Books by Angel Nikolov
Russia, Mount Athos and the monastery of Rila. A collection of documents. Edition, translation a... more Russia, Mount Athos and the monastery of Rila. A collection of documents. Edition, translation and commentary by A. Nikolov, T. Georgieva, Y. Bencheva. Sofia, 2016.
NIKOLOV, A. BETWEEN ROME AND CONSTANTINOPLE:
SKETCHES FROM THE ANTI-CATHOLIC LITERATURE
IN BULGAR... more NIKOLOV, A. BETWEEN ROME AND CONSTANTINOPLE:
SKETCHES FROM THE ANTI-CATHOLIC LITERATURE
IN BULGARIA AND THE SLAVIC ORTHODOX WORLD
(11th–17th C.). SOFIA, 2016, 353 PP.
![Research paper thumbnail of Николов, А., Герд, Л. П. А. Сирку в България (1878-1879) // П. А. Сырку в Болгарии (1878-1879) [= Studia mediaevalia Slavica et Byzantina, 3]. София, 2012, 429 стр. ISSN 1314-4170](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/36243685/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Nikolov, A., Gerd, L.
P. A. Syrku in Bulgaria (1878-1879)
Summary
The book is devoted to... more Nikolov, A., Gerd, L.
P. A. Syrku in Bulgaria (1878-1879)
Summary
The book is devoted to the hitherto little known journeys of P. A. Syrku (1852-1905), the then-future eminent Slavist and researcher of Old-Bulgarian literature, across of newly liberated Bulgaria, undertaken between September 1878 and September 1879. Its aim is to present to the reader all the available documents of relevance and interest, including seventeen unpublished and so far unstudied personal letters of the scholar to his Russian colleagues A. N. Pypin, T. D. Florinsky, V. I. Lamansky, A. A. Kunik and F. I. Uspensky, kept at the Saint Petersburg branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Archive and the Manuscript Department of the Russian National Library in Saint Petersburg.
The material gathered and discussed in this book sheds light on various aspects of P. A. Syrku’s activity in Bulgaria during the period of temporary Russian occupation: the connection between the young scholar’s journey and the project for a “Bulgarian expedition” under the aegis of the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences and the Imperial Societies of Archaeology and Geography, proposed to the Russian authorities by A. N. Pypin, Professor at Saint Petersburg University as early as November 1876; P. A. Syrku’s meetings and communication with Bulgarian academics and prominent public figures such as Marin Drinov, Dragan Tsankov, Metropolitan Meletius of Sofia, Metropolitan Nathanael of Ohrid, Neofit Rilski, publisher Dragan Manchov, etc.; the compilation and contents of the collection of medieval Slavonic and Greek manuscripts, gathered by the Russian scholar during his visits across Bulgaria (part of this collection is currently housed at the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg); the survey conducted by P. A. Syrku in 1879 around Chepino (in the northwestern Rhodope Mountains) on the authenticity of Veda Slovena, the book of bogus epic poems published by S. Verkovic, and the accompanying archaeological excavations of the medieval fortress of Tsepina (near the present-day village of Dorkovo).
Also published in this volume are all the surviving letters from the period after 1879, part of P. A. Syrku’s correspondence with Bulgarian scholars and intellectuals (M. Drinov, K. Shapkarev, H. Popkonstantinov, A. Shopov, S. S. Bobchev), which are held in the Bulgarian Historical Archive of Sts Cyril and Methodius National Library and the Scientific Archive of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia.
The documents and other material presented here have been transcribed, translated and appear in the book accompanied by a scholarly commentary. The volume includes also a bibliography and indices of the referenced manuscripts, archival documents, personal and place names as well as a section entitled Notes on Polichroniy Syrku’s Manuscript Collection, by A. Miltenova (Sofia) and A. Sergeev (Saint Petersburg).
The book is bilingual; the documents and all the rest of the material are published in both Bulgarian and Russian so that they could be made accessible to the widest possible circle of researchers, academics and students.
![Research paper thumbnail of Николов, А. Повест полезна за латините: паметник на средновековната славянска полемика срещу католицизма. София, 2011, 153 pp. ISBN 9789549252699 [A Useful Tale about the Latins: A literary monument of the medieval Slavic polemics against Catholicism]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/31958550/thumbnails/1.jpg)
"The book examines the polemical work A Useful Tale about the Latins(“A tale about the Latins, of... more "The book examines the polemical work A Useful Tale about the Latins(“A tale about the Latins, of when they split from the Greeks and the Holy God’s Church and how they invented a heresy to serve with unleavened bread and an insult to the Holy Ghost”), which is the Slavonic translation of a lost Byzantine original.
As explained in the Foreword, at the core of the Slavonic text under examination lies one of the anonymous works targeting the rites and customs of “the Latins” or western Christians, which spread in the Byzantine world after the Great Schism of 1054. Although this lost Greek original was
very similar to the three 'Opuscula de origine schismatis' published by J. Hergenröther in 1869, it contained considerably more historical detail.
The author of the Useful Tale about the Latins covers a wide range of events, topics and issues, often sacrificing historical fact to serve his overriding purpose, that of describing in the least favourable terms the Latins’ break with the orthodox faith, which had as its logical outcome the ecclesiastical split between Constantinople and Rome and, on a more general level, also the profound political estrangement and animosity between the Byzantine Empire and the world of the western Christians.
The beginning of the text emphasises the concerted action of Pope Hadrian I (772-795) and the four ecumenical patriarchs at the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787), summoned by Emperor Constantine VI (780-797) and Empress Eirene, which reinstated icon veneration. However, after the ascent in Constantinople of a new series of iconoclast rulers, Pope Leo III (795-816) put up as emperor the ‘Latin Prince Carul’ (i.e. Chalemagne), whose dream was to rule over ‘all Latin families and over all Greeks’ and to conquer Constantinople, while the ‘Latin’ monks, priests and teachers who arrived in Rome together with him turned out to be undercover heretics, who taught the laity to use unleavened bread in Holy Communion and preached that the Holy Spirit proceeded not only from the Father but from the Son too.
Further down are recounted the sufferings and humiliation to which the iconoclast emperor Theophilus (829-842) subjected in Constantinople the Patriarch of Jerusalem’s emissaries, Michael Synkellos and his disciples Theophanes and Theodorus Graptoi.
The following two sections of the Tale present the fight of Pope Leo IV (847-855) and his successor Benedict III (855-858) against the ‘Latin heretics’ in Rome. The consensus between the four patriarchs and the Roman high priests came to an end during the rule of emperor Leo VI the Wise (886-912), when the secret admirer of the ‘Latin heresy’, Pope Formosus (891-896), openly declared that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son and sanctioned communion with unleavened bread. Thus Rome broke ‘simultaneously with the Empire and the Church’, which provided ample grounds for the Patriarch of Constantinople Sergius (1001-1019) and the other three patriarchs to excommunicate and condemn the name of the Roman pope. ‘And so, even to these days, then broke the Latins away from the Empire, and from the four patriarchies, and conquered for themselves Rome and were enemies of all Orthodox Christians.’ They deceived and turned to their foul faith many peoples from the Scythians, who inhabited the outer parts of Rome to the west, because those ‘were speechless and had no books of their own.’
The compiler of the Tale painstakingly lists and condemns the deviations of ‘the Latins’ from Orthodoxy and then goes on to relate their attempt at establishing their own empire with Rome as its centre: ‘and they completely split from the Greeks, and from the Empire, and from the Church and twice, and thrice they set an emperor from among the Latins together with the Pope, and they achieved nothing because the Latin families would not submit to his rule.’ Then the Pope called from Britain ‘the Alamanian prince’, who took an oath never to plan anything hostile against the Romans, to remain in submission and obedience before the Pope, and never to break away from the Latins and the Roman Church. And so it was decreed, ‘in Rome to set the Pope from the Latins, and in Britain - an emperor from the Alamans, and not in Constantinople.’
Further on the Tale recounts how the Byzantine emperors managed to convert to Christianity three ‘Scythian’ peoples, traditionally hostile to the ‘Greek empire’: the Bulgarians, the Russians and the Hungarians. The onset of invasions of various peoples ‘from the east, north and south’, however, weakened the ‘Greek empire’ and allowed the Latins to attract the Hungarians, still novices at Christianity, to their faith. From the north the Empire was assaulted by ‘the barbarians who call themselves Cumans’, who devastated ‘the whole of Europe’ and, having crossed the river Istros, reached Thrace and Constantinople. From the east ‘the Ismaelites, called Persians’ fought across ‘the whole of Asia and even as far as the Aegean, building a wall before Constantinople’. Then ‘the Hagarenes, who call themselves Saracenes’ broke away from the ‘Greek empire’ and conquered Syria, Palestine, Jerusalem, Nubia, Egypt and Lybia, and their ships sailed as far as Constantinople.
The Tale ends with the conclusion that the Latins, having seen the wars of the pagans against the Greeks, ‘became worse enemies of the Christian land and God’s Church, and thus established over the earth their foul faith and their evil heresies.’
Chapter I (‘Overview of research and editions of the Useful Tale about the Latins’) traces the history of textual research. It acknowledges the key importance of the first publication of the text, produced in 1875 by A. Popov. As early as 1876, V. Vasilevsky suggested that the ending of the tale alluded to the first Crusades at the end of the 11th century and dated the creation of the Greek original of the work to the same period. In 1878 A. Pavlov proposed that the Slavonic translation of the lost Greek text was made no later than the first half of the 13th century in Bulgaria, from where it had disseminated through Russia. Unfortunately, the tentative suggestions of those authors for further research into the text were not taken up and to this day the Useful Tale about the Latins remains a rather neglected and poorly studied work.
The first two sections of Chapter II, ‘Observations on the origins and early dissemination of the Useful Tale about the Latins in the manuscript tradition (until the mid-14th century)’, discuss evidence of borrowings from the Useful Tale in two works from the early 12th century, written in two rather distant from each other parts of the Slavic world: the Russian primary chronicle and the Bulgarian apocryphal chronicle.
The third section of Chapter II
bears title ‘The place and role of the Ochrid Archbishopric in the Rome – Constantinople relations (middle of the 11th – early 12th centuries)’ and
develops the idea that the Useful Tale about the Latins, along with some other polemical texts, was translated into the Slavonic in the western Bulgarians territories, ruled at that time by Byzantium but, from an ecclesiastic point of view, belonging to the diocese of the “archbishops of entire Bulgaria”, who had their seat in Ohrid. From the Balkans these works were quick to reach Kievan Rus’ and shape the core of a corpus of Slavonic anti-Catholic texts, which was supplemented and enriched over the following centuries with new works of the south-Slavic and Russian translators and scholars.
