According to the founding act of the Council of Ministers establishing the Cyrillo-Methodian Research Centre (CMRC) in 1980, the institution was assigned three principal research tasks, which form the foundation of its research paradigm:

  • The critical edition of Slavic, Greek, and Latin Cyrillo-Methodian sources.
  • The compilation and publication of a Cyrillo-Methodian bibliography of international scholarly and popular-scientific literature published since 1940, together with the continuation and expansion of the bibliography for earlier periods.
  • The coordination of Cyrillo-Methodian research at national and international level through scholarly publications and academic forums.

Today, this research paradigm is implemented through:

  • identifying, studying, and publishing Cyrillo-Methodian sources and their manuscript copies;
  • researching the works of Cyril and Methodius and their disciples and producing scholarly editions;
  • researching and publishing textual monuments originating in Bulgarian literary centres of the 9th–10th centuries, based on the later copies in which they have survived;
  • studying the Cyrillo-Methodian legacy in the context of contacts between Eastern and Western Europe in the Middle Ages, on the basis of Latin and Slavic sources documenting the functioning of Cyrillo-Methodian traditions in Europe as a connecting element within medieval European written culture;
  • studying Slavic writing as Europe’s third writing system, including its social significance in the past, present, and future;
  • researching, cataloguing, digitising, and bringing into wider public and cultural use monuments of secular and religious art dedicated to Saints Cyril and Methodius and their disciples; creating exhibitions for Bulgarian cultural institutions abroad, museums and other cultural institutions in Bulgaria and abroad, and supporting the cultural activities of Bulgarian lectorates and Bulgarian schools abroad;
  • creating digital corpora of Cyrillo-Methodian research materials within the framework of the digital humanities.

Research at the CMRC is conducted within the framework of national and international research projects and disseminated through the Centre’s publications and the scholarly forums it organises.