Christianisation as Cultural Guilt: The Bulgarian Experience

This article contextualises the idea of Christianisation as cultural guilt within the Bulgarian context, particularly at the time of the Bulgarian National Revival. This theory has been most radically depicted in the published works of the outstanding revolutionary and poet of the National Revival, Hristo Botev. The origin of this idea is studied through his cultural dialogue with the texts of Georgi Rakovski (another eminent revolutionary and poet from the same period) to prove that the decadent version of Christianisation was known amongst the Bulgarian elite, most of whom were educated at Russian institutions, where they became familiar with the essays of the German historiogJohann Christian von Engel. Under his influence, Christianisation is considered to be a cultural and political invasion on the part of the Byzantine Empire. In this context, the motive of the lost brightness of the Bulgarian Middle Ages emerges from the literary works of the National Revival. The valuation of the medieval symbols of the obliterated Bulgarian antiquity culminated in the 1920s and 1930s. During that period, aspects of national identification were sought from magicians, dualists, and anchorites, which ultimately did not yield the desired result for the official nationalism but rather caused a crisis of symbols.