Kiril Živković

Kiril Živković also spelled Kiril Zhivkovich (Bulgarian: Кирил Живкович, Serbian Cyrillic: Кирил Живковић; Pirot, Ottoman Empire, 1730 – Temska, Ottoman Empire, 1807) was a Bulgarian-born, Serbian writer and Orthodox bishop.

According to Kyril himself, he was born "in the city of Pirot, in Bulgarian lands, in the year 1730". Pirot at the time was part of the Sanjak of Niš of the Ottoman Empire (now in Serbia). As a seven-year-old, he fled with his parents to the village of Futog in Bačka in the Habsburg Empire (now in Serbia), where he was ordained as the priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Afterwards Zhivkovich became a monk at the Bulgarian Orthodox Zograf Monastery on Mount Athos. He travelled and studied throughout the Balkans, Russia, and Italy. In 1778 he was elevated to the rank of abbot (archimandrite) by Metropolitan Vikentije Jovanović-Vidak. That same year he was put in charge of Grgeteg monastery. Eight years later, on the 20th of June 1786, Metropolitan Mojsije Putnik of Sremski Karlovci made him Bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Pakrac eparchy, a position he would hold from 1786 to 1807. He published two books: in Vienna in 1794: Domentijan and The Lives of Serbian Saints and Enlighteners Simeon and Sava, and a redaction of Peter Damascene writings in Buda in 1803. He also left behind several unpublished manuscripts.

Most prominent from his unpublished writings is the Manuscript from Temska Monastery. This manuscript is an important document in that it renders the state of the little documented Torlakian dialects from 1764 written, according to the author, in "simple Bulgarian language". He died on 12 August 1807 in the Monastery of St. George in Temska near Pirot.