38 
The History of the Book in the Balkans
38 EKATERINA ROGATCHEVSKAIA AND ALEKSANDRA B. VRANEŠ
The Balkans, the region in the southeast of Europe, is geographically bounded by the rivers Sava and Danube in the north; the Mediterranean in the south; the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, and the Aegean Sea in the east and southeast; and the Adriatic and Ionian seas in the west and southwest. Although the question is disputed, the countries making up the region are generally taken to include: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and European Turkey. Geographical position defines the Balkan identity, but the region is diverse politically, ethnically, and linguistically. The book culture of the area is characterized by the coexistence in its history of different ethnic groups (e.g. Celts, Illyrians, Romans, Avars, Vlachs, Germans, Slavs, and Turks), languages (e.g. Latin, Greek, Albanian, various Slavonic and Turkic languages), cultures, religions (e.g. paganism, Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, and Islam), and political systems (e.g. of the Roman, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires, and the Soviet bloc).
The Balkans could be called the birthplace of Slavonic literacy, which began in the second half of the 9th century with the missionary activities of the brothers Cyril (Constantine) and Methodius, Byzantine Greeks from Thessaloniki. They introduced Glagolitic and later the Cyrillic alphabet, translating parts of the Bible and some service books into the Old Church Slavonic understood by all Slavs. The first Slavonic centres of literacy developed at Ohrid (now in Macedonia) and Preslav (the capital of the first Bulgarian empire; now in Bulgaria). Whereas Ohrid cultivated Glagolitic, Cyrillic became the official script of Bulgaria. Old Church Slavonic gradually assumed vernacular features, laying the basis for the development of other literary Slavonic languages.
Glagolitic script was used in the south Slavonic countries and in Moravia until the 12th century, but then was generally replaced by Cyrillic or Latin, and localized mainly in Croatia. Early examples of Glagolitic script are rare. The first surviving MSS are of the 10th–11th centuries: the Kiev Folia, the Prague Fragments, the Glagolita Clozianus, the Codex Zographensis, the Codex Assemanianus, the Codex Marianus, the Sinai Psalter, and the Euchologium Sinaiticum. Cyrillic script had three main variants: uncial (‘ustav’, in use during the 11th–14th centuries), half-uncial (‘poluustav’, 15th–17th centuries), and the cursive script called ‘skoropis’ (mainly used in documents since the 14th century). The earliest dated Cyrillic MS is the Savvina Kniga. Scholars estimate that about 30 other books survive from the 11th century, although not all of them originated in the Balkans.
Before the 18th century, when Peter the Great introduced Civil founts in Russia (see 37) and the codification of national languages started in some countries, Cyrillic printing—mainly catering for the needs of the Orthodox Church—was widely used. Although the first Cyrillic book was printed by Schweipolt Fiol in Poland, and highly productive presses also existed in Venice, Prague, Vilno, and elsewhere, the Balkans played an important role in Cyrillic printing, the second Cyrillic press beginning production in Montenegro as early as in 1493. Glagolitic printing was localized in Croatia and Slovenia, although Glagolitic presses also operated in Italy.
The Church Slavonic MSS written in the first Bulgarian empire are richly illuminated. The earliest Cyrillic MS of Bulgarian origin is the Codex Suprasliensis. In the 14th century, the Tărnovo school of literature developed a distinct style of handwriting and illumination. One of the best examples of this style is the Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander (1356), now in the British Library. The first printed books were produced outside Bulgaria.
The elements of Modern Bulgarian were first evident in Filip Stanislavov’s Abagar (Rome, 1651). The leading figure in the Bulgarian National Revival (1762–1878) was Paisius of Hilandar (1722–73), who wrote a Slavonic-Bulgarian history (Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya). Another person of note was Neofit Rilski, the author of the first Bulgarian grammar (1835). The National Revival made possible the start of printing in Bulgaria. Having bought a press in Belgrade, Nikola Karastoyanov, who had worked previously in Serbia, founded the first printing office in Samokov (1828). Commercial publishing and bookselling are associated in Bulgaria with Khristo G. Danov. The national bibliography was initiated by K. Velichkov in 1897.
Independence from the Ottoman empire meant the revitalization of publishing and bookselling, and there were 80 independent publishers before World War II. In 1939, they produced 2,169 titles with a total press run of 6.4 million copies.
Serbian book culture also developed using the Cyrillic alphabet and was shaped by Orthodox Christianity, although it later experienced Arabic and Turkish influence within the Ottoman empire. The most productive scriptoria were located in monasteries. One of the earliest South Slavonic Cyrillic MSS, the Miroslav Gospels, written c.1185–1190, probably in Kotor (now in Montenegro), was commissioned by Prince Miroslav, brother of Stefan Nemanja (later known as St Simeon), the ruler of the most successful medieval Serbian kingdom of Raška. The richly illuminated gospels are among the most beautiful Slavonic MSS; unsurprisingly, both Montenegrins and Serbs claim them as part of their own written heritage. Stefan Nemanja’s youngest son, Rastko Nemanjić (later St Sava), is considered the founder of the independent Serbian Orthodox Church and the author of the Life of St Simeon. The father and son were also founders of Hilandar monastery, an Eastern Orthodox monastery on Mount Athos in Greece; following its foundation in 1198, Hilandar was the principal centre for Serbian medieval book culture. During the Turkish rule that began in the 15th century and lasted for over 300 years, Serbian spirituality and national identity were preserved in monasteries, Hilandar taking the lead.
The printed book evolved in parallel with the MS book in the 16th century (see 6, 15). Serbia’s first press, which produced the Rujan Gospels (1537), was located at the Rujan monastery, close to the Tara Mountain. Presses were established in the monasteries of Gračanica (producing an Octoechos or prayer book, 1539), Mileševa (three books printed, 1544–57), and the Mrkša Church (two imprints, 1562–6). In 1552, Prince Radiša Dmitrović founded a press in Belgrade, and started working on the gospels. As he died shortly afterwards, the work was continued by Trojan Gundulić of Dubrovnik and Mardarios of the church at Mrkša. After this brief period of activity, Serbian printing declined, religious and historical works being printed at Venice. Zaharije Stefanović Orfelin, a Serbian poet and engraver, established the first Serbian periodical in 1766 and wrote a biography of Peter the Great. In the 19th century, Serbian books were published in Leipzig, Novi Sad (the capital of Voedovina, then under Hungarian jurisdiction), and other towns that were situated in territories belonging to the Austro-Hungarian empire. Matica Srpska played an important role in developing printing in the Serbian language and promoting Serbian book culture. The language reforms introduced by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić contributed to the landmark events in the history of the Serbian book. These included the foundation of the Royal Serbian Press in Belgrade in 1832 and the opening of the National Library of Serbia and of the Serbian Literacy Society, the predecessor of the present Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (1892).
During World War I, significant numbers of Serbian books and periodicals were published in France, Greece, and Switzerland. The national book industry quickly recovered, only to collapse again during World War II, when the partisans’ illegal presses alone were active.
In the 8th and 9th centuries the medieval state of Duklja, a predecessor of the modern Montenegro, was under Byzantine, Serbian, and Bulgarian domination. After the Great Schism in 1054, Duklja became predominantly Catholic. Once Stefan Nemanja made the land part of his state of Raška, he converted the population to Orthodoxy, and Latin cultural advancement was effectively stopped by ending the production of Latin books. Since then, Montenegro’s book culture has been closely connected with the Serbian book. The second Cyrillic press—founded in 1493 on the initiative of Ðurađ Crnojević, the ruler of the independent principality of Zeta—opened in Montenegro. Although its exact location remains unknown, the press, where the hieromonk Makarije may have worked, most likely operated in Cetinje. The Montenegrin printing tradition was continued in Venice by Božidar Vuković from Podgorica, who had a great influence on Serbian and Montenegrin culture, as well as on the development of printing in other Slavonic countries.
Under Ottoman rule, printing and literary activities were significantly reduced; but one of the first signs of the national revival, Vasilije Petrović Njegoš’s History of Montenegro, was published in Moscow in 1754. The Mountain Wreath, the best-known book by the Montenegrin national poet and philosopher Petar II (Petrović Njegoš), was also published abroad in 1837, although by then he had already established his own press (1834), the second on Montenegrin soil. During a Turkish siege in 1852 its type had to be melted down for bullets, but in 1858 a new press was obtained.
The establishment of a National Public Library in Cetinje was first proposed in 1879, but implemented only in 1893. From 1905, the library started receiving legal deposit copies. By 1912, it had more than 10,000 titles, a large number of incunabula and early printed books, and more than 100 MSS, but the holdings suffered severely from the occupying Austrian troops in 1918. In 1946 the Public Central Library was created at Cetinje, and given its current name in 1964. The library’s major published work was Crnogorska bibliografija 1494–1994, a national bibliography.
