Petar Bogdan Bakshev

Petar Bogdan Bakshev or Petar Bogdan (Bulgarian: Петър Богдан Бакшев); (Chiprovtsi, Ottoman Empire, 1601 – 1674) was an archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church in Bulgary, historian and a key Bulgarian National Revival figure. Petar Bogdan restored the Catholic hierarchy and was one of the organizers of a Bulgarian uprising of the region of Chiprovtsi against the Ottoman rule. He is most famous for being the author of the first Bulgarian history.

The biographic data concerning Petar Bogdan are few, but the researches confirm that he was born in 1601 in Chiprovtsi in the northwest of Bulgary and receives his name Bogdan. The name Petar was given to the future Archbishop of Sofia after his entering in the Order of St. Francisc in 1618. Probably he was named after his mentor and teacher, and also the first Archbishop of Sofia, Peter Solinat. He came to be well known to the scientific and cultural circles in Bulgaria not until the 1980s, although his life and work coincides with those of already famous men of letters as Petar Parchevich, Filip Stanislavov and Franchesko Soymirovich.

He graduated school in the monastery St. Francisc in Ancona (1620-1623). Petar Bakshev studied later in Vatican from 1623 to 1630, where besides theology he studied also grammar, philosophy, logic, and church history. In 1642 Pope Urban II declared Sofia to be the seat of the Bulgaria's Catholic Archbishopric and appointed Peter Bogdan Bakshev as the Archbishop. The sole purpose of his activity was the social-political, confessional and cultural liberation of Bulgarians from the Ottoman oppression, and the revival of the Bulgarian state. Most Bulgarian historians think of him as the forefather of the Bulgarian National Revival. He had a very good language knowledge and performs the biggest writing activities. Petar Bogdan used Latin, Italian, Greek, Romanian and Turkish.

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