Чипровци: История и современность болгарского города

Chiprovtsi (, pronounced ) is a small town in northwestern Bulgaria, administratively part of Montana Province. It lies on the shores of the river Ogosta in the western Balkan Mountains, very close to the Bulgarian Serbian border. A town of about 2,000 inhabitants, Chiprovtsi is the administrative centre of Chiprovtsi Municipality that also covers nine nearby villages. Chiprovtsi is thought to have been founded in the Late Middle Ages as a mining and metalsmithing centre. Attracting German ore miners who introduced Roman Catholicism to the area, the town grew in importance as a cultural, economic and religious centre of the Bulgarian Catholics and the entire Bulgarian northwest during the first few centuries of Ottoman rule. The apogee of this upsurge was the anti Ottoman Chiprovtsi Uprising of 1688. After the suppression of the uprising, some of the town's population fled to Habsburg ruled lands; those unable to flee were killed or enslaved by the Ottomans. Deserted for about 30 years, the town was repopulated by Eastern Orthodox Bulgarians, beginning in the 1720s. It was following this new settlement that Chiprovtsi became a major centre of the Bulgarian carpet industry. Other traditional industries have been stock breeding, agriculture and fur trade. Today, Chiprovtsi municipality experiences a declining population and above average unemployment. However, the development of alternative tourism help to sustain the economy.

According to linguist Ivan Duridanov, Chiprovtsi's original name was Kipurovets (Кипуровец). The current form gradually emerged through a sound shift and a syncope. The name is of Slavic origin, but may be linked to the archaic Greek loanword kipos (κήπος, "garden"), a word also borrowed by Serbian. Some researchers derive the toponym from the personal name Kipra or Kipro, implying beauty and sprightliness. Another popular hypothesis, although rejected by Duridanov, links the name to Latin cuprum ("copper") due to the numerous copper deposits and mines in the region in Ancient Roman times. The name was first mentioned in a western source, namely a Latin document of 1565, as Chiprovatz. Similar forms such as Chipurovatz, Chiprouvatz, Chiprovotzii, Chiprovtzi, Kiprovazo, Chiprovatzium, Kiprovetz and Kiprovtzi have been used throughout the 16th–17th centuries. The attested Serbo Croatian pronunciation of the suffix as opposed to standard Bulgarian is explained with the influence of the so called "Illyrian language", a Dalmatian form of Croatian language used by the Franciscan clerics in the town in the 17th century. The existence of a Saksonska (Regio Saxonium, "Saxon") neighbourhood was also attested until the 17th century. Another actively used pair of toponyms is Dolni kray ("Lower Part") and Gorni kray ("Upper Part"), referring to the town neighbourhoods closer to the river or the mountain respectively. Chiprovtsi Point and Chiprovtsi Islets in Rugged Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica are named after Chiprovtsi.

Chiprovtsi is situated in a small valley at the foot of the Chiprovtsi Mountain, a high northern branch of the western Balkan Mountains. The Chiprovtsi Mountain forms the border between Bulgaria and the neighbouring Serbia. It is long and features several peaks around , including Midzhur , Martinova Chuka , Golyama Chuka , Kopren , Tri Chuki and Vrazha Glava The Ogosta River, a right tributary of the Danube, originates from the Chiprovtsi Mountain and flows northeast through the Danubian Plain to join the Danube in Vratsa Province. Just northeast of the town is another mountain, Shiroka Planina, a branch of the Fore Balkan Mountains. The region is rich in metal and mineral deposits.

It is known that the area around Chiprovtsi has been inhabited since the time of the Thracians and later the Roman Empire, when the local metal deposits were exploited. With the arrival of the Seven Slavic tribes and the Bulgars in the 6th–7th century and the establishment of the First Bulgarian Empire in 680 in the former lands of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire), the entire region was soon incorporated into the Bulgarian realm. After a period of renewed Byzantine rule in 1018–1185, it was part of the Second Bulgarian Empire until its conquest by the Ottomans in the late 14th or early 15th century. In the second half of the 14th century, a certain number of Bosnian Croats and Ragusan merchants arrived in Chiprovtsi and its surroundings, accompanied by some Franciscan clerics from Catholic Franciscan province of Silver Bosnia. According to the research of Croatian historian Vitomir Belaj, the Catholic Franciscans had arrived from medieval Bosnia in western Bulgaria at the time of Bosnian vicar Bartul Alvernski ("Bartholomew of Alverno"), who himself originated from Italy, in 1366. Among the newcoming settlers there were some noblemen as well. According to Belaj, these included members of the Parchevich family, the ancestral house of the Peyachevich family.

