Convent School (Bulgaria)
The monastery or cell schools in Bulgaria ( Bulgarian Килийно училище ; transcription: Kilijno utschilischte) were a kind of elementary school in the Bulgarian territories during the 500 years of Ottoman rule over the Balkan provinces. The monastery schools preserved the Bulgarian language and the Christian faith of the Bulgarians for over 500 years. Until the establishment of state schools in the first half of the 19th century, the monastery schools were the only schools for Bulgarians. These schools were an important aspect in the national revival of Bulgaria .
Schooling was not denied to the Bulgarians, but there were no state institutions that could produce teachers and writers, so the Bulgarians had to be content with primitive monastery schools, a result of their own organization and a means of self-education.
Surname
The commonly used German translation ("Klosterschulen") of the Bulgarian original term ("Kilijno utschilischte") is not very appropriate. The Bulgarian word "kilija" means not only monastery cell, but also any kind of small chamber, room, hermitage, little chamber or study room. The Bulgarian word "utschilischte" means school.
For teaching in the monastery schools were monastery a monk's cell assigned or a room in the outbuildings of the Church. This is where the Bulgarian name comes from, which instead of "monastery school" could also be translated as "monastery cell school".
Over time, however, the character of these monastery schools changed. There were also secular schools of this type for which the term "dwarf school" would be more appropriate. To emphasize the typical national peculiarity in the historical situation, these schools could also be called "Bulgarian dwarf schools".
However, since "Kilijno utschilischte" is used throughout the Bulgarian specialist literature, only the term "monastery school" is used throughout the following, even if it does not characterize this type of school adequately. This name will therefore be put in quotation marks further below, especially when the later phase refers to secular "monastery schools" that are no longer in the care of church institutions, but, for example, in the teacher's house.
In this context, "monastery school" in quotation marks should be understood as a primitive educational establishment housed in a narrow space that is unsuitable for a school. It is a school that teaches using outdated teaching methods and could therefore more appropriately be described as a "primitive school".
Destruction of the Bulgarian education system
With the invasion of the Ottomans and the fall of the Second Bulgarian Empire in the second half of the 14th century, there was a decline in the intellectual life of the Bulgarians. With the capture of Veliko Tarnovo by the Ottomans (1393) and the Kingdom of Vidin (1396), the two largest centers of Bulgarian intellectual life were destroyed. A significant part of the educated Bulgarians was killed, others were enslaved and forcibly relocated to Asia Minor , and still others emigrated to the neighboring Slavic countries.
All Bulgarian schools in the country have been closed. Education and literature disappeared in the conquered Bulgarian territories. The cultural exchange with the other European countries came to a standstill for a long time. When, in the 15th century, after the horror of the Ottoman conquest, life gradually returned to normal, there was a timid revival of spiritual life in some Bulgarian monasteries.
The Ottoman administration was forcibly imposed on the Ottoman Balkan provinces of the former Bulgarian Empire, which hampered the intellectual development of the Bulgarian people. The upper class consisted entirely of Ottomans. In addition to the Ottoman upper class, many ordinary Turks from the heartland of the Ottoman Empire immigrated to the former Bulgarian Empire during the 500 years of rule of the Ottomans over the Bulgarians. Their children were taught in schools attached to the mosques . These schools were denied to non-Muslim Bulgarians. However, part of the Bulgarians converted to Islam ( Pomaks - Muslim Bulgarians). Whether and to what extent the Islamization of parts of the Bulgarians took place under direct or indirect coercion, how many and for what motives converted to Islam is irrelevant in this context and is controversial in historiography (see: Islam in Bulgaria ).
The Bulgarian language was increasingly displaced, even if it was not the direct policy of the Ottoman Empire to assimilate the conquered peoples .
Special features of the Bulgarian monastery schools
In the beginning the Bulgarian monastery schools were attached to churches or monasteries and metochs (these are smaller monastery branches).