The final section of Chapter II examines evidence of borrowings from the Useful Tale about the Latins used in the compilation of the historical additions to the
Slavonic translation of Constantine Manasses’ Chronicle, made in the first half of the 14th century in the Bulgarian capital of Turnovo.
Chapter III, ‘Overview and classification of researched manuscript copies’, presents thirteen unpublished copies and one published fragment of the Useful Tale about the Latins, which form the basis of the study. The comparisons between the copies justify the following classification:
- Initial redaction which, in terms of structure, reproduces most faithfully the features of the archetypal translation; within this redaction there are two text groups (A and B), to the first of which belongs the earliest extant copy of the work made in the Bulgarian lands c. 1360–1370 (Plevlja monastery No 12);
- Interpolated redaction, evidenced in the Hilandar Monastery manuscript No 469 (c. 1530–1540);
- Abridged redaction, whose earliest copy is included in manuscript No 102 of the Serbian monastery of Decani (c. 1415–1425);
- Contaminated redaction, compiled by Vladislav the Grammarian, based on a copy of the Interpolated redaction contained in the Odessa part of his 1456 collection.
The final section of the book contains edition of all redactions of the Useful Tale about the Latins, as well as a neglected fragment published by Yordan Hadzhikonstantinov-Dzhinot, a Bulgarian teacher and antiquarian from Veles, in 1860. The appended translation of the oldest copy of the Tale into modern Bulgarian language is accompanied by a detailed historical commentary."
![Research paper thumbnail of Николов, А. Политическа мисъл в ранносредновековна България (средата на IX – края на X в.). София, 2006, 355 pp ISBN 954-326-037-0 [Political Thought in Early Medieval Bulgaria (the middle of 9th - the end of 10th c.)]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/36969172/thumbnails/1.jpg)
The book outlines the sources, content and evolution of the Bulgarian political thought between t... more The book outlines the sources, content and evolution of the Bulgarian political thought between the adoption of the Christian faith (864) and the conquest of Eastern Bulgaria by Emperor John Tzimisces (971), when the Bulgarian Khanate is transformed into a Christian empire (“tsarstvo”) with a church organization virtually independent of Constantinople and Rome and with liturgy and literature in the vernacular Slavic (Old-Bulgarian) language. In the decades after the arrival of the disciples of the Slavic apostles Constantine-Cyril the Philosopher and Methodius in 886, active literary and educational work is being done in the capitals Pliska and Preslav, in Ohrid and in some of the larger monastic centers which is being patronized and supervised in person by Prince Boris I – Michael (852-889; + 907), Tsar Symeon I (893-927) and Tsar Peter (927-969). Thus Bulgaria becomes the only recently Christianized country to organize and conduct an extensive long-term cultural policy which becomes an embodiment of the ideas of the sovereignty, greatness, piety and wisdom of the Bulgarian rulers.
The comprehensive analysis of the corpus of Old-Bulgarian original, compilative and above all translated texts (1) reveals the lively interest of the scholars close to the ruler’s court in such issues as the theory of power and rule, the image of the ideal ruler and it’s biblical, Roman and Byzantine paradigms, the idea of the eschatological mission of the Roman Empire as an end link in the chain of successive world empires and (2) allows us an insight into the real essence of the complex process of transformation of the original model of the pagan Bulgarian state following the Christianization which was characterized by the selective adoption, adaptation and rejection of certain political ideas and concepts mainly in the framework of the country’s relations with Byzantium.
It should be emphasized that the Bulgarian political elite, involved in unrelenting confrontation and rivalry with the Empire, displays extraordinary sensitivity to any alteration in the tone of the diplomatic relations of Byzantium with the Bulgarians as well as to the subtle nuances of the ruling propaganda tendencies in Constantinople. Special significance for the development of the Bulgarian political thought has the ‘dynastic ideology’ promoted by Basil I, which becomes a structural pattern for Boris I – Michael and especially for his son Symeon who received excellent education in Constantinople exactly during the final years of the rule of this emperor. There are substantial grounds to claim that after his ascension to the throne Symeon I suits his personal and political behavior to the same ideas which are to be found in the imperial propaganda during the reign of Leo VI the Wise (e. g. Arethas from Caesarea praises him as an emanation of Plato’s ideal of emperor – philosopher who excels all previous rulers of the empire and gives to these under him more wisdom than a library of books).
It is in the context of this spirit of learned ‘encyclopedic’ (and at the same time strictly Orthodox) piety, permeating the court of Symeon I and embodied in the literary and translating work systematically patronized by the state, that the view of this ruler of himself, which took final shape c. 912-913, can be outlined, i.e. that he - as a new Adam (a notion implicitly contained in the dedicated to him by John Exarch Hexameron), a new Moses (as he openly calls himself in one of his letters to Patriarch Nicholas Mysticus), a new Ptolemy (according to the famous Eulogy from the Symeon’s miscellany), emperor-philosopher (who rose to power from the monastery) and a new Justinian (the oldest translation of Agapetus’ Expositio capitum admonitorium was designed to create a suitable image for the newly-proclaimed Bulgarian tsar) – is elected by God to ascend the Byzantine throne in order to revive and renew the former magnificence and might of the Christian Roman Empire.
It deserves mention that in the ages to follow the Russian ideologists, including the authors of the concept Moscow – Third Rome, look on Byzanium and its ideological legacy primarily through the eyes of the Old-Bulgarian writers and translators. So, it can be claimed that the foundations of the ideological model of the Muscovite tsardom are laid in Bulgaria, which establishes itself as the first empire in the Slavic world and bequeaths to the future generations of Slavic scholars its model of selective ‘reading’ and ‘translation’ of the Byzantine tradition. In this respect, the political relations and cultural communication between Byzantium and Bulgaria in 9-10 c. have a really far-reaching significance, i.e. due to them that some lasting features of the Orthodox Slavic world evolve which in turn influence the development of European history up until the present day.
Books edited by Angel Nikolov
Културното наследство на Странджа. Богатство, рискове, предизвикателства. Съст. А. Николов. София, 2019
The Cultural Heritage of Strandzha: Wealth, Risks, Challenges. Ed. by Angel Nikolov. Sofia, 2019.... more The Cultural Heritage of Strandzha: Wealth, Risks, Challenges. Ed. by Angel Nikolov. Sofia, 2019. Collected papers from an international scientific conference held in Burgas, 28-29 September 2019.
Българско средновековие: оБщество, власт, история сборник в чест на проф. д-р Милияна каймакамова... more Българско средновековие: оБщество, власт, история сборник в чест на проф. д-р Милияна каймакамова отговорен редактор: доц. д-р георги н. николов © 2013 георги н. николов -предговор © 2013 георги н. николов, ангел николов -съставители © 2013 Жеко алексиев -художник © 2013 автори: аксиния джурова, александър николов, ангел николов, анисава Милтенова, васил гюзелев, василка тъпкова-Заимова, владимир ангелов, георги н. николов, димитър Й. димитров, димо Чешмеджиев, димчо Момчилов, дмитрий и. Полывянный, дочка владимирова-аладжова, елена койчева, елена костова, елка Бакалова, Живко аладжов, иван джамбов, иван Йорданов, ивайла Попова, иваничка георгиева, илия г. илиев, илка Петкова, казимир Попконстантинов, кирил господинов, кирил Маринов, кирил Павликянов, константин тотев, красимир стоилов, лиляна симеонова, люба илие ва, людмила в. горина, Мирослав Й. лешка, Петър ангелов, Пламен Павлов, радивоj радић, росина костова, силвия в. аризанова, снежана ракова, тодор Попнеделев, тома томов, Христо Матанов, Христо темелски, Цветелин степанов, Daniel Ziemann, Lubomíra Havlíková, Peter Schreiner
Сборник с доклади от Международната научна конференция „Симеонова България в историята на европей... more Сборник с доклади от Международната научна конференция „Симеонова България в историята на европейския Югоизток: 1100 години от битката при Ахелой“ (Поморие, 25-28 октомври 2017 г.).
The medieval Bulgarian and the "others". Collection in honor of the 60th anniversary of Prof. Petar Angelov
Papers by Angel Nikolov
The Bohot monastery of St. Nicholas - a lost monastic convent in the vicinity of the town of Plev... more The Bohot monastery of St. Nicholas - a lost monastic convent in the vicinity of the town of Pleven
The article is devoted to the history of a long disappeared monastery in the vicinity of the town of Pleven - the monastery of St. Nicholas near the village of Bohot. For the first time, the monastic brotherhood's petition to the Russian Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich dated 26 October 1642 is published in full translation into Bulgarian. It is assumed that the monastery was founded in the Middle Ages and continued to function (with some interruptions) until at least the middle - second half of the 17th century. In this context the unclear question of the importance of Pleven during the period of the Second Bulgarian Empire is also considered.
Yovcheva, Maria, Nikolov, Angel, TWO FRAGMENTS OF A SERBIAN OFFICE MENAION FROM THE END OF THE 13... more Yovcheva, Maria, Nikolov, Angel, TWO FRAGMENTS OF A SERBIAN OFFICE MENAION FROM THE END OF THE 13TH – THE FIRST HALF OF THE 14TH CENTURY FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF THE CHURCH HISTORICAL AND ARCHIVAL INSTITUTE OF THE BULGARIAN PATRIARCHATE AND THE HISTORICAL MUSEUM – TETEVEN (Summary)
The article studies the fate and the content of a parchment manuscript, containing an Office Menaion, two parts of which have found their way to the Church Historical and Archival Institute of the Bulgarian Patriarchate in Sofia (CHAI) and the Historical Museum of Teteven (IM–Teteven), respectively. The manuscript was written at the end of the 13th or the beginning of the 14th century. The place of its creation can be located with relative accuracy thanks to two marginal notes in memory of the oikonomos of the Krushevo metochion of the Athonite Hilandar monastery, in the Western part of the Metohija region (today in the Republic of Kosovo). By 1858, the two fragments were still part of a single codex and were owned by a Bulgarian from Craiova, Hristo Hadzhi Danailov, who later donated a portion of the manuscript on behalf of himself and of his brother Dimitar to the Bulgarian community centre in Craiova (founded in 1871). It was this part of the manuscript that ended up in the museum collection of Teteven in 1922.