Chiprovtsi's development reached its apogee in the 17th century, when it became a bustling cultural, religious and merchant centre of that part of the Balkans. Named the "flower of Bulgaria" in that period, some have deemed the town's prosperity the Balkans' only participation in the Renaissance, along with that of Dalmatia. Many members of the local élite were educated in Rome, particularly at the Collegio Clementino and the Sapienza University. Gradually, the foreign Franciscans were replaced by locals and in the 1620s the Bulgarian Catholics formed a separate autonomous entity directly subordinate to the Pope, the Bulgarian Custody. Solinat was succeeded by a Bulgarian bishop, Iliya Marinov of Chiprovtsi, who was in turn followed by another local, Petar Bogdan Bakshev, who travelled to Wallachia, Warsaw, Vienna, Rome and Ancona looking for funds and support for the community. In the 1640s, the Bulgarian Custody gave way to the Diocese of Marcianopolis presided by Petar Parchevich and the Diocese of Nicopoli headed by Filip Stanislavov and represented in Chiprovtsi by Franchesko Soymirovich. The evolution of Chiprovtsi from a mining town to a trade hub owes much to the settlement of merchants from the Republic of Ragusa (today Dubrovnik, Croatia) and the quality of the local metalworking, as well as the lack of permanent Ottoman presence and the privileges enjoyed by the population. By the mid 17th century, mining was in decline, as the silver deposits had been all but exhausted (in 1666 there remained only 16 iron smelteries), to 75–80 students. The teachers were often Bulgarian graduates of the Collegio Clementino in Rome and the languages of education were Latin, Bulgarian and "Illyrian", a Croatian form written usually in the Latin alphabet but sometimes in Cyrillic. The school also had a library, one of the first in Bulgaria. Since the 1630s, the eminent writers and translators from Chiprovtsi, most notably Petar Bogdan Bakshev and Petar Parchevich, formed the so called "Chiprovtsi Literary School", issuing books about the history of Bulgaria, as well as on religious topics. On 12 September 1683, the Ottomans were routed by the forces of Europe at the Battle of Vienna. In early 1684, Austria, Poland and Venice concluded an anti Ottoman pact; they were joined by Russia in 1686 to form the Holy League. It was clear at that time that the decisive moment was near. The leaders of Chiprovtsi assessed that after the imminent capture of Belgrade by the League in 1688 their European allies would reach Sofia and end the Ottoman rule of Bulgaria. Thus, they revolted in the spring of 1688. The insurgents were aided by six regiments of regular Habsburg army and artillery under General Heißler and managed to briefly capture the town of Kutlovitsa (modern Montana), but were ultimately crushed by the Ottomans and their Hungarian ally Imre Thököly. On 18–19 October, the Ottomans stormed Chiprovtsi and retook it from the rebels, capturing over 2,000 people. About 3,000 natives of the area, guarded by the remaining insurrectionary units, managed to flee beyond the Danube. Most of those settled in the Habsburg ruled realms, founding a major Bulgarian colony in the Banat known as the "Banat Bulgarians", as well as colonies in Deva and Alvinc (Vinţu de Jos) in Transylvania and Szentendre in modern Hungary. The town itself was plundered, burned down and deserted and its links to the West were largely severed. Ultimately, the region was repopulated by Orthodox Bulgarians, beginning in the 1720s. In 1737–1738, the sultan amnestied the rebels and permitted the return of the insurgents' property in 1741, though none of the former residents is known to have returned. In the 1720s–1730s, Chiprovtsi had only 12 inhabited houses; by the 1750s, those had reached 150. The Orthodox Chiprovtsi Monastery had been reestablished in 1703 by a certain Zhivko who took the ecclesiastical name of Zoticus. As the interrupted mining was apparently not continued after the uprising and the international trade links had been severed, the locals switched to cattle breeding, agriculture, fur trade and later carpet weaving as their main occupation. The western traveller Ami Boué, who visited the town in 1836–1838, reported that "mainly young girls, under shelters or in corridors, engage in carpet weaving. They earn only five francs a month and the payment was even lower before". By 1868, the annual production of carpets in Chiprovtsi had surpassed 14,000 square metres. Following the Russo Turkish War in 1877–1878, Chiprovtsi, along with all of northern Bulgaria and the region around Sofia, became part of the newly liberated Principality of Bulgaria, the predecessor of modern Bulgaria. In 1896, almost 1,400 women from Chiprovtsi and the region were engaged in carpet weaving. In 1920, the locals founded the Manual Labour carpet weaving cooperative society, the first of its kind in the country. In the 1950s, ore output was renewed in the region, briefly revitalizing Chiprovtsi through the influx of young and highly educated people. On 12 September 1968, Chiprovtsi was officially proclaimed a town by the National Assembly of Bulgaria. After the democratic changes in 1989, mining was discontinued again due to a lack of funds, the factory was closed and the carpet industry has been in decline as it had lost its firm foreign markets. As a result, the town and the municipality have been experiencing a demographic crisis. Since 2007, the municipality has been governed by Zaharin Ivanov Zamfirov of Bulgarian Agrarian People's Union "Aleksandar Stamboliyski" who won the municipal elections with 1,615 votes or 62.67% against Antoaneta Todorova Kostova of the Bulgarian Socialist Party who amassed 962 votes or 37.33%. Two villages in the municipality are eligible to elect their own mayor, Prevala and Zhelezna. The municipal administration is divided into two branches, the common and specialized administration. The common administration is further divided into the "Information Services" and "Financial economical Activities and Handling of Property" departments; the specialized administration includes the "Planning and Distribution of the Budget" and "Territorial and Village Planning and Building" departments. The municipality has no separate court or prosecutor's office and is instead serviced by the Montana provincial court and office. The local police station is subordinate to the one in Montana. There is a Municipal Land Commission, part of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and a Municipal Social Service. The Municipal Land Commission takes care of land and forest distribution and the Municipal Social Service oversees financial aid and supports the disabled. Carpets have been crafted according to traditional designs, but in recent years it is up to the customers to decide the pattern of the carpet they have ordered. The production of a single carpet takes about 50 days; primarily women engage in carpet weaving. Work is entirely manual and all used materials are natural; the primary material is wool, coloured using plant or mineral dyes. The local carpets have been prized at exhibitions in London, Paris, Liège and Brussels. The kilim making of Chiprovtsi was inscribed on the Intangible Cultural Heritage list of UNESCO in 2014. The municipality has also invested in the development of tourism and many private houses have been turned into small family hotels or guesthouses. In 2004, 65 people were engaged in the tourism industry; in the same year, the municipality was visited by 2,350 tourists, of whom were 254 foreigners. In terms of economic indicators, the municipality ranks around the high average: it is 113th of 264 municipalities in Bulgaria by GDP per capita and 67th by Human Development Index. In September 2008, it was reported that one of the few fluorite deposits in Europe located near Chiprovtsi would be developed by a Bulgarian company that had leased the mine for 20 years. The company has invested BGN 14.5 million and aims to extract 150,000 tonnes of raw material and produce 50,000 tonnes of pure fluorite a year. as of 2008, the company employs 73 miners, all former workers in the closed local mines, and expects their number to reach 150. In 2016, the mines were closed, as the deposits were almost exhausted and the market conditions of fluorit also became unfavorable. At this point, the company employed 116 people, who were let go.

