Petar Bogdan was unable to publish his manuscript in Italy due to lack of funds

Professor Vasiliev, did you have access to the manuscript itself, or did you translate it from a copy of it? How long did it actually take you to complete it?

– I will tell you about these events briefly, in chronological order. Since I am a Latin scholar, Professor Liliya Ilieva, the discoverer, or more precisely the rediscoverer, of this manuscript, contacted me in October 2017 and asked if I would like to get involved. I agreed. It was shortly after the opening. I used a digital copy. However, first I had to get familiar with the text, assess the difficulty, and the method of learning. Because translation is only a small part of it – of course, it is not unimportant, but for the manuscript other aspects are also important.

For example?

– For example, when the entire manuscript is collected as a physical medium, it can be investigated, as it is a complex collection, i.e. a collection consisting of “On the Antiquity of the Fatherland and Bulgarian Affairs” and other works. The history of the manuscript can be explored, when and how it was formed Estancia University Library It is in Modena, where it is still preserved, and whether the handwriting in which it is written corresponds to that of Petar Bogdan. I must do this by comparative analysis with handwriting in personal documents that are proven to be his.

© Wilco Angelov

What is your conclusion? Are all the chapters in the collection by Peter Bogdan?

– Everything is his. However, during the research, I discovered that the manuscript found was not written by Petar Bogdan. It was a copy prepared by another person, most likely an Italian, who was specifically commissioned to transcribe it. Unfortunately, nothing concrete is said, as there is no data on where the manuscript is kept. Therefore, after I had already worked for two years and translated the text, and after I already had a good understanding of Petar Bogdan’s personality, as far as Bulgarians could do, in 2019 I went to Modena and within a week, I conducted a paleographic examination of his handwriting on the spot.

That is, one study is textual research, the other is paleographic research. Everything ended in 2020 with my two-volume publication “Peter Bogdan. On the Antiquity of the Motherland and On Bulgarian Affairs / Petrus Deodatus. De Antiquitate Paterni Soli et de Rebus” (UI “St. Kliment Ohridski”). Thus, the entire work on this thesis took me three years.

How did it feel when you went to Modena and touched with your own hands a text written almost four centuries ago, which you had already studied and were familiar with? What was it like to be in the presence of something so precious that until recently few people in our country knew of its existence?

– Yes, it is true, and almost no one knew about it. Not only Bulgarians, but also Italians. I stumbled upon a library that contained more than 20,000 manuscripts, and this was just one of them. At the time, no one would have thought that such valuable texts were preserved there. And too few scientists have studied these collections over the years.

Of course, Petar Bogdan was known to Bulgarian experts dealing with this subject, but I was probably the second or third Bulgarian to come into contact with this manuscript. Naturally, there was great excitement. The librarian left me to work fairly calmly, to conduct my research, which, unfortunately, in one respect did not lead to the results I had expected.

Why, what are your expectations?

– My main task and personal expectation is to find out how the manuscript came to this library, to establish its history. Imagine a text that was probably completed in 1667: first, we have an original manuscript written by an author, but apparently lost – we have not lost hope of finding it; second, we have a copy that has a different fate – we know when the text was written, but not when it was copied, that is, let’s say ten years later, or after the author’s death, towards the end of the 17th century; third, by the 20th century, this copy has had its own destiny – according to the tradition of the time, the work began to travel around Europe, changing its owners in one country or another, in one monastery or another, in one collection or another…

There was a trade in manuscripts during this era. Marquis Giuseppe Campori himself was a donorEstancia University Library In Modena, he was an influential nobleman in the city in the 19th century. He was a collector, that is, he was able to set aside funds and buy manuscripts for his private collection while traveling around Europe. Usually these people left notes about how they acquired specific materials, but the notes of the Marquis of Campoli were burned in World War II, and my main task remained unfinished. Therefore, unfortunately, we do not know how this manuscript came to be in the collection of the Marquis of Modena.

Professor Lilia Ilieva, a searcher with a keen sense for such things, had a theory that this could be a matter of family connections to the Marchese of Campoli (the collector’s mother was named Mariana Bulgariani, ed.). He was particularly interested in the topic of Bulgaria and in some way he was dedicated to finding such texts, which is how he got this paper. Where he got it – we don’t know.

Dealing with such an ancient text is certainly a challenge. Which was more difficult for you – the language it is written in or the analysis of Peter Bogdan’s information? Did you discover any interesting and unknown facts?