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By 1935, the rest of the manuscript was owned by Stefan Tsvetkov from the town of Svishtov, the son of Angel Tsvetkov, a wealthy local merchant and a member of the first church board of the Holy Trinity Cathedral (consecrated 1867). This larger part of the manuscript was sold in 1937 by Mikhail Stamboliyev, a teacher from the town of Russe to the Church Museum in Sofia and belongs today to the CHAI collection (Ms no. 501).
The paper explores codicological, palaeographic and orthographic features of the Teteven fragment. The numbering of the quires and the similarity with the Serbian Menaion Hlud. 156 from the State Historical Museum in Moscow (GIM) allow the assumption that the two parts belonged to a voluminous codex containing the services for the complete summer period of the church year. The study of the calendar and the composition of the services indicates the presence of at least two textual layers in the Teteven fragment. One of these layers, common to the Menaia of the Studite liturgical practice, presents already translated texts, inherited from the earlier tradition. The other layer stands closer to Slavonic codices following the Theotokos Evergetis Typikon. It is characterised by distinctive hymns also typical only of Mss Dečani 32 and Ms 113 from SS. Cyril and Methodius National Library (NBKM). Most likely, these particular poetic texts penetrated into the South Slavic milieu through certain Serbian centres in the thirteenth century. The type of the Menaion, the copyist’s notes, and the kinship with Hlud. 156 (written for the Cathedral church of Theotokos of Ljeviš in Prizren) allow us to conclude that the two fragments belong to a codex, which was probably commissioned for one of the great monasteries in Metohija founded by King Stefan II Milutin or by his ancestors.
Nikolov, Angel. A NEWLY DISCOVERED MIXED-CONTENT MISCELLANY OF THE SECOND – THIRD QUARTER OF THE ... more Nikolov, Angel. A NEWLY DISCOVERED MIXED-CONTENT MISCELLANY OF THE SECOND – THIRD QUARTER OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
This article is devoted to a Bulgarian manuscript collection written in the town of Vidin by several hands around the second-third quarter of the eighteenth century; not later than the first quarter of the nineteenth century it was brought to Teteven, where it has been kept ever since. The collection of texts examined here is a typical example of the later miscellanies of mixed content, which are distinguished by the presence of numerous apocryphal and non-canonical works. Moreover, the inclusion of a number of apotropaic texts in the miscellany allows us to assume that its transcribers-most likely members of a relatively wealthy Vidin family of merchants and priests-had access to older amulet collections, which in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were frequently used in teaching children to read and write. The miscellany is also remarkable in that it reflects the personal tastes and pragmatic needs of its owners, who were not only obsessed with keeping evil forces at bay but also took pains to equip themselves with accurate calendar information on church festivals and fasts throughout the year, a Latin abecedary, and even a short Bulgarian-Hungarian dictionary whose presence in the manuscript hints at distant (most likely commercial) travels.
Unpublished Copies of Prayers against Nezhit and Fevers from the
Collection of the Church Histori... more Unpublished Copies of Prayers against Nezhit and Fevers from the
Collection of the Church Historical and Archival Institute at the Bulgarian
Patriarchate
The present article is devoted to some late transcripts of non-canonical
healing prayers against nezhit (a demon that causes headaches, toothache and rheumatic pains) and fevers (seven, twelve or more demon-sisters that cause fever), which are included in manuscript No. 438 from the collection of the Church Historical and Archival Institute of the Bulgarian Patriarchate (Sofia). The problem of who and why bothered with transcribing the prayers against nezhit in 1865 (this is the latest dated transcription of these texts), when such archaic apocrypha must have seemed like some absurd atavism, is discussed. An analysis of the manuscript (which is a convolute consisting of three once separate parts transcribed between the second half of the eighteenth century and 1865) shows that during this period the priests in the future Bulgarian capital of Sofia diligently copied, preserved, and apparently used the prayers against nezhit and fevers, and the local population (especially in the nearby villages) apparently shared the view that the cure of disease means rather fighting evil spirits (exorcism) than tackling objective physical problems through the means of medicine. These ancient superstitions, fuelled also by some non-canonical Russian prayers that spread among the Bulgarians, contradicted the growing aspiration of the more educated circles of Bulgarian society to build a modern and mass-accessible educational system based on the achievements of European science. Several of the texts under discussion (a cycle of five prayers against nezhit and three Russian healing prayers, including the famous prayer to Archangel Michael the Terrible Warmaster, whose authorship was incorrectly attributed by D.S. Likhachev to Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible) are published in the appendices.
New data on the activity of the Tryavna painter Todor Genkov
Todor Genkov (1854-1922) belongs to... more New data on the activity of the Tryavna painter Todor Genkov
Todor Genkov (1854-1922) belongs to the old Zaharievi family, from which originated many famous Tryavna painters. He was one of the most productive representatives of the late Tryavna Art School. His icons can be found in many regions of the country – Lovech, Veliko Tarnovo, Gabrovo, Targovishte, Stara Zagora and Burgas. The article presents hitherto unknown icons from the Church of the Assumption in the village of Golyamo Bukovo (Sredets municipality), as well as from the church of St. Demetrius in the village of Ablanitsa (Lovech municipality), where the painter worked in 1899-1900 and was forced by the Lovech Diocesan Council to correct some of his works.
Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 286; Bibliotheque de Byzantion, 22, 2020
Abstract: In the first half of the 13th century, Bulgaria had unusually intense political and ecc... more Abstract: In the first half of the 13th century, Bulgaria had unusually intense political and ecclesiastical contacts with the West, which has its logical explanation with the dramatic changes in the Balkans due to the conquest of Constantinople by the troops of the Fourth Crusade in April 1204 and the rise of the Latin Empire as a leading factor in the politically fragmented Byzantine space. Concerned about the confused and unpredictable situation in the region, the Bulgarian Emperor Kaloyan (1196-1207) exchanged several letters with Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) and eventually subordinated the Bulgarian Church to the Roman See. In return, on November 8, 1204 the papal legate Leo Brancaleoni anointed him and placed a royal crown on his head. On April 14, 1205, Kaloyan defeated the Latin troops near Adrianople and took as a captive Emperor Baldwin I (1204-1205), who ended his life in Tarnovo. From then until 1261, Bulgaria and the Latin Empire would more than once meet on the battlefield, and sometimes they would be allies, which largely depended on their relations with other neighbouring powers – Epirus, Serbia, Hungary, Nicaea.
The purpose of this article is to analyse some archaeological evidence of Bulgaria’s contacts with the Latin Empire and the Roman Church in the first half of the thirteenth century, some of which only came to light in recent years. Although relatively scarce and heterogeneous, these materials deserve further attention and should be subject to more in-depth interpretations: the lead seals of Latin emperors from Bulgaria (especially those of Baldwin II, found in the fortress of Pleven and in the vicinity of Popovo), a fragment of an early thirteenth-century Romanesque bronze crucifix with gilding from a processional cross found in Preslav, a bronze gilded figurine of a saint with enamel decoration, made in Limoges, discovered in 2018 in Veliko Tarnovo, as well as a lead pilgrim badge from the Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, discovered in 2017 in a mid-thirteenth-century tomb in the medieval town of Hotalich, near Sevlievo.
През първата половина на 13 в. България установила необичайно ин-тензивни политически и църковни контакти със Запада, което има своето логично обяс-нение в драматичните промени на Балканите във връзка с превземането на Константи-нопол от войските на IV кръстоносен поход на 13 април 1204 г. и издигането на Латин-ската империя като водещ политически фактор в политически фрагментираното визан-тийско пространство. Загрижен от обърканата и непредсказуема ситуация във Визан-тия, както и от териториалните претенции на Унгария, българският цар Калоян (1196–1207) разменил няколко писма с папа Инокентий III (1198–1216) и в края на краищата под-чинил Българската църква на Римския престол, а в замяна на 8 ноември 1204 г. в Тър-ново папският легат Лъв Бранкалеонe го миропомазал и сложил на главата му кралска корона. На 14 април 1205 г. Калоян разгромил латинските войски край Адрианопол и пленил император Балдуин I (1204–1205), който приключил живота си в Търново. Оттук нататък България и Латинската империя неведнъж щели да се сблъскат на бойното поле, а понякога щели да бъдат и съюзници, което до голяма степен зависело от техните отношения с останалите фактори в региона – Епир, Сърбия, Унгария, Никея.
Целта на настоящата статия е да маркира някои археологически свидетелства за контактите на България с Латинската империя и Римската църква през първата поло-вина на 13 в., част от които станаха известни през последните години. Макар и оскъдни и разнородни, тези материали заслужават внимание и би трябвало да станат обект на по-задълбочени интерпретации: оловните печати на латинските императори от Бълга-рия (и по-специално тези на Балдуин II, открити в Плевенската крепост и в околностите на Попово), фрагмент от едно романско бронзово позлатено разпятие от процесиен кръст от Преслав, позлатена бронзова фигурка на светец с украса от емайл, произведена в Лимож, открита през 2018 г. във Велико Търново, а също и една оловна поклонническа значка от базиликата Св. Петър в Рим, открита през 2017 г. в гроб от средата на 13 в. в средновековния град Хоталич край Севлиево.
Open edition: https://books.openedition.org/efr/10643
L’article clarifie l’histoire de plusieurs pièces du patrimoine mobile de deux institutions monas... more L’article clarifie l’histoire de plusieurs pièces du patrimoine mobile de deux institutions monastiques fondées par des citoyens russes en Bulgarie pour commémorer la bravoure et l’héroïsme des soldats et officiers russes tués pendant la guerre russo-turque de 1877-1878 : le Monastère de l’Ascension, avec son église ‘Saint- Alexandre Nevsky’, construite entre 1879-1882 sur ordre du célèbre ‘général blanc’ Mikhail Skobelev sur les collines de Bakadzhik, près de Yambol ; et le Monastère de la Nativité à Shipka, construit (et probablement consacré en 1902) à l’initiative de la mère du général, Olga Skobeleva, par un comité directeur dirigé par le diplomate et homme d’état russe Nikolai Ignatiev.
В статье разъясняется история движимого культурного наследия двух монастырских учреждений, основанных российскими гражданами в Болгарии в память о мужестве и героизме русских солдат и офицеров, погибших во время русско-турецкой войны 1877-1878 гг: Вознесенский монастырь с храмом Святого Александра Невского, построенный в 1879-1882 годах по приказу знаменитого "белого генерала" Михаила Скобелева на Бакаджикских горах близ Ямбола; и Рождественский монастырь на Шипке, построенный (и освященный в 1902 году) по инициативе матери генерала, Ольги Скобелевой, исполнительным комитетом во главе с русским дипломатом и государственным деятелем графом Николаем Игнатьевым.
