The origins of Bulgarian literature date back to A.D. 855 when the Greek priests Cyril and Methodius designed an alphabet--Cyrillic--suitable for the Slavic languages in order to facilitate the Christianization of the Slavs (see ch. 2). At first the alphabet was used to translate the Bible and other Christian religious texts, but in the Golden Age of the First Bulgarian Kingdom several original religious and secular tests were written by Bulgarians in their own language. In the late Middle Ages a substantial literature in Bulgarian was created. Although the authors were all churchmen, much of the literature was secular. A whole body of apocryphal literature--so-called heretical tales and legends--came into being at that time. During five centuries of Turkish rule, no literature was produced except the orally transmitted folksongs and ballads. Not until the second half of the eighteenth century, when Turkish rule began to degenerate, did Bulgarian literature revive itself as part of the awakening national consciousness of the people. The first book to appear was Father Paisi's _Slav-Bulgarian History_, a highly nationalistic book published in 1762 that played a major role in the struggle for liberation. During the first half of the nineteenth century, several Bulgarian texts were published in neighboring countries. These were extremely influential in developing the modern Bulgarian language as their publication coincided with the establishment of schools and the spread of education among the Bulgarian people. A number of periodicals were also started by Bulgarians abroad, but most of them were irregular and short lived. Of considerable significance, however, was the collection and publication, first in periodicals and later in book form, of the folksongs and ballads that had kept alive the language and culture of the Bulgarians during the five centuries of Turkish rule. Much of the interest in folk literature came from outside the country from other Slavs in Serbia, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, and Russia, who were going through their own national awakening and had a kindred feeling for the Bulgarians. The early modern literature was nationalistic and didactic. Its authors were educators involved in the spread of education and in the modernization of the language and revolutionaries fighting for an independent Bulgaria. Modernization and social reform were other strong currents permeating the literature of that time and later. Such poets as Petko Slaveikov, Lyuben Karavelov, and Khristo Botev were strongly influenced by the Russian social reformers and revolutionaries of the second half of the nineteenth century. Botev was the most outstanding poet of this era. His short, intense, and fiery poems continue to arouse patriotic feelings of Bulgarians everywhere. Botev's revolutionary fervor and heroism have been identified by the present-day regime with its own revolutionary movement, and he has been accorded great honor.