Още за епиграфския материал от скалните обители по Шуменското плато
More on the Epigraphy in the Rock Dwellings on the Shumen Plateau

Summary/Abstract: Originating as separate monastic monasteries in close connection with the churches that arose in the process of the Christianisation of Bulgaria at the foot of the slopes, the rock churches and monasteries on the Shumen plateau gradually reached their spiritual and cultural heyday with the entry and consolidation of Hesychasm in the 13th and 14th centuries. In the present work, special attention is paid to the inscriptions, testifying that the monastic colony on the Shumen Plateau was also connected with the large-scale church construction from the end of the 9th—beginning in the 10th century, after which it underwent a number of reconstructions in the following centuries. On the one hand, as in other monasteries from North-Eastern Bulgaria, the presence of proto-Bulgarian runic signs gives reason to consider the monastic practices on the Shumen Plateau in the context of the inclusion of the proto-Bulgarian ethnic group in the Christian faith. Finally, the inscriptions in the rock dwellings in the Osmarsko-Troitski Boaz—the so-called Troitski ktetor's inscription, the inscriptions in the Momina skala hermitage, and the Direklia rock church—reflect the transfer of heavenly patronage from ruined churches at the foot of the plateau. The rich epigraphic material (e.g., the so-called Inscription of the Grammarian Andrey, the anonymous grave inscription under Mamiltash in Troitski Boaz), the fragments of painting that have reached us (e.g., traces of frescoes and icon painting in the so-called Kostadin Monastery), and the individual reconstructions and expansions of the sacral space of the rock complexes eloquently support the observation that in its development the monastic colony took shape as a complete Shumenska Mala Sveta Gora.

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