The article clarifies the history of several pieces of mobile heritage of two monastic institutions founded by Russian citizens in Bulgaria to commemorate the bravery and heroism of Russian soldiers and officers killed during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878: Ascension Monastery, with its St. Alexander Nevsky church, built between 1879-1882 on the orders of the famous 'white general' Mikhail Skobelev on the Bakadzhik hills near Yambol; and Nativity Monastery in Shipka, built (and consecrated in 1902) on the initiative of the general's mother, Olga Skobeleva, by a steering committee headed by the Russian diplomat and statesman Count Nikolai Ignatiev.
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Books by Angel Nikolov
SKETCHES FROM THE ANTI-CATHOLIC LITERATURE
IN BULGARIA AND THE SLAVIC ORTHODOX WORLD
(11th–17th C.). SOFIA, 2016, 353 PP.
P. A. Syrku in Bulgaria (1878-1879)
Summary
The book is devoted to the hitherto little known journeys of P. A. Syrku (1852-1905), the then-future eminent Slavist and researcher of Old-Bulgarian literature, across of newly liberated Bulgaria, undertaken between September 1878 and September 1879. Its aim is to present to the reader all the available documents of relevance and interest, including seventeen unpublished and so far unstudied personal letters of the scholar to his Russian colleagues A. N. Pypin, T. D. Florinsky, V. I. Lamansky, A. A. Kunik and F. I. Uspensky, kept at the Saint Petersburg branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Archive and the Manuscript Department of the Russian National Library in Saint Petersburg.
The material gathered and discussed in this book sheds light on various aspects of P. A. Syrku’s activity in Bulgaria during the period of temporary Russian occupation: the connection between the young scholar’s journey and the project for a “Bulgarian expedition” under the aegis of the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences and the Imperial Societies of Archaeology and Geography, proposed to the Russian authorities by A. N. Pypin, Professor at Saint Petersburg University as early as November 1876; P. A. Syrku’s meetings and communication with Bulgarian academics and prominent public figures such as Marin Drinov, Dragan Tsankov, Metropolitan Meletius of Sofia, Metropolitan Nathanael of Ohrid, Neofit Rilski, publisher Dragan Manchov, etc.; the compilation and contents of the collection of medieval Slavonic and Greek manuscripts, gathered by the Russian scholar during his visits across Bulgaria (part of this collection is currently housed at the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg); the survey conducted by P. A. Syrku in 1879 around Chepino (in the northwestern Rhodope Mountains) on the authenticity of Veda Slovena, the book of bogus epic poems published by S. Verkovic, and the accompanying archaeological excavations of the medieval fortress of Tsepina (near the present-day village of Dorkovo).
Also published in this volume are all the surviving letters from the period after 1879, part of P. A. Syrku’s correspondence with Bulgarian scholars and intellectuals (M. Drinov, K. Shapkarev, H. Popkonstantinov, A. Shopov, S. S. Bobchev), which are held in the Bulgarian Historical Archive of Sts Cyril and Methodius National Library and the Scientific Archive of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia.
The documents and other material presented here have been transcribed, translated and appear in the book accompanied by a scholarly commentary. The volume includes also a bibliography and indices of the referenced manuscripts, archival documents, personal and place names as well as a section entitled Notes on Polichroniy Syrku’s Manuscript Collection, by A. Miltenova (Sofia) and A. Sergeev (Saint Petersburg).
The book is bilingual; the documents and all the rest of the material are published in both Bulgarian and Russian so that they could be made accessible to the widest possible circle of researchers, academics and students.
As explained in the Foreword, at the core of the Slavonic text under examination lies one of the anonymous works targeting the rites and customs of “the Latins” or western Christians, which spread in the Byzantine world after the Great Schism of 1054. Although this lost Greek original was
very similar to the three 'Opuscula de origine schismatis' published by J. Hergenröther in 1869, it contained considerably more historical detail.
The author of the Useful Tale about the Latins covers a wide range of events, topics and issues, often sacrificing historical fact to serve his overriding purpose, that of describing in the least favourable terms the Latins’ break with the orthodox faith, which had as its logical outcome the ecclesiastical split between Constantinople and Rome and, on a more general level, also the profound political estrangement and animosity between the Byzantine Empire and the world of the western Christians.
The beginning of the text emphasises the concerted action of Pope Hadrian I (772-795) and the four ecumenical patriarchs at the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787), summoned by Emperor Constantine VI (780-797) and Empress Eirene, which reinstated icon veneration. However, after the ascent in Constantinople of a new series of iconoclast rulers, Pope Leo III (795-816) put up as emperor the ‘Latin Prince Carul’ (i.e. Chalemagne), whose dream was to rule over ‘all Latin families and over all Greeks’ and to conquer Constantinople, while the ‘Latin’ monks, priests and teachers who arrived in Rome together with him turned out to be undercover heretics, who taught the laity to use unleavened bread in Holy Communion and preached that the Holy Spirit proceeded not only from the Father but from the Son too.
Further down are recounted the sufferings and humiliation to which the iconoclast emperor Theophilus (829-842) subjected in Constantinople the Patriarch of Jerusalem’s emissaries, Michael Synkellos and his disciples Theophanes and Theodorus Graptoi.
The following two sections of the Tale present the fight of Pope Leo IV (847-855) and his successor Benedict III (855-858) against the ‘Latin heretics’ in Rome. The consensus between the four patriarchs and the Roman high priests came to an end during the rule of emperor Leo VI the Wise (886-912), when the secret admirer of the ‘Latin heresy’, Pope Formosus (891-896), openly declared that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son and sanctioned communion with unleavened bread. Thus Rome broke ‘simultaneously with the Empire and the Church’, which provided ample grounds for the Patriarch of Constantinople Sergius (1001-1019) and the other three patriarchs to excommunicate and condemn the name of the Roman pope. ‘And so, even to these days, then broke the Latins away from the Empire, and from the four patriarchies, and conquered for themselves Rome and were enemies of all Orthodox Christians.’ They deceived and turned to their foul faith many peoples from the Scythians, who inhabited the outer parts of Rome to the west, because those ‘were speechless and had no books of their own.’
The compiler of the Tale painstakingly lists and condemns the deviations of ‘the Latins’ from Orthodoxy and then goes on to relate their attempt at establishing their own empire with Rome as its centre: ‘and they completely split from the Greeks, and from the Empire, and from the Church and twice, and thrice they set an emperor from among the Latins together with the Pope, and they achieved nothing because the Latin families would not submit to his rule.’ Then the Pope called from Britain ‘the Alamanian prince’, who took an oath never to plan anything hostile against the Romans, to remain in submission and obedience before the Pope, and never to break away from the Latins and the Roman Church. And so it was decreed, ‘in Rome to set the Pope from the Latins, and in Britain - an emperor from the Alamans, and not in Constantinople.’
Further on the Tale recounts how the Byzantine emperors managed to convert to Christianity three ‘Scythian’ peoples, traditionally hostile to the ‘Greek empire’: the Bulgarians, the Russians and the Hungarians. The onset of invasions of various peoples ‘from the east, north and south’, however, weakened the ‘Greek empire’ and allowed the Latins to attract the Hungarians, still novices at Christianity, to their faith. From the north the Empire was assaulted by ‘the barbarians who call themselves Cumans’, who devastated ‘the whole of Europe’ and, having crossed the river Istros, reached Thrace and Constantinople. From the east ‘the Ismaelites, called Persians’ fought across ‘the whole of Asia and even as far as the Aegean, building a wall before Constantinople’. Then ‘the Hagarenes, who call themselves Saracenes’ broke away from the ‘Greek empire’ and conquered Syria, Palestine, Jerusalem, Nubia, Egypt and Lybia, and their ships sailed as far as Constantinople.
The Tale ends with the conclusion that the Latins, having seen the wars of the pagans against the Greeks, ‘became worse enemies of the Christian land and God’s Church, and thus established over the earth their foul faith and their evil heresies.’
Chapter I (‘Overview of research and editions of the Useful Tale about the Latins’) traces the history of textual research. It acknowledges the key importance of the first publication of the text, produced in 1875 by A. Popov. As early as 1876, V. Vasilevsky suggested that the ending of the tale alluded to the first Crusades at the end of the 11th century and dated the creation of the Greek original of the work to the same period. In 1878 A. Pavlov proposed that the Slavonic translation of the lost Greek text was made no later than the first half of the 13th century in Bulgaria, from where it had disseminated through Russia. Unfortunately, the tentative suggestions of those authors for further research into the text were not taken up and to this day the Useful Tale about the Latins remains a rather neglected and poorly studied work.
The first two sections of Chapter II, ‘Observations on the origins and early dissemination of the Useful Tale about the Latins in the manuscript tradition (until the mid-14th century)’, discuss evidence of borrowings from the Useful Tale in two works from the early 12th century, written in two rather distant from each other parts of the Slavic world: the Russian primary chronicle and the Bulgarian apocryphal chronicle.
The third section of Chapter II
bears title ‘The place and role of the Ochrid Archbishopric in the Rome – Constantinople relations (middle of the 11th – early 12th centuries)’ and
develops the idea that the Useful Tale about the Latins, along with some other polemical texts, was translated into the Slavonic in the western Bulgarians territories, ruled at that time by Byzantium but, from an ecclesiastic point of view, belonging to the diocese of the “archbishops of entire Bulgaria”, who had their seat in Ohrid. From the Balkans these works were quick to reach Kievan Rus’ and shape the core of a corpus of Slavonic anti-Catholic texts, which was supplemented and enriched over the following centuries with new works of the south-Slavic and Russian translators and scholars.
The final section of Chapter II examines evidence of borrowings from the Useful Tale about the Latins used in the compilation of the historical additions to the
Slavonic translation of Constantine Manasses’ Chronicle, made in the first half of the 14th century in the Bulgarian capital of Turnovo.
Chapter III, ‘Overview and classification of researched manuscript copies’, presents thirteen unpublished copies and one published fragment of the Useful Tale about the Latins, which form the basis of the study. The comparisons between the copies justify the following classification:
- Initial redaction which, in terms of structure, reproduces most faithfully the features of the archetypal translation; within this redaction there are two text groups (A and B), to the first of which belongs the earliest extant copy of the work made in the Bulgarian lands c. 1360–1370 (Plevlja monastery No 12);
- Interpolated redaction, evidenced in the Hilandar Monastery manuscript No 469 (c. 1530–1540);
- Abridged redaction, whose earliest copy is included in manuscript No 102 of the Serbian monastery of Decani (c. 1415–1425);
- Contaminated redaction, compiled by Vladislav the Grammarian, based on a copy of the Interpolated redaction contained in the Odessa part of his 1456 collection.
