Maria Pileva, PhD

Thе article examines Bulgarian responses to American missionary edu- cators in the Ottoman Balkans during the nineteenth century, tracing a spectrum that ranges from curiosity and engagement to suspicion and intolerance. It ex- plores how Protestant ideas and cultural ideals intersected with Bulgarian literary and spiritual life, education, and the activities of educators and church figures. The reception of missionaries’ work — both favourable and highly critical — is documented in the literature, in periodicals, pamphlets and brochures, as well as in personal correspondence. The article also considers how interpretations of missionary contributions shifted over time, with broader reassessments emerging more than a century after the official beginning of their work among Bulgarians.

The paper examines the mediating role of Bulgarian Revival literature conserning the relationship between man and God and the function of its religious imagery, themes and motifs. Attention is paid to the broad biblical basis of genres, texts, paratexts; of morally instructive elements in works different in content and style. The active use of biblical models and motifs, visible throughout the whole period, is traced, as well as their restructuring that had began. Significant names that set the parameters of the National Revival and their spiritual mission to revive Bulgarian literature and culture and integrate them into the European one are also mentioned.

The article examines the potential of spiritual energy invested in one of the works of the great Bulgarian poet – the socalled “Revival prayer“, the role of the individual and his responsibility to God. Central to “My Prayer“ are images, themes, and motifs from the Bible, along with contemporary issues of institutional religion, which have been moved away in many aspects from genuine human care. Attention is paid to the structure of the prayer and all of its components – from the motto to the final metaphor, but also to the reversal and play with the genre, which gave rise to many contradictory interpretations of the text. A question has been touched on some religious motifs, repeated in other works of Botev, incl. the ideological suggestions of the poet’s new testament.