cyril and Methodius establish the Preslav (first in Pliska) and Ohrid Literary Schools in Bulgaria
988 – Vladimir I of Kiev Russia adopts the Christianity as official religion and the Cyrillic alphabet as state writing system