The final section of the book contains edition of all redactions of the Useful Tale about the Latins, as well as a neglected fragment published by Yordan Hadzhikonstantinov-Dzhinot, a Bulgarian teacher and antiquarian from Veles, in 1860. The appended translation of the oldest copy of the Tale into modern Bulgarian language is accompanied by a detailed historical commentary."
The comprehensive analysis of the corpus of Old-Bulgarian original, compilative and above all translated texts (1) reveals the lively interest of the scholars close to the ruler’s court in such issues as the theory of power and rule, the image of the ideal ruler and it’s biblical, Roman and Byzantine paradigms, the idea of the eschatological mission of the Roman Empire as an end link in the chain of successive world empires and (2) allows us an insight into the real essence of the complex process of transformation of the original model of the pagan Bulgarian state following the Christianization which was characterized by the selective adoption, adaptation and rejection of certain political ideas and concepts mainly in the framework of the country’s relations with Byzantium.
It should be emphasized that the Bulgarian political elite, involved in unrelenting confrontation and rivalry with the Empire, displays extraordinary sensitivity to any alteration in the tone of the diplomatic relations of Byzantium with the Bulgarians as well as to the subtle nuances of the ruling propaganda tendencies in Constantinople. Special significance for the development of the Bulgarian political thought has the ‘dynastic ideology’ promoted by Basil I, which becomes a structural pattern for Boris I – Michael and especially for his son Symeon who received excellent education in Constantinople exactly during the final years of the rule of this emperor. There are substantial grounds to claim that after his ascension to the throne Symeon I suits his personal and political behavior to the same ideas which are to be found in the imperial propaganda during the reign of Leo VI the Wise (e. g. Arethas from Caesarea praises him as an emanation of Plato’s ideal of emperor – philosopher who excels all previous rulers of the empire and gives to these under him more wisdom than a library of books).
It is in the context of this spirit of learned ‘encyclopedic’ (and at the same time strictly Orthodox) piety, permeating the court of Symeon I and embodied in the literary and translating work systematically patronized by the state, that the view of this ruler of himself, which took final shape c. 912-913, can be outlined, i.e. that he - as a new Adam (a notion implicitly contained in the dedicated to him by John Exarch Hexameron), a new Moses (as he openly calls himself in one of his letters to Patriarch Nicholas Mysticus), a new Ptolemy (according to the famous Eulogy from the Symeon’s miscellany), emperor-philosopher (who rose to power from the monastery) and a new Justinian (the oldest translation of Agapetus’ Expositio capitum admonitorium was designed to create a suitable image for the newly-proclaimed Bulgarian tsar) – is elected by God to ascend the Byzantine throne in order to revive and renew the former magnificence and might of the Christian Roman Empire.
It deserves mention that in the ages to follow the Russian ideologists, including the authors of the concept Moscow – Third Rome, look on Byzanium and its ideological legacy primarily through the eyes of the Old-Bulgarian writers and translators. So, it can be claimed that the foundations of the ideological model of the Muscovite tsardom are laid in Bulgaria, which establishes itself as the first empire in the Slavic world and bequeaths to the future generations of Slavic scholars its model of selective ‘reading’ and ‘translation’ of the Byzantine tradition. In this respect, the political relations and cultural communication between Byzantium and Bulgaria in 9-10 c. have a really far-reaching significance, i.e. due to them that some lasting features of the Orthodox Slavic world evolve which in turn influence the development of European history up until the present day.
Books edited by Angel Nikolov
Papers by Angel Nikolov
The article is devoted to the history of a long disappeared monastery in the vicinity of the town of Pleven - the monastery of St. Nicholas near the village of Bohot. For the first time, the monastic brotherhood's petition to the Russian Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich dated 26 October 1642 is published in full translation into Bulgarian. It is assumed that the monastery was founded in the Middle Ages and continued to function (with some interruptions) until at least the middle - second half of the 17th century. In this context the unclear question of the importance of Pleven during the period of the Second Bulgarian Empire is also considered.
The article studies the fate and the content of a parchment manuscript, containing an Office Menaion, two parts of which have found their way to the Church Historical and Archival Institute of the Bulgarian Patriarchate in Sofia (CHAI) and the Historical Museum of Teteven (IM–Teteven), respectively. The manuscript was written at the end of the 13th or the beginning of the 14th century. The place of its creation can be located with relative accuracy thanks to two marginal notes in memory of the oikonomos of the Krushevo metochion of the Athonite Hilandar monastery, in the Western part of the Metohija region (today in the Republic of Kosovo). By 1858, the two fragments were still part of a single codex and were owned by a Bulgarian from Craiova, Hristo Hadzhi Danailov, who later donated a portion of the manuscript on behalf of himself and of his brother Dimitar to the Bulgarian community centre in Craiova (founded in 1871). It was this part of the manuscript that ended up in the museum collection of Teteven in 1922.
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By 1935, the rest of the manuscript was owned by Stefan Tsvetkov from the town of Svishtov, the son of Angel Tsvetkov, a wealthy local merchant and a member of the first church board of the Holy Trinity Cathedral (consecrated 1867). This larger part of the manuscript was sold in 1937 by Mikhail Stamboliyev, a teacher from the town of Russe to the Church Museum in Sofia and belongs today to the CHAI collection (Ms no. 501).
The paper explores codicological, palaeographic and orthographic features of the Teteven fragment. The numbering of the quires and the similarity with the Serbian Menaion Hlud. 156 from the State Historical Museum in Moscow (GIM) allow the assumption that the two parts belonged to a voluminous codex containing the services for the complete summer period of the church year. The study of the calendar and the composition of the services indicates the presence of at least two textual layers in the Teteven fragment. One of these layers, common to the Menaia of the Studite liturgical practice, presents already translated texts, inherited from the earlier tradition. The other layer stands closer to Slavonic codices following the Theotokos Evergetis Typikon. It is characterised by distinctive hymns also typical only of Mss Dečani 32 and Ms 113 from SS. Cyril and Methodius National Library (NBKM). Most likely, these particular poetic texts penetrated into the South Slavic milieu through certain Serbian centres in the thirteenth century. The type of the Menaion, the copyist’s notes, and the kinship with Hlud. 156 (written for the Cathedral church of Theotokos of Ljeviš in Prizren) allow us to conclude that the two fragments belong to a codex, which was probably commissioned for one of the great monasteries in Metohija founded by King Stefan II Milutin or by his ancestors.
This article is devoted to a Bulgarian manuscript collection written in the town of Vidin by several hands around the second-third quarter of the eighteenth century; not later than the first quarter of the nineteenth century it was brought to Teteven, where it has been kept ever since. The collection of texts examined here is a typical example of the later miscellanies of mixed content, which are distinguished by the presence of numerous apocryphal and non-canonical works. Moreover, the inclusion of a number of apotropaic texts in the miscellany allows us to assume that its transcribers-most likely members of a relatively wealthy Vidin family of merchants and priests-had access to older amulet collections, which in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were frequently used in teaching children to read and write. The miscellany is also remarkable in that it reflects the personal tastes and pragmatic needs of its owners, who were not only obsessed with keeping evil forces at bay but also took pains to equip themselves with accurate calendar information on church festivals and fasts throughout the year, a Latin abecedary, and even a short Bulgarian-Hungarian dictionary whose presence in the manuscript hints at distant (most likely commercial) travels.
Collection of the Church Historical and Archival Institute at the Bulgarian
Patriarchate
The present article is devoted to some late transcripts of non-canonical
healing prayers against nezhit (a demon that causes headaches, toothache and rheumatic pains) and fevers (seven, twelve or more demon-sisters that cause fever), which are included in manuscript No. 438 from the collection of the Church Historical and Archival Institute of the Bulgarian Patriarchate (Sofia). The problem of who and why bothered with transcribing the prayers against nezhit in 1865 (this is the latest dated transcription of these texts), when such archaic apocrypha must have seemed like some absurd atavism, is discussed. An analysis of the manuscript (which is a convolute consisting of three once separate parts transcribed between the second half of the eighteenth century and 1865) shows that during this period the priests in the future Bulgarian capital of Sofia diligently copied, preserved, and apparently used the prayers against nezhit and fevers, and the local population (especially in the nearby villages) apparently shared the view that the cure of disease means rather fighting evil spirits (exorcism) than tackling objective physical problems through the means of medicine. These ancient superstitions, fuelled also by some non-canonical Russian prayers that spread among the Bulgarians, contradicted the growing aspiration of the more educated circles of Bulgarian society to build a modern and mass-accessible educational system based on the achievements of European science. Several of the texts under discussion (a cycle of five prayers against nezhit and three Russian healing prayers, including the famous prayer to Archangel Michael the Terrible Warmaster, whose authorship was incorrectly attributed by D.S. Likhachev to Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible) are published in the appendices.
Todor Genkov (1854-1922) belongs to the old Zaharievi family, from which originated many famous Tryavna painters. He was one of the most productive representatives of the late Tryavna Art School. His icons can be found in many regions of the country – Lovech, Veliko Tarnovo, Gabrovo, Targovishte, Stara Zagora and Burgas. The article presents hitherto unknown icons from the Church of the Assumption in the village of Golyamo Bukovo (Sredets municipality), as well as from the church of St. Demetrius in the village of Ablanitsa (Lovech municipality), where the painter worked in 1899-1900 and was forced by the Lovech Diocesan Council to correct some of his works.
The purpose of this article is to analyse some archaeological evidence of Bulgaria’s contacts with the Latin Empire and the Roman Church in the first half of the thirteenth century, some of which only came to light in recent years. Although relatively scarce and heterogeneous, these materials deserve further attention and should be subject to more in-depth interpretations: the lead seals of Latin emperors from Bulgaria (especially those of Baldwin II, found in the fortress of Pleven and in the vicinity of Popovo), a fragment of an early thirteenth-century Romanesque bronze crucifix with gilding from a processional cross found in Preslav, a bronze gilded figurine of a saint with enamel decoration, made in Limoges, discovered in 2018 in Veliko Tarnovo, as well as a lead pilgrim badge from the Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, discovered in 2017 in a mid-thirteenth-century tomb in the medieval town of Hotalich, near Sevlievo.