These schools were established in the 15th and 16th centuries. Worldly knowledge was not imparted in them. Only the script of Church Slavonic was taught in class, as well as calligraphy and church chants. Each church had its own monastery school. The local clergyman was the teacher. These Bulgarian monastery schools were open to all children. In the 17th and 18th centuries private "monastery schools" also emerged. The teacher, who was not necessarily a clergyman , taught each child individually. The monastery schools were only uniform in their early phase in that the teaching material in the numerous monastery schools in the Bulgarian settlements of the Ottoman Empire was exclusively religious in nature.
Classes were either in Greek or in Church Slavonic, and in some places in both languages. Reading, writing, some arithmetic and church hymns were taught. In addition, the children were brought up to love their homeland and to love Christian neighbors.
Occasionally, lessons were also combined with learning a particular craft. Ecclesiastical books were used as textbooks - books of hours , Gospels , Book of Psalms, and others. Of course, the children were initiated into the liturgical traditions of the Greek Orthodox Church during the lessons in the monastery schools .
The main purpose of the monastery schools was to train young people for the clergy. But especially the children of the craftsmen and traders, a class that placed particular emphasis on education, attended these monastery schools. The educated monks who otherwise dealt with the transcription of books acted as teachers. There subjects were trained to prepare for their duties as monks, but also children from the neighboring villages who were to become village priests and teachers.
National Bulgarian Revival and "New Bulgarian Education"
An extensive network of monastery schools emerged in the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century. They were no longer just attached to monasteries and churches, but were also founded as municipal schools.
A teacher usually has only a few children to teach - 10 to 20 students. The teacher was usually paid by the city or has another profession, for example a clergyman.
It was not until the 18th century and the first quarter of the 19th century that favorable external and internal circumstances brought the intellectual life of the Bulgarians to life.
Gradually, the pursuit of education and spiritual emancipation became more and more conscious and purposeful until, in the second half of the 19th century, an organized national movement was formed that advocated the creation of modern, secular schools.
This movement for "New Bulgarian Education" was part of the movement for the national rebirth of the Bulgarians.
From the mid-1820s until the Crimean War (1853–1856), this movement for "New Bulgarian education" increased. The already existing network of Bulgarian schools was greatly expanded and strengthened even further in the years that followed, up to the liberation of Bulgaria (1878).
The stormy economic development made it necessary to raise the level of education. Agriculture, handicrafts, manufactory production and the intensifying foreign trade contacts with European countries demanded more and more diverse knowledge in the field of geography, history, foreign languages, merchandise and natural sciences. The traditional training of the monastery schools could no longer do this. It was insufficient and out of date in comparison with the achievements of modern European civilization.
As early as the 18th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment penetrated the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The reform and modernization efforts in the Ottoman Empire themselves had a positive effect on the movement for "New Bulgarian education".
It started with the ambitious reforms of Sultan Ahmed III . (1703–1730), which Sultan Abdülmecid I continued with the Hatt-ı Sherif of Gülhane (1839) and mark the beginning of the tansimat .
With the Hatt-ı Sherif of Gülhane, all subjects of the Ottoman Empire, regardless of their beliefs, were guaranteed equal rights. With another decree by Abdülmecid I, the Hatt-ı Hümayun decree, in 1856 the movement for "New Bulgarian education" was in fact legally permitted and legalized.
In the 18th century the number of monastery schools increased noticeably. In 1762, when Païssi von Hilandar completed his Slavo-Bulgarian history , there were 112 monastery schools. In 1835 there were 235 monastery schools. The quality of education also changed in the second half of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. More and more schools were opened by secular persons or by the Bulgarian communities. The secular element also penetrated more and more into the classroom. Some secular and ecclesiastical history and arithmetic are also taught.
Gradually a class of teachers also emerged from which the core of the Bulgarian intelligence of the rebirth was formed in the early phase of the Bulgarian rebirth.