The local Bulgarians traditionally belong to the ethnographic group of the Torlaks and speak a transitional Bulgarian dialect, the Belogradchik dialect. Most of the population are adherents of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. of which eight in Chiprovtsi. Such crosses are typical for the Bulgarian northwest and each is dedicated to a saint: they serve both demarcating and religious purposes. Most of the crosses are not dated, with the notable exceptions of Saint Demetrius—1755, Saints Peter and Paul—1781 and Holy Mother of God—1874. A notable cultural trait of Chiprovtsi shared with much of the region is the veneration of a family patron saint, named svetets ("saint") and akin to Serbian slava. The practice exists since time immemorial and the family saint is thought to have been chosen by the taking of a random candle by an unaware person. The svetets is associated to the family house: when a daughter in law comes to live there, she accepts the family saint of the home, and when a family member or a foreign settler moves out or builds a new house, they adopt a new svetets. Chiprovtsi has a museum of history that occupies two old style buildings and features four exhibitions. These present the domestic life from Antiquity through the Middle Ages and the 17th century heyday until today, as well as works of the Chiprovtsi goldsmithing and carpet industry. The town has an Eastern Orthodox church dedicated to the Ascension of Jesus; the remains of the old Roman Catholic church of Saint Mary have also been preserved. The Chiprovtsi Monastery is situated outside the town; there are ruins of several other Orthodox churches and another monastery. The town has a community cultural centre (chitalishte) with branches in eight of the villages in the municipality. The chitalishte has a youth dancing group, a folk music group, a theatrical group, a folk ritual and customs reproduction group and other similar groups. The nine libraries of the Chiprovtsi chitalishte and its branches house 65,975 volumes of books.