Contribution to the study of Damascene literature

Until a few years ago, the 17th and 18th centuries were considered among the least studied periods of our literary development. Ignorance of the true state of literary life during these centuries led to an underestimation of one of the most interesting phenomena in our literature during Turkish slavery - the Bulgarian damascenes. Appearing as translations of the collection "Treasure" by Damaskin Studite in the second half of the 16th century, they gradually occupied a central place in literary practice in our country in the 17th and especially in the 18th century. Their compilers, initially translators and compilers, began to show creative daring, most clearly expressed in Paisius' contemporary - the damascene maker Joseph Beardati. Damaskin1 Al. Burmov. Was there a central revolutionary Bulgarian committee in Bucharest in 1769-1872? Historical Review, 1961, vol. 3, pp. 34-47. * Donka Petkanova-Toteva, The Damaskins in Bulgarian Literature, BAS, Sofia, 1965. 52 The literature of the Damaskins played an important role in the spiritual life of our lands and helped to speed up the emergence of the Revival consciousness in the lowlands. On its pages, along with the first enlightenment appeal, a critical and denunciatory attitude towards a number of phenomena of slave life appeared. From collections with a moral and instructive direction in the spirit of Christian virtues, they turned into works that were directly or indirectly related to the problems of the then reality.