The monastery schools in the monasteries of Rila , Etropole, Chilendar, Sograf and Trojan , as well as the schools in Kotel , Teteven , Sopot and Samokow were particularly popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries . In many regions the monastery schools were the only schools until the liberation (1878).
Greek schools
In the second half of the 17th century, there were also Greek schools in some Bulgarian cities that taught Greek and Bulgarian. They emphasized the advantages of the Greek language and education and indoctrinated a contempt for the Bulgarian mother tongue. Although these Greek schools were vehicles of an assimilation process, they also played a positive role as they raised the general level of education of the Bulgarian people. They spread worldly knowledge and new ideas. Learning the Greek language made trade and handicrafts easier for the Bulgarians.
Many young Bulgarians went through the well-known Greek schools in Kotel, Istanbul, Ohrid , Kastoria or Ioannina . Secular Greek schools were also opened in some Bulgarian cities - Plovdiv, Samokov, Melnik, Veliko Tarnovo, Sliven.
The Bulgarians aspired to the establishment of Greek-Bulgarian schools in which, although Greek was taught, the Bulgarian language was also taught. These schools were completely secular. The first school of this kind was founded in Sliven in 1810, according to other authors in Kotel in 1812 and in Swishtow in 1815. The school in Sliven only existed for a short time and the school in Kotel was originally intended to be a purely Greek school and the Bulgarian language was only added later to the lessons.
The Greek-Bulgarian schools represent a transition period from the monastery schools to the New Bulgarian secular school. Thanks to these schools, a new, much better educated generation of Bulgarians, who received their education in the 20s and 30s of the 19th century, joins the activists of national rebirth.
The Bulgarian schools shortly before the liberation from the Ottomans
After a long chain of events, the Russo-Turkish War from 1877 to 1878 was the final and decisive event in the end of Ottoman rule. In the previous decades, known as the third phase of the Bulgarian National Revival, there was an increase in Bulgarian national consciousness, which was additionally fueled by some activists (revolutionaries of the national revival), of which Wasil Levski is the most famous. This led to the April uprising , which was bloodily suppressed by the Ottomans.
At the same time, the economic, political and military power of the Ottoman Empire declined. The Sultan in Istanbul officially gave the Greek Orthodox Church the task of taking care of the Bulgarian territories. As part of the newly awakened Bulgarian national consciousness, the Bulgarians also fought for their own Bulgarian Orthodox Church.
The Bulgarian schools after the liberation
After the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottomans (1878), the educational system also changed. The legislature gave schools a secular character. One of the first decrees of the Third Bulgarian Empire (1878), which was also confirmed by the Governor General of the newly created Principality of Bulgaria , the Russian Count Dondukow-Korsakow , deals with schools. The decree formulates the goal of primary school education: learning to read and write, learn basic religious and moral terms and acquire useful knowledge for life.
With the aim of ensuring their children a better education, the wealthy Bulgarian traders and craftsmen took part in the construction and maintenance of new schools. They also found support from emigrants from Wallachia and southern Russia .
Lessons and textbooks
At first, ecclesiastical books were mainly used as textbooks. The training in the monastery schools took place in several stages. After learning the scriptures, the students learned large parts of the Book of Hours and the Book of Psalms as well as the prayers "Heavenly Lord" (Bulgar. Царю небесен), " Our Father " (Bulgar. Отче наш) and "Come to us to bow" ( bulg. Елате да се поклоним). Special emphasis was placed on the first prayer in class, as it was considered important in the fight against heretics. Higher levels of education in the monastery schools included reading, explaining and interpreting the biblical texts, memorizing the other prayers, and acquiring the knowledge and skills to copy religious texts and hymn books.
The initial lessons were aimed at literacy for the children. First they learned to read, mostly by heart. A higher level of education was writing, which is done on smooth, square boards. The arithmetic was limited to addition and subtraction. Only the more educated teachers also teach multiplication and division.