През първата половина на 13 в. България установила необичайно ин-тензивни политически и църковни контакти със Запада, което има своето логично обяс-нение в драматичните промени на Балканите във връзка с превземането на Константи-нопол от войските на IV кръстоносен поход на 13 април 1204 г. и издигането на Латин-ската империя като водещ политически фактор в политически фрагментираното визан-тийско пространство. Загрижен от обърканата и непредсказуема ситуация във Визан-тия, както и от териториалните претенции на Унгария, българският цар Калоян (1196–1207) разменил няколко писма с папа Инокентий III (1198–1216) и в края на краищата под-чинил Българската църква на Римския престол, а в замяна на 8 ноември 1204 г. в Тър-ново папският легат Лъв Бранкалеонe го миропомазал и сложил на главата му кралска корона. На 14 април 1205 г. Калоян разгромил латинските войски край Адрианопол и пленил император Балдуин I (1204–1205), който приключил живота си в Търново. Оттук нататък България и Латинската империя неведнъж щели да се сблъскат на бойното поле, а понякога щели да бъдат и съюзници, което до голяма степен зависело от техните отношения с останалите фактори в региона – Епир, Сърбия, Унгария, Никея.
Целта на настоящата статия е да маркира някои археологически свидетелства за контактите на България с Латинската империя и Римската църква през първата поло-вина на 13 в., част от които станаха известни през последните години. Макар и оскъдни и разнородни, тези материали заслужават внимание и би трябвало да станат обект на по-задълбочени интерпретации: оловните печати на латинските императори от Бълга-рия (и по-специално тези на Балдуин II, открити в Плевенската крепост и в околностите на Попово), фрагмент от едно романско бронзово позлатено разпятие от процесиен кръст от Преслав, позлатена бронзова фигурка на светец с украса от емайл, произведена в Лимож, открита през 2018 г. във Велико Търново, а също и една оловна поклонническа значка от базиликата Св. Петър в Рим, открита през 2017 г. в гроб от средата на 13 в. в средновековния град Хоталич край Севлиево.
В статье разъясняется история движимого культурного наследия двух монастырских учреждений, основанных российскими гражданами в Болгарии в память о мужестве и героизме русских солдат и офицеров, погибших во время русско-турецкой войны 1877-1878 гг: Вознесенский монастырь с храмом Святого Александра Невского, построенный в 1879-1882 годах по приказу знаменитого "белого генерала" Михаила Скобелева на Бакаджикских горах близ Ямбола; и Рождественский монастырь на Шипке, построенный (и освященный в 1902 году) по инициативе матери генерала, Ольги Скобелевой, исполнительным комитетом во главе с русским дипломатом и государственным деятелем графом Николаем Игнатьевым.
The article clarifies the history of several pieces of mobile heritage of two monastic institutions founded by Russian citizens in Bulgaria to commemorate the bravery and heroism of Russian soldiers and officers killed during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878: Ascension Monastery, with its St. Alexander Nevsky church, built between 1879-1882 on the orders of the famous 'white general' Mikhail Skobelev on the Bakadzhik hills near Yambol; and Nativity Monastery in Shipka, built (and consecrated in 1902) on the initiative of the general's mother, Olga Skobeleva, by a steering committee headed by the Russian diplomat and statesman Count Nikolai Ignatiev.
SKETCHES FROM THE ANTI-CATHOLIC LITERATURE
IN BULGARIA AND THE SLAVIC ORTHODOX WORLD
(11th–17th C.). SOFIA, 2016, 353 PP.
P. A. Syrku in Bulgaria (1878-1879)
Summary
The book is devoted to the hitherto little known journeys of P. A. Syrku (1852-1905), the then-future eminent Slavist and researcher of Old-Bulgarian literature, across of newly liberated Bulgaria, undertaken between September 1878 and September 1879. Its aim is to present to the reader all the available documents of relevance and interest, including seventeen unpublished and so far unstudied personal letters of the scholar to his Russian colleagues A. N. Pypin, T. D. Florinsky, V. I. Lamansky, A. A. Kunik and F. I. Uspensky, kept at the Saint Petersburg branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Archive and the Manuscript Department of the Russian National Library in Saint Petersburg.
The material gathered and discussed in this book sheds light on various aspects of P. A. Syrku’s activity in Bulgaria during the period of temporary Russian occupation: the connection between the young scholar’s journey and the project for a “Bulgarian expedition” under the aegis of the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences and the Imperial Societies of Archaeology and Geography, proposed to the Russian authorities by A. N. Pypin, Professor at Saint Petersburg University as early as November 1876; P. A. Syrku’s meetings and communication with Bulgarian academics and prominent public figures such as Marin Drinov, Dragan Tsankov, Metropolitan Meletius of Sofia, Metropolitan Nathanael of Ohrid, Neofit Rilski, publisher Dragan Manchov, etc.; the compilation and contents of the collection of medieval Slavonic and Greek manuscripts, gathered by the Russian scholar during his visits across Bulgaria (part of this collection is currently housed at the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg); the survey conducted by P. A. Syrku in 1879 around Chepino (in the northwestern Rhodope Mountains) on the authenticity of Veda Slovena, the book of bogus epic poems published by S. Verkovic, and the accompanying archaeological excavations of the medieval fortress of Tsepina (near the present-day village of Dorkovo).
Also published in this volume are all the surviving letters from the period after 1879, part of P. A. Syrku’s correspondence with Bulgarian scholars and intellectuals (M. Drinov, K. Shapkarev, H. Popkonstantinov, A. Shopov, S. S. Bobchev), which are held in the Bulgarian Historical Archive of Sts Cyril and Methodius National Library and the Scientific Archive of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia.
The documents and other material presented here have been transcribed, translated and appear in the book accompanied by a scholarly commentary. The volume includes also a bibliography and indices of the referenced manuscripts, archival documents, personal and place names as well as a section entitled Notes on Polichroniy Syrku’s Manuscript Collection, by A. Miltenova (Sofia) and A. Sergeev (Saint Petersburg).
The book is bilingual; the documents and all the rest of the material are published in both Bulgarian and Russian so that they could be made accessible to the widest possible circle of researchers, academics and students.
As explained in the Foreword, at the core of the Slavonic text under examination lies one of the anonymous works targeting the rites and customs of “the Latins” or western Christians, which spread in the Byzantine world after the Great Schism of 1054. Although this lost Greek original was
very similar to the three 'Opuscula de origine schismatis' published by J. Hergenröther in 1869, it contained considerably more historical detail.
The author of the Useful Tale about the Latins covers a wide range of events, topics and issues, often sacrificing historical fact to serve his overriding purpose, that of describing in the least favourable terms the Latins’ break with the orthodox faith, which had as its logical outcome the ecclesiastical split between Constantinople and Rome and, on a more general level, also the profound political estrangement and animosity between the Byzantine Empire and the world of the western Christians.
The beginning of the text emphasises the concerted action of Pope Hadrian I (772-795) and the four ecumenical patriarchs at the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787), summoned by Emperor Constantine VI (780-797) and Empress Eirene, which reinstated icon veneration. However, after the ascent in Constantinople of a new series of iconoclast rulers, Pope Leo III (795-816) put up as emperor the ‘Latin Prince Carul’ (i.e. Chalemagne), whose dream was to rule over ‘all Latin families and over all Greeks’ and to conquer Constantinople, while the ‘Latin’ monks, priests and teachers who arrived in Rome together with him turned out to be undercover heretics, who taught the laity to use unleavened bread in Holy Communion and preached that the Holy Spirit proceeded not only from the Father but from the Son too.
Further down are recounted the sufferings and humiliation to which the iconoclast emperor Theophilus (829-842) subjected in Constantinople the Patriarch of Jerusalem’s emissaries, Michael Synkellos and his disciples Theophanes and Theodorus Graptoi.
The following two sections of the Tale present the fight of Pope Leo IV (847-855) and his successor Benedict III (855-858) against the ‘Latin heretics’ in Rome. The consensus between the four patriarchs and the Roman high priests came to an end during the rule of emperor Leo VI the Wise (886-912), when the secret admirer of the ‘Latin heresy’, Pope Formosus (891-896), openly declared that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son and sanctioned communion with unleavened bread. Thus Rome broke ‘simultaneously with the Empire and the Church’, which provided ample grounds for the Patriarch of Constantinople Sergius (1001-1019) and the other three patriarchs to excommunicate and condemn the name of the Roman pope. ‘And so, even to these days, then broke the Latins away from the Empire, and from the four patriarchies, and conquered for themselves Rome and were enemies of all Orthodox Christians.’ They deceived and turned to their foul faith many peoples from the Scythians, who inhabited the outer parts of Rome to the west, because those ‘were speechless and had no books of their own.’
The compiler of the Tale painstakingly lists and condemns the deviations of ‘the Latins’ from Orthodoxy and then goes on to relate their attempt at establishing their own empire with Rome as its centre: ‘and they completely split from the Greeks, and from the Empire, and from the Church and twice, and thrice they set an emperor from among the Latins together with the Pope, and they achieved nothing because the Latin families would not submit to his rule.’ Then the Pope called from Britain ‘the Alamanian prince’, who took an oath never to plan anything hostile against the Romans, to remain in submission and obedience before the Pope, and never to break away from the Latins and the Roman Church. And so it was decreed, ‘in Rome to set the Pope from the Latins, and in Britain - an emperor from the Alamans, and not in Constantinople.’
Further on the Tale recounts how the Byzantine emperors managed to convert to Christianity three ‘Scythian’ peoples, traditionally hostile to the ‘Greek empire’: the Bulgarians, the Russians and the Hungarians. The onset of invasions of various peoples ‘from the east, north and south’, however, weakened the ‘Greek empire’ and allowed the Latins to attract the Hungarians, still novices at Christianity, to their faith. From the north the Empire was assaulted by ‘the barbarians who call themselves Cumans’, who devastated ‘the whole of Europe’ and, having crossed the river Istros, reached Thrace and Constantinople. From the east ‘the Ismaelites, called Persians’ fought across ‘the whole of Asia and even as far as the Aegean, building a wall before Constantinople’. Then ‘the Hagarenes, who call themselves Saracenes’ broke away from the ‘Greek empire’ and conquered Syria, Palestine, Jerusalem, Nubia, Egypt and Lybia, and their ships sailed as far as Constantinople.
The Tale ends with the conclusion that the Latins, having seen the wars of the pagans against the Greeks, ‘became worse enemies of the Christian land and God’s Church, and thus established over the earth their foul faith and their evil heresies.’
