Clement of Ohrid in the context of "Cyril and Methodius"

Macedonian literature (Macedonian: македонска книжевност) begins with the Ohrid Literary School in the First Bulgarian Empire (nowadays North Macedonia) in 886. These first written works in the dialects of the Old Church Slavonic were religious. The school was established by St. Clement of Ohrid. The Macedonian recension at that time was part of the Old Church Slavonic and it did not represent one regional dialect but a generalized form of early Eastern South Slavic. The standardization of Macedonian in the 20th century provided good ground for further development of the modern Macedonian literature and this period is the richest one in the history of the literature itself.

The Ohrid Literary School or Ohrid-Devol Literary school was one of the two major cultural centres of the First Bulgarian Empire, along with the Preslav Literary School (Pliska Literary School). The school was established in Ohrid (in what is now North Macedonia). Another center was Devol (modern-day Albania) as well as Drembica, Glavinica and Velika with unknown location. All the school centers were located in a then Bulgarian province known as Kutmichevitsa. It was founded in 886 by Saint Clement of Ohrid on the order of Boris I of Bulgaria simultaneously or shortly after the establishment of the Preslav Literary School. After Clement was ordained bishop of Drembica, Velika (bishopric) in 893, the position of head of the school was assumed by Naum of Preslav. The Ohrid Literary School used the Glagolitic alphabet from its establishment until the 12th century and Cyrillic from the end of the 9th century onward. Between 990 and 1015, Ohrid was the capital of the Bulgarian Empire and simultaneously also the seat of the Bulgarian Patriarchate.

Kutmichevitsa (Bulgarian: Кутмичевица) was an administrative region of the Bulgarian Empire during 9th-11th cent., corresponding roughly with the northwestern part of the modern region of Macedonia and the southern part of Albania, broadly taken to be the area included in the triangle Saloniki-Skopje-Vlora. It had an important impact on the formation, endorsement and development of the Old Church Slavonic and culture. The Debar–Velich diocese of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was created in Kutmichevitsa whose first bishop between 886 and 893 was Clement of Ohrid, appointed by Knyaz Boris I.