Kopilovtsi is a village in
Georgi Damyanovo Municipality
Georgi Damyanovo Municipality () is a frontier municipality ('' obshtina'') in Montana Province, Northwestern Bulgaria, located on the northern slopes of western Stara Planina mountain and the area of the so-called Fore-Balkan. It is named after ...
,
Montana Province
Montana Province (, transliterated: ''Oblast Montana'') is a Provinces of Bulgaria, province in northwestern Bulgaria, bordering Serbia in the southwest and Romania in the north. It spreads its area between the Danube river and the Balkan Mountai ...
, north-western
Bulgaria
Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...
.
History
Some documents like those of Catholic priests and bishops prove the
Albanian
Albanian may refer to:
*Pertaining to Albania in Southeast Europe; in particular:
**Albanians, an ethnic group native to the Balkans
**Albanian language
**Albanian culture
**Demographics of Albania, includes other ethnic groups within the country ...
origin of the population living in the mining village of Kopilovtsi. The documents prove that the population of the village spoke Albanian by the sixteenth century. In its relation to Rome In 1640, a Catholic Bulgarian from Chiprovtsi named
Petar Bogdan wrote to Catholic authorities in Rome about Kopilovtsi and stated that "Catholic sacrament has 1,200 people, 360 children, I can tell by nationality Albanians, because they came long ago from Albania and even now keep this language”. Bogdani writes about the village several times later focusing on the growth of Catholic Albanian population. In 1653, he wrote to Church authorities in Rome that almost all the villagers were traders.
[Гюзелев, pp. 45–47.]
References
Villages in Montana Province
{{MontanaBG-geo-stub