Chapter I (‘Overview of research and editions of the Useful Tale about the Latins’) traces the history of textual research. It acknowledges the key importance of the first publication of the text, produced in 1875 by A. Popov. As early as 1876, V. Vasilevsky suggested that the ending of the tale alluded to the first Crusades at the end of the 11th century and dated the creation of the Greek original of the work to the same period. In 1878 A. Pavlov proposed that the Slavonic translation of the lost Greek text was made no later than the first half of the 13th century in Bulgaria, from where it had disseminated through Russia. Unfortunately, the tentative suggestions of those authors for further research into the text were not taken up and to this day the Useful Tale about the Latins remains a rather neglected and poorly studied work.
The first two sections of Chapter II, ‘Observations on the origins and early dissemination of the Useful Tale about the Latins in the manuscript tradition (until the mid-14th century)’, discuss evidence of borrowings from the Useful Tale in two works from the early 12th century, written in two rather distant from each other parts of the Slavic world: the Russian primary chronicle and the Bulgarian apocryphal chronicle.
The third section of Chapter II
bears title ‘The place and role of the Ochrid Archbishopric in the Rome – Constantinople relations (middle of the 11th – early 12th centuries)’ and
develops the idea that the Useful Tale about the Latins, along with some other polemical texts, was translated into the Slavonic in the western Bulgarians territories, ruled at that time by Byzantium but, from an ecclesiastic point of view, belonging to the diocese of the “archbishops of entire Bulgaria”, who had their seat in Ohrid. From the Balkans these works were quick to reach Kievan Rus’ and shape the core of a corpus of Slavonic anti-Catholic texts, which was supplemented and enriched over the following centuries with new works of the south-Slavic and Russian translators and scholars.
The final section of Chapter II examines evidence of borrowings from the Useful Tale about the Latins used in the compilation of the historical additions to the
Slavonic translation of Constantine Manasses’ Chronicle, made in the first half of the 14th century in the Bulgarian capital of Turnovo.
Chapter III, ‘Overview and classification of researched manuscript copies’, presents thirteen unpublished copies and one published fragment of the Useful Tale about the Latins, which form the basis of the study. The comparisons between the copies justify the following classification:
- Initial redaction which, in terms of structure, reproduces most faithfully the features of the archetypal translation; within this redaction there are two text groups (A and B), to the first of which belongs the earliest extant copy of the work made in the Bulgarian lands c. 1360–1370 (Plevlja monastery No 12);
- Interpolated redaction, evidenced in the Hilandar Monastery manuscript No 469 (c. 1530–1540);
- Abridged redaction, whose earliest copy is included in manuscript No 102 of the Serbian monastery of Decani (c. 1415–1425);
- Contaminated redaction, compiled by Vladislav the Grammarian, based on a copy of the Interpolated redaction contained in the Odessa part of his 1456 collection.
The final section of the book contains edition of all redactions of the Useful Tale about the Latins, as well as a neglected fragment published by Yordan Hadzhikonstantinov-Dzhinot, a Bulgarian teacher and antiquarian from Veles, in 1860. The appended translation of the oldest copy of the Tale into modern Bulgarian language is accompanied by a detailed historical commentary."
The comprehensive analysis of the corpus of Old-Bulgarian original, compilative and above all translated texts (1) reveals the lively interest of the scholars close to the ruler’s court in such issues as the theory of power and rule, the image of the ideal ruler and it’s biblical, Roman and Byzantine paradigms, the idea of the eschatological mission of the Roman Empire as an end link in the chain of successive world empires and (2) allows us an insight into the real essence of the complex process of transformation of the original model of the pagan Bulgarian state following the Christianization which was characterized by the selective adoption, adaptation and rejection of certain political ideas and concepts mainly in the framework of the country’s relations with Byzantium.
It should be emphasized that the Bulgarian political elite, involved in unrelenting confrontation and rivalry with the Empire, displays extraordinary sensitivity to any alteration in the tone of the diplomatic relations of Byzantium with the Bulgarians as well as to the subtle nuances of the ruling propaganda tendencies in Constantinople. Special significance for the development of the Bulgarian political thought has the ‘dynastic ideology’ promoted by Basil I, which becomes a structural pattern for Boris I – Michael and especially for his son Symeon who received excellent education in Constantinople exactly during the final years of the rule of this emperor. There are substantial grounds to claim that after his ascension to the throne Symeon I suits his personal and political behavior to the same ideas which are to be found in the imperial propaganda during the reign of Leo VI the Wise (e. g. Arethas from Caesarea praises him as an emanation of Plato’s ideal of emperor – philosopher who excels all previous rulers of the empire and gives to these under him more wisdom than a library of books).
It is in the context of this spirit of learned ‘encyclopedic’ (and at the same time strictly Orthodox) piety, permeating the court of Symeon I and embodied in the literary and translating work systematically patronized by the state, that the view of this ruler of himself, which took final shape c. 912-913, can be outlined, i.e. that he - as a new Adam (a notion implicitly contained in the dedicated to him by John Exarch Hexameron), a new Moses (as he openly calls himself in one of his letters to Patriarch Nicholas Mysticus), a new Ptolemy (according to the famous Eulogy from the Symeon’s miscellany), emperor-philosopher (who rose to power from the monastery) and a new Justinian (the oldest translation of Agapetus’ Expositio capitum admonitorium was designed to create a suitable image for the newly-proclaimed Bulgarian tsar) – is elected by God to ascend the Byzantine throne in order to revive and renew the former magnificence and might of the Christian Roman Empire.
It deserves mention that in the ages to follow the Russian ideologists, including the authors of the concept Moscow – Third Rome, look on Byzanium and its ideological legacy primarily through the eyes of the Old-Bulgarian writers and translators. So, it can be claimed that the foundations of the ideological model of the Muscovite tsardom are laid in Bulgaria, which establishes itself as the first empire in the Slavic world and bequeaths to the future generations of Slavic scholars its model of selective ‘reading’ and ‘translation’ of the Byzantine tradition. In this respect, the political relations and cultural communication between Byzantium and Bulgaria in 9-10 c. have a really far-reaching significance, i.e. due to them that some lasting features of the Orthodox Slavic world evolve which in turn influence the development of European history up until the present day.
The article is devoted to the history of a long disappeared monastery in the vicinity of the town of Pleven - the monastery of St. Nicholas near the village of Bohot. For the first time, the monastic brotherhood's petition to the Russian Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich dated 26 October 1642 is published in full translation into Bulgarian. It is assumed that the monastery was founded in the Middle Ages and continued to function (with some interruptions) until at least the middle - second half of the 17th century. In this context the unclear question of the importance of Pleven during the period of the Second Bulgarian Empire is also considered.
The article studies the fate and the content of a parchment manuscript, containing an Office Menaion, two parts of which have found their way to the Church Historical and Archival Institute of the Bulgarian Patriarchate in Sofia (CHAI) and the Historical Museum of Teteven (IM–Teteven), respectively. The manuscript was written at the end of the 13th or the beginning of the 14th century. The place of its creation can be located with relative accuracy thanks to two marginal notes in memory of the oikonomos of the Krushevo metochion of the Athonite Hilandar monastery, in the Western part of the Metohija region (today in the Republic of Kosovo). By 1858, the two fragments were still part of a single codex and were owned by a Bulgarian from Craiova, Hristo Hadzhi Danailov, who later donated a portion of the manuscript on behalf of himself and of his brother Dimitar to the Bulgarian community centre in Craiova (founded in 1871). It was this part of the manuscript that ended up in the museum collection of Teteven in 1922.
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By 1935, the rest of the manuscript was owned by Stefan Tsvetkov from the town of Svishtov, the son of Angel Tsvetkov, a wealthy local merchant and a member of the first church board of the Holy Trinity Cathedral (consecrated 1867). This larger part of the manuscript was sold in 1937 by Mikhail Stamboliyev, a teacher from the town of Russe to the Church Museum in Sofia and belongs today to the CHAI collection (Ms no. 501).
The paper explores codicological, palaeographic and orthographic features of the Teteven fragment. The numbering of the quires and the similarity with the Serbian Menaion Hlud. 156 from the State Historical Museum in Moscow (GIM) allow the assumption that the two parts belonged to a voluminous codex containing the services for the complete summer period of the church year. The study of the calendar and the composition of the services indicates the presence of at least two textual layers in the Teteven fragment. One of these layers, common to the Menaia of the Studite liturgical practice, presents already translated texts, inherited from the earlier tradition. The other layer stands closer to Slavonic codices following the Theotokos Evergetis Typikon. It is characterised by distinctive hymns also typical only of Mss Dečani 32 and Ms 113 from SS. Cyril and Methodius National Library (NBKM). Most likely, these particular poetic texts penetrated into the South Slavic milieu through certain Serbian centres in the thirteenth century. The type of the Menaion, the copyist’s notes, and the kinship with Hlud. 156 (written for the Cathedral church of Theotokos of Ljeviš in Prizren) allow us to conclude that the two fragments belong to a codex, which was probably commissioned for one of the great monasteries in Metohija founded by King Stefan II Milutin or by his ancestors.
This article is devoted to a Bulgarian manuscript collection written in the town of Vidin by several hands around the second-third quarter of the eighteenth century; not later than the first quarter of the nineteenth century it was brought to Teteven, where it has been kept ever since. The collection of texts examined here is a typical example of the later miscellanies of mixed content, which are distinguished by the presence of numerous apocryphal and non-canonical works. Moreover, the inclusion of a number of apotropaic texts in the miscellany allows us to assume that its transcribers-most likely members of a relatively wealthy Vidin family of merchants and priests-had access to older amulet collections, which in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were frequently used in teaching children to read and write. The miscellany is also remarkable in that it reflects the personal tastes and pragmatic needs of its owners, who were not only obsessed with keeping evil forces at bay but also took pains to equip themselves with accurate calendar information on church festivals and fasts throughout the year, a Latin abecedary, and even a short Bulgarian-Hungarian dictionary whose presence in the manuscript hints at distant (most likely commercial) travels.