In later periods the stematography of Christofor Schefarowitsch (published in Vienna in 1741) was used in the class, as well as the Slavo-Bulgarian story by Païssi von Hilandar and grammars of Russian, Serbian and Greek origin.
The merchant Marko Teodorowitsch was 1792 in Vienna brooches Print informing the Church Slavonic in the Bulgarian monastery schools.
The primer by Petar Beron (Bulgarian Буквар с различни поучения), published in Brașov in 1824 , also plays an important role . It is known in Bulgaria as the fish fibula (Bulgarian Рибен буквар) because a whale and a dolphin are drawn on the book cover. The book is written like a children's encyclopedia and was compiled from several Greek textbooks.
Mutual schools
From the first half of the 18th century a new type of school appeared with a new form of teaching. These schools were no longer referred to as monastery schools in Bulgaria. These "mutual schools" (a literal translation of the Bulgarian name; bulg. Взаимни училища; transcription: Wsaimni utschilischta) were based on the fact that children of different ages taught each other the subject matter. That is the teaching system of the Lancaster School .
Of these "mutual schools" there were also girls' schools in the 19th century. Up until the advent of these girls' schools, girls were in principle excluded from education among the Bulgarians. With the Ottomans, girls were also excluded from schools.
Positive and negative aspects of the monastery schools
The Greek-influenced Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople , often briefly referred to as the Greek Orthodox Church , had ecclesiastical sovereignty over the Bulgarian territories. The ruling church leaders of the Greek Orthodox Church have in a sense worked with the Ottomans and used their influence to ensure peace and order. On the other hand, the church also had an autonomous position within certain limits and was able to contribute to the preservation of the Bulgarian national consciousness and to strengthening the spiritual resistance. The numerous monasteries in the country played a decisive role in this. The children learned to read and write in the monastery schools. While it was only a primary school tuition, it created a foundation on which intelligent children could build their further education.
The monastery schools existed for almost 400 years in the Bulgarian areas of the Ottoman Empire.
These monastery schools had no written rules or regulations.
The schools differed from each other in that their performance depended on the personal qualities of the respective teacher. In the local Bulgarian chronicles of that time, individual teachers were also highlighted. Since the teachers had no pedagogical training one could rightly speak of "born teachers".
The Slavic tradition was maintained in the monastery schools. The students were taught the beliefs and beliefs in the Bulgarian language. Clergy and scribes were trained.
From the 15th to the 18th century, the monastery schools played a major role in maintaining the national self-confidence of the Bulgarians who were incorporated into the Ottoman Empire.
Students of monastery schools were famous Bulgarians like Païssi von Hilandar or Sophronius von Wraza .
Because of their firm ties to the conservative religious practices of the Orthodox Church, the monastery schools did not succeed in developing into secular schools on their own.
Despite the changes in the teaching of the monastery schools in the 18th century, there was only elementary education provided by the monastery schools. They lagged significantly behind the modern, secular schools. Therefore, at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, more and more Bulgarians turned to secular Greek schools or continued their monastery school education abroad.
Despite the primitive teaching, the monastery schools contributed to the literacy and education of the Bulgarian population and helped to preserve the Bulgarian nationality.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Härtel / Schönfeld: Bulgaria: from the Middle Ages to the present, p.97; # Hans-Dieter Döpmann : Church in Bulgaria from the beginnings to the present, Munich, Biblion Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3-932331-90-7 , p. 43
- ↑ Vera P. Mutafchieva: Bulgaria. A demolition. ISBN 954-426-195-8 , Anubis Publishing House, Sofia, 1999
literature
Hans-Joachim Härtel, Roland Schönfeld: Bulgaria: from the Middle Ages to the present. , from the series: Eastern and Southeastern Europe. History of the countries and peoples, ISBN 3-7917-1540-2 , Verlag Friedrich Pustet Regensburg, 1998