Macedonian book culture developed under Bulgarian, Serbian, and Byzantine influence, reflecting the political landscape of southern Europe. Skopje, Macedonia’s capital, became the capital of the Serbian empire in 1346, but from the late 14th century, the region was part of the Ottoman empire for about 500 years.
Important Macedonian books were produced outside the country: Jakov of Kamena Reka (the Stone River) had a Cyrillic press in Venice in 1560s; Hristofor Žefarovik’s Stemmatographia, containing portraits of Bulgarian and Serbian rulers and images of South Slavonic coats of arms, was published at Vienna in 1741. In the 19th century, when publishing in Macedonia largely depended on the requirements of local schools, Teodosij of Sinai owned a press in Salonica, issuing the first prayer book in a local Macedonian dialect and a short Dictionary. Although Bulgarian, Serbian, and Greek were the languages of instruction, fifteen primers in a local Macedonian dialect were published between 1857 and 1875. The idea of establishing a Macedonian linguistic and national identity was first mooted in 1870, but was delayed during the interwar period, when local dialects were largely banned. The language was standardized and officially recognized in 1944. At present, materials in three main languages—Macedonian, Albanian, and Turkish—are published to serve the needs of the ethnically diverse population. In 2012, more than 100 publishing houses were issuing material in Macedonian, with some twenty publishers catering for the other languages. On average, domestic authors comprised between 15 and 30 per cent of the total production, with the remainder being translations.
Medieval Bosnian literature developed in Bosnian Cyrillic script, a variant of Cyrillic, and in Glagolitic. The oldest work in the Bosnian Cyrillic script is the Charter, a trade agreement between Bosnia and Dubrovnik (1189), issued by the Bosnian Ban (ruler) Kulin; the oldest book in this script is the Service to St Mary (Ofičje svete dieve Marie), printed by Giorgio de Rusconi at Venice in 1512. The two known copies are held at the Bibliothèque nationale and at All Souls College (Oxford).
Cyrillic printing in Bosnia is associated with Božidar Goraždanin. In Goražda (in the east of Bosnia and Herzegovina), he established a press that produced three books in 1519–23. During the entire Ottoman period only four presses operated in Bosnia (three of them in the 19th century), with the total output of four newspapers and 50 book titles.
For a period of more than 300 years no Bosnian press existed, and all printed materials came from abroad. Even the first periodical, Bosanski prijatelj, was founded in Zagreb in 1850. However, following an initiative by the Ottoman authorities, the first modern Bosnian printing office was set up in Sarajevo in 1865. By the end of the 19th century, two offices had been established in Mostar: the Press of the Catholic Mission in Herzegovina, started by the Franciscans, and the Herzegovina vilajet (‘province’ in the Ottoman empire) press. Under Austro-Hungarian rule, publishing grew, and the number of enterprises reached 40, adding German, Hungarian, and Yiddish to the linguistic landscape of Bosnian publishing. During the 40 years of Austro-Hungarian domination, 1,600 titles were published—Bosnia contributed 2,000 titles to book production for the kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes—and in 1945–51 book production reached 1,750 titles. Bosnian companies did fairly well as part of the publishing industry of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, but the 1992–5 war had a devastating effect not only on the local economy, but on the area’s cultural heritage, as the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo was destroyed.
The earliest works written on Croatian territory were in Glagolitic script. In their union with Hungary, the Croats were mainly Catholics, but Croatia appeared to be the only European nation given special permission by Pope Innocent IV (in 1248) to use its own language in its liturgy and the Glagolitic alphabet for service books. One of the most beautiful Glagolitic MSS is the Missal of Prince Novak (1368), now held in the Austrian National Library. It contains the famous hymn ‘Dies irae’ and some musical notation. The earliest Croatian incunabulum, the Missale Romanum (1483; its place of printing is unknown), survives in thirteen copies and eight fragments.
The first dated press in Croatia was opened in 1494 at Senj by Blaž Baromić, Croatia’s first printer, who learned the art in Venice. The press was active until 1508 and printed seven books. In Rijeka (Fiume), a press was established in 1530 by the bishop of Modruš, Šimun Kožičić Benja. It published six Glagolitic books in two years. Croatian Cyrillic script was used in the Adriatic city-state of Dubrovnik and in Bosnia and Herzegovina; some scholars consider it the same as the Bosnian Cyrillic script, bosanica or bosančica. From the 15th century, the bulk of Croatian literature appeared in Roman script. In the 17th century, only one printing house operated in Zagreb (1664), but during the 18th and early 19th centuries, seven presses were working on Croatia territory. A Venetian printer, Carlo Antonio Occhi, published 50 books at his press in Dubrovnik in 1783–7.
Croatian Romantic nationalism emerged in the mid-19th century to counteract the apparent Germanization and Magyarization of the country. The Illyrian movement attracted a number of influential figures from the 1830s onward, and produced some important advances in Croatian culture and language. These were promoted by a society, Matica Ilirska (later Matica Hrvatska), formed in February 1842 and based at the National Library of Croatia. After the fall of the absolute monarchy, the publishing industry revived. Matica published the first literary-scientific magazine Književnik (1864–6), and from 1869 the main fiction magazine for 19th-century Croatian literature, Vijenac.
As Slovenia’s history includes its being part of the Roman empire, the Holy Roman Empire, and Austro-Hungary, the development of its book culture was considerably influenced by Latin and by German culture. As in the rest of Europe, scriptoria were mainly based in monasteries. For example, in the late 12th century, the Cistercian monastery of Stična produced the Collectarium, a collection of religious lives. Overall, 32 codices and five fragments from Stična have survived. Another scriptorium of note is the former Carthusian abbey at Žiče, the largest Carthusian monastery in this part of Europe and the first charterhouse outside Romance-language countries. The monastic library contained about 2,000 MSS, of which only 120 books and about 100 fragments survived.
The first printer of Slovenian origin, Matevž Cerdonis, worked in Padua in 1482–7, but the earliest books in Slovenian, by Primož Trubar, were produced at Ulrich Morhart’s press in Tübingen. The Reformation was especially important for Slovenian culture and the development of the language: the first complete Bible in Slovenian, translated by Jurij Dalmatin, was printed at Johann Krafft’s press in Wittenberg in 1584. A press on Slovenian soil opened in 1575 at Ljubljana; it belonged to Janž Mandelc, and produced ten books before it closed in 1580. Another press at Ljubljana was in operation from 1678 until 1801. The largest 19th-century publishers were Druzba Svetega Mohoria (1852), Slovenská matica (1846), and Slovenska knižnica (1876–80). The beginning of the 20th century saw several waves of Slovene publishing, closely linked to the nationalist movement. Publishing and other cultural institutions suffered considerably under the German occupation during World War II, although partisans maintained active underground presses.
The Illyrian tribes that populated the territory of present-day Albania were Christianized in the 1st century AD. The country’s central position subsequently made it a battlefield between the western and the eastern halves of the Byzantine empire; at some point in history it was administered by the eastern empire, but ecclesiastically dependent on Rome. In the Middle Ages, the population of the southern and eastern parts of Albania became Orthodox Christians, whereas Roman Catholicism remained strong in the north. During the Ottoman rule that lasted until the beginning of the 20th century, the majority of the Albanian population converted to Islam.
The written Albanian language can be traced back to the 14th or late 15th century. Gjon Buzuku’s Meshari (Missal), published in 1555 at Venice, is the first printed work in the language. The effects of the Reformation greatly advanced the development of Albanian literature and book culture, and in the 16th–17th centuries, original works of poetry, prose, and philosophy were published. In the 18th century, both Christians and Muslims used the Albanian language to maintain their cultural heritage. However, the works of the most notable Albanians were published abroad (e.g. Pjetër Budi’s Rituale Romanum and Speculum Confessionis, or Pjetër Bogdani’s Cuneus Prophetarum, a parallel-text theological tract in Albanian and Italian). On the other hand, Greek language and culture dominated southeastern Albania. In Voskopojë, a press was set up which produced books in Greek and Aromanian (the vernacular language close to Romanian) in the Greek alphabet. Although Albania was the last Balkan country to gain independence from Ottoman rule, it too had its National Renaissance movement and version of literary Romanticism. The development of printing was, however, slowed because of complications with the Albanian language, which had been written with various alphabets since the 15th century. The roman alphabet for Albanian was standardized in 1909, and a unified literary version of Albanian, based on the Tosk dialect, was established in 1972.
Émigré publishing represented a further distinctive characteristic of Albanian book culture. The Albanians who fled the country because of Enver Hoxha’s regime set up their publishing centres in Italy, France, Germany, and the US. In the 1990s, Albanian communities all over the world were enlarged by the Kosovo Albanians, who had produced their printed material in Zagreb, Skopje, and Tirana, but had mostly lost the opportunity to do so at home due to political turbulence.
In the Middle Ages, Romanians lived in two distinct and independent principalities, Wallachia and Moldavia (Moldova), as well as in the Hungarian-ruled principality of Transylvania (see 33). During Ottoman rule, Wallachia and Moldavia had some internal autonomy and external independence, which were finally lost in the 18th century. Christian Orthodox, Latin, and oriental cultures influenced Romania’s culture. Tîrgovişte and Braşov became noteworthy centres for early Cyrillic and Romanian printing.
The Romanian language finally established itself as part of written culture in the 17th century. The first collection of laws printed in Wallachia, the Pravila de la Govora, appeared at Govora in 1640. Other printing centres of note were Iaşi, where Varlaam’s Cazania was printed; Alba Iulia (the Bălgrad New Testament, 1648), and Bucharest (the first Romanian Bible, 1688). In the 18th century, new presses were installed in Buzău, the Snagov monastery, and Râmnicu Vâlcea; a third (which had Greek types) began operating in Bucharest. Arab, Greek, and Turkish books were printed in addition to the Cyrillic and Romanian ones.
The first newspaper, Curierul românesc (1829), was started by ‘the father of Romanian literature’, Ion Heliade Rădulescu. Bucharest was also home to the Library of the Academy (1867) and the Central State Library (1955; later the National Library of Romania), while university libraries had been established earlier in Iaşi (1839) and Cluj (or Cluj-Napoca, 1872).
The publishing and bookselling industries in all socialist countries followed the pattern previously established by the Soviet Union: private publishers and printers were closed; the state controlled the production and distribution of printed material; censorship was introduced. This resulted in an unbalanced book market, with overproduction of propaganda and severe shortages in popular literature. Large state subsidies led to unnaturally low book prices. On the other hand, communist ideology contributed to creating a cultural infrastructure of schools, public libraries, book clubs, and so on in all the Balkan countries. Having recovered from the devastation of World War II, most of the communist bloc countries reached their highest book production figures by the 1990s, although problems with distribution were much harder to solve: for example, in 1988, 27 per cent of books published in Bulgaria did not find their way to consumers, as demand for them did not exist.
Different political and economic conditions determined the development of publishing in individual countries. In Bulgaria, publishing and censorship were strictly centralized, unlike in Tito’s Yugoslavia, where publishing relied on state giants and on private and small enterprises that balanced self-censorship and profitability. Slovenia was early in learning Western marketing strategies and adopting modern manufacturing techniques.
Not surprisingly, the transition from socialism was difficult, and was accompanied in some cases by military conflict. In Bulgaria, although overall production figures in the early 1990s were lower than at the end of the communist era, the number of publishers grew from 752 in 1993 to 2,000 in 2000, spread equally over the country. In Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1996, 1,800 publishers were operating in the country in a great number of new and well-established places. Romanian publishing activity was still strongly centred around Bucharest, however. In Croatia, 1,828 of more than 3,000 publishers were located in Zagreb, followed by Split with 184 firms. Another common tendency in the transitional market economy was a significant growth of titles produced to satisfy different types of readership, combined with a notable fall in print runs. Many national libraries also found it extremely difficult to exercise their right to receive legal deposit publications during this period. Such problems were partly caused by political and economic instability and partly by the legal ignorance of new participants in the book market. Links between national libraries across the Balkans were broken. In Serbia, there was a clear reduction in materials printed in the non-Serbian languages of the former Yugoslavia. Montenegro and Macedonia, having lost their Serbo-Croatian-speaking market, concentrated on their national readership. The numbers of bookshops in all the countries fell, as very few survived the early years of a market economy. However, the face of bookselling changed dramatically with the introduction of large book chains and online shops, and e-publishing.
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G. Mitrevski, ‘Publishing in Macedonia’, Slavic & East European Information Resources, 1.2–3 (2001), 187–209
E. L. Nemirovskii, Istoriia slavianskogo kirillovskogo knigopechataniia XV–nachala XVII veka (2003)
I. Nikolic, ‘Publishing in Serbia’, Slavic & East European Information Resources, 1.2–3 (2001), 85–126
D. Tranca, A General Survey of the Romanian Book (1968)