Collection of the Church Historical and Archival Institute at the Bulgarian
Patriarchate
The present article is devoted to some late transcripts of non-canonical
healing prayers against nezhit (a demon that causes headaches, toothache and rheumatic pains) and fevers (seven, twelve or more demon-sisters that cause fever), which are included in manuscript No. 438 from the collection of the Church Historical and Archival Institute of the Bulgarian Patriarchate (Sofia). The problem of who and why bothered with transcribing the prayers against nezhit in 1865 (this is the latest dated transcription of these texts), when such archaic apocrypha must have seemed like some absurd atavism, is discussed. An analysis of the manuscript (which is a convolute consisting of three once separate parts transcribed between the second half of the eighteenth century and 1865) shows that during this period the priests in the future Bulgarian capital of Sofia diligently copied, preserved, and apparently used the prayers against nezhit and fevers, and the local population (especially in the nearby villages) apparently shared the view that the cure of disease means rather fighting evil spirits (exorcism) than tackling objective physical problems through the means of medicine. These ancient superstitions, fuelled also by some non-canonical Russian prayers that spread among the Bulgarians, contradicted the growing aspiration of the more educated circles of Bulgarian society to build a modern and mass-accessible educational system based on the achievements of European science. Several of the texts under discussion (a cycle of five prayers against nezhit and three Russian healing prayers, including the famous prayer to Archangel Michael the Terrible Warmaster, whose authorship was incorrectly attributed by D.S. Likhachev to Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible) are published in the appendices.
Todor Genkov (1854-1922) belongs to the old Zaharievi family, from which originated many famous Tryavna painters. He was one of the most productive representatives of the late Tryavna Art School. His icons can be found in many regions of the country – Lovech, Veliko Tarnovo, Gabrovo, Targovishte, Stara Zagora and Burgas. The article presents hitherto unknown icons from the Church of the Assumption in the village of Golyamo Bukovo (Sredets municipality), as well as from the church of St. Demetrius in the village of Ablanitsa (Lovech municipality), where the painter worked in 1899-1900 and was forced by the Lovech Diocesan Council to correct some of his works.
The purpose of this article is to analyse some archaeological evidence of Bulgaria’s contacts with the Latin Empire and the Roman Church in the first half of the thirteenth century, some of which only came to light in recent years. Although relatively scarce and heterogeneous, these materials deserve further attention and should be subject to more in-depth interpretations: the lead seals of Latin emperors from Bulgaria (especially those of Baldwin II, found in the fortress of Pleven and in the vicinity of Popovo), a fragment of an early thirteenth-century Romanesque bronze crucifix with gilding from a processional cross found in Preslav, a bronze gilded figurine of a saint with enamel decoration, made in Limoges, discovered in 2018 in Veliko Tarnovo, as well as a lead pilgrim badge from the Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, discovered in 2017 in a mid-thirteenth-century tomb in the medieval town of Hotalich, near Sevlievo.
През първата половина на 13 в. България установила необичайно ин-тензивни политически и църковни контакти със Запада, което има своето логично обяс-нение в драматичните промени на Балканите във връзка с превземането на Константи-нопол от войските на IV кръстоносен поход на 13 април 1204 г. и издигането на Латин-ската империя като водещ политически фактор в политически фрагментираното визан-тийско пространство. Загрижен от обърканата и непредсказуема ситуация във Визан-тия, както и от териториалните претенции на Унгария, българският цар Калоян (1196–1207) разменил няколко писма с папа Инокентий III (1198–1216) и в края на краищата под-чинил Българската църква на Римския престол, а в замяна на 8 ноември 1204 г. в Тър-ново папският легат Лъв Бранкалеонe го миропомазал и сложил на главата му кралска корона. На 14 април 1205 г. Калоян разгромил латинските войски край Адрианопол и пленил император Балдуин I (1204–1205), който приключил живота си в Търново. Оттук нататък България и Латинската империя неведнъж щели да се сблъскат на бойното поле, а понякога щели да бъдат и съюзници, което до голяма степен зависело от техните отношения с останалите фактори в региона – Епир, Сърбия, Унгария, Никея.
Целта на настоящата статия е да маркира някои археологически свидетелства за контактите на България с Латинската империя и Римската църква през първата поло-вина на 13 в., част от които станаха известни през последните години. Макар и оскъдни и разнородни, тези материали заслужават внимание и би трябвало да станат обект на по-задълбочени интерпретации: оловните печати на латинските императори от Бълга-рия (и по-специално тези на Балдуин II, открити в Плевенската крепост и в околностите на Попово), фрагмент от едно романско бронзово позлатено разпятие от процесиен кръст от Преслав, позлатена бронзова фигурка на светец с украса от емайл, произведена в Лимож, открита през 2018 г. във Велико Търново, а също и една оловна поклонническа значка от базиликата Св. Петър в Рим, открита през 2017 г. в гроб от средата на 13 в. в средновековния град Хоталич край Севлиево.
В статье разъясняется история движимого культурного наследия двух монастырских учреждений, основанных российскими гражданами в Болгарии в память о мужестве и героизме русских солдат и офицеров, погибших во время русско-турецкой войны 1877-1878 гг: Вознесенский монастырь с храмом Святого Александра Невского, построенный в 1879-1882 годах по приказу знаменитого "белого генерала" Михаила Скобелева на Бакаджикских горах близ Ямбола; и Рождественский монастырь на Шипке, построенный (и освященный в 1902 году) по инициативе матери генерала, Ольги Скобелевой, исполнительным комитетом во главе с русским дипломатом и государственным деятелем графом Николаем Игнатьевым.
The article clarifies the history of several pieces of mobile heritage of two monastic institutions founded by Russian citizens in Bulgaria to commemorate the bravery and heroism of Russian soldiers and officers killed during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878: Ascension Monastery, with its St. Alexander Nevsky church, built between 1879-1882 on the orders of the famous 'white general' Mikhail Skobelev on the Bakadzhik hills near Yambol; and Nativity Monastery in Shipka, built (and consecrated in 1902) on the initiative of the general's mother, Olga Skobeleva, by a steering committee headed by the Russian diplomat and statesman Count Nikolai Ignatiev.
During the time of the Bulgarians’struggle for ecclesiastical emancipation from the Constantinople patriarchy in the 1850s – 1870s, the cult of theSlavic enlighteners St Cyril and St Methodius spread widely across the northern slopes of the Strandzha Mountains,whose population was predominantly Bulgarian. This could explain why even prior to the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War, icons of the two saints began to appear in the vicinity of the towns of Sredets and Malko Tarnovo.These were painted by Socrates Georgiou, a Greek icon painter from Sozopol who skillfully exploited the patrioticsentiments of the local Bulgarian church communities. A similar approach was adopted by the less gifted Greek iconpainter Stavros from Lozengrad, who was particularly active in the area around Malko Tarnovo, which remainedunder Turkish control between 1878 and 1912. During the early decades after the 1878, on the northern side of theBulgarian – Turkish border, in the region of Sredets and the adjacent villages belonging to the municipalities ofSozopol and Primorsko, there were several icon painters from Tryavna (Dimitar Minev, his son Hristo Dimitrov,and others) who were working tirelessly in the local churches, painting icons of the Slavic enlighteners in the besttraditions of the Tryavna Art School. In some of the Strandzha churches a clear manifestation of the veneration of StCyril and St Methodius was the placement of their icon on the bishop’s throne, an curious novel practice, alsoevident in a number of other places across Bulgaria, the reason for which was the conviction shared by thecontemporaries that the contribution of the Thessaloniki brothers provided a solid spiritual and cultural basis for theautocephaly of the Bulgarian Church, which was restored on May 11th, 1872.
Summary
The paper examines the restoration of the church network in the Strandzha Mountains region around the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, tracing the interaction between builders and icon painters from the vicinity of Gabrovo and Tryavna within the context of this process. The study is based on fieldwork and archival research under the project entitled Comprehensive and Innovative Methods for Identification and Study of the Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage of Central and Eastern Strandzha against the Backdrop of Migration and Demographic Decline, funded by the National Science Fund of Bulgaria. Here, published for the first time, are the inscriptions on the altar tables of the churches in that area. The historical records available testify to a large-scale, targeted policy aimed at reviving and fostering local church/religious life in the decades following the Russo-Turkish Liberation War of 1877-1878 in the territory of the Municipality of Sredets (as opposed to the Municipality of Malko Turnovo, which remained within the borders of the Ottoman Empire up until 1912). Under the authority and supervision of Seraphim, Metropolitan of Sliven, and his Vicar Bishop and successor Gervasius of Leuke, the local church municipalities attracted builder teams from the vicinity of Gabrovo, which over time renovated the war-damaged temples in the town of Sredets and the village of Svetlina and built new churches in the villages of Gorno and Dolno Yabalkovo, Bistrets, Momina Tsarkva and, most probably also the churches in the villages of Fakia, Valchanovo and Varovnik. Active participants in this process were Dimitar Minev and Georgi Dimitrov, master icon painters from the town of Tryavna who painted icons for most of the abovementioned churches.
Join us in Veliko Tarnovo, this summer, between 18–22 July 2022 for the Pilot Edition of the HISTORY OF SCIENCE IN THE MEDIEVAL WORLD SUMMER SCHOOL
Deadline for submitting an application: 29 April 2022.
There is no registration fee.
Full schedule: https://www.uni-vt.bg/res/14892/SSHistMedSci_Final_Program.pdf
Please address your informal inquiries and your application materials to Dr Divna Manolova at dvmanolova@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de.
Summer School Philosophy and Vision
The School studies the wider medieval world of Afro-Eurasia and aims to shed light on Byzantium and the Slavonic world, and their intellectual heritage as agents in the development of medieval science, which, though significant, nevertheless remain largely unknown to the scholarly community. Even though current scholarship is focused on the so-called ‘Global Medieval’, the medieval Slavonic, Byzantine and Black Sea regions remain a blind spot for both the researchers and the general public outside of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Thus, the School aims at positioning Byzantium and the Slavonic world on the map of history of medieval science, thus offering the participants the rare opportunity to get acquainted with their respective heritage.
In its pilot edition, the Summer School will problematize the medieval manuscript and approach it as a space and as a territory. Building upon this conceptual premise, the School will also introduce students to the medieval epistemic fields (sciences) which study the natural world (the kosmos) as a space, namely geography, cosmography and astronomy. Students will acquire fundamental knowledge concerning the place and role of the sciences in the intellectual world of the Middle Ages. They will also develop an understanding of premodern science as a spectrum of disciplines wider than the late antique framework of the four mathematical sciences (arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy) and inclusive of all epistemic domains dedicated to the intellectual exploration of the natural world (the kosmos) and of humanity. The School relies on a discussion-based and experiential / experimental format. That is, the School includes workshops, which will guide the students into the use of medieval instruments and maps as preserved in the surviving manuscripts.
The common discussion language of the School will be English.
If the participants know a medieval scholarly language (for this pilot edition: Latin, Greek and/or Old Church Slavonic, but in the future also Persian, Arabic, Chinese, Classical Armenian, and so forth), this would be an advantage, but it is not an essential requirement for participation.
During the selection process, preference will be given to