– Of course, the whole topic is relatively new to me. The language is not difficult for me. I am hindered by concrete reality – the names of cities, people, Pavliks, which are rare in Bulgarian onomastics. Apparently, we are dealing with an Italian scribe who did not understand Bulgarian and made mistakes in transmitting Bulgarian names. However, this is one of the ways to prove that he is not a real Bulgarian – Bulgarians never make mistakes with Bulgarian names.

It not only concerns names of people, but also names of places. Their spelling mistakes bother me. Another tricky thing is quotes. Traditionally, these works from medieval and Renaissance literature quote a lot, whether it is the Bible, whether it is historical sources, or the Fathers of the Church and so on. The author does this in order to support his argument with the words of some authority. Sometimes the quote is easy to find because the author points it out very well. In other cases, however, he just hints or says in the most general terms: “As St. Augustine says, a man can best orient himself to the thing he is dealing with if he knows what comes before and what comes after”…

But St. Augustine wrote a lot of texts, so reading these general quotations from him is both difficult and interesting. That’s the point of textual research—finding the sources of these quotations is also complicated, but it’s one of the goals of research.

We know that the reason for writing this paper was the Catholic community – could it be a problem that this work is not so popular among the Orthodox? Can we really speak like this?

– In my opinion, we cannot talk like this, because we are still stuck in the paradigm of our time.

I mention it because such a sound might come from somewhere…

– Yes, such voices may be heard, but there are reports that Petar Bogdan is loved by both Orthodox and Catholics. He is a man of sufficient authority, and his personal qualities, especially his humility and erudition, make the Orthodox show him respect and piety. In Chiprotsy, Catholics and Orthodox are not hostile to each other, on the contrary, they live together.

In a way, your question cannot be answered because the original manuscript is actually disappearing. Petar Bogdan wanted to print the book – he wrote it with great effort in the last moments of his life and brought it to Italy, and he tried to publish it in a private printing house, but failed due to lack of funds. He was a spiritual man after all, he did not have a lot of money, and he finally gave it to Rome, to the Catholic Church. According to reports, a scribe – Giovanni Pastricho or Ivan Pastricho – began to review and edit the text because the Roman Catholic Church would never allow itself to publish the manuscript without reviewing its correct doctrinal focus. During this review, for some reason, Pastricho stopped editing, left a list of questions he wanted to answer later, and then stopped.

These are the first few pages of an editorial discovered in 1978 by the historian Dr. Bozhidar Dimitrov, we call it the Editorial, a version of which is kept in the Vatican. A book was printed. These are all speculations I dare not make.

You mentioned Dr. Bozhidar Dimitrov, who died suddenly a few months after Professor Ilieva discovered the manuscript – were you able to speak to him as well? He had a special regard for Petar Bogdan Bakhshev…

– No, I did not succeed. Coincidentally, he died in the course of my work. I would have liked to talk, but the meeting did not take place. Sorry about that, of course, but I got enough data from the text itself to conduct a final study, and then it would have been nice to discuss various aspects with him.

I would like to correct you, though. You said Bakšić, which is the Bulgarianization of his surname, which should be Bakšić, because this is how he signed himself in the translated book. Bakšić, as well as Parčević and other Chiprovs of that era. Bakšić was imposed, but today we have to correct this paradigm from another perspective. Peter Bogdan was a spiritual man, and we should not call spiritual people by secular surnames, just as we dare not use the secular name of Father Persius. We can say Hilendarski, because he was a Hilendarski monk, and in the case of Peter Bogdan, even Father Peter is enough. Bogdan was his secular name, but he liked it because it had a Christian focus. So we can use Petar Bogdan, but the other plug-in – can’t.

Thanks for the clarification, it is also important for readers. However, I want to say something else: on a poster for the Naim exhibition, I read that Petar Bogdan’s text points not only to the past but also to the future – what does it mean?

– In his text, Petar Bogdan consciously writes about the heirs of the Catholic city of Chipro – Christians and converted Pavlicians, who are a big focus of this story. On the one hand, there are the audience, on the other hand, the European readers. Petar Bogdan says that this Catholic community must be protected in the future and in this name tries to convey his message. Coincidentally, we are now the first readers of this story.

There are very few manuscripts with a similar fate, and after searching for a long time without finding it, we came across a copy of this text 350 years after Petar Bogdan’s death. When I translated it, I could see how he imagined that his treatise would stand the test of time and that it should be relevant to all who read it in the future. That’s what makes it unique. In addition, it is written in Latin, a universal language that does not change over time, so its message sounds very relevant today.