As with the question of the existence of medieval Macedonian polities, defining any pre-modern corpus of texts as “(Slavic) Macedonian”, and distinct as such from Bulgarian or Serbian, is highly problematic. The present survey will restrict itself to editions of ancient documents found in the territory of “geographical Macedonia”, without prejudice to their “ethnic” background.

The first discoveries of such documents were often made by foreign travellers and scholars visiting the Balkans. The Russian Viktor Grigorovič, who toured Bulgaria and Macedonia during the 1840s, took back to Russia about sixty manuscripts, among them the 11th-century Glagolitic Ohrid Gospel and Codex Marianus (found on Mount Athos). They were published by Grigorovič himself and by other Russian and European scholars.

Jordan Hadžikonstantinov-Džinot (1818–1882) was the first Macedonian intellectual to publish medieval manuscripts. He discovered a copy of the “Narrative of the Restoration of the Bulgarian Patriarchate” (which occurred in 1235) and the “Salonica Legend”, a 12th-century vita presenting St Cyril, the creator of the Slavic script, as baptizer of the Bulgarians. Džinot sent his discoveries to the “Society of Serbian Letters” in Belgrade, in whose official magazine they appeared in 1855-56.

By the end of the 19th century, the publication of epigraphic monuments and of ancient manuscripts from Macedonia became an eminently political issue. On the basis of such editions, Balkan scholars sought to give historical legitimacy to the irredentist claims of their states on the region. Thus, while Ohrid-born Margaritis Dimitsas tried to attest the continuously Hellenic character of Macedonia since antiquity (Macedonia in speaking stones and surviving monuments, 1896), his Serbian and Bulgarian colleagues issued rival compilations. The most authoritative collection of medieval Slavic manuscripts and epigraphic material from the region is the Bulgarian antiques from Macedonia, published in 1908 by the historian Jordan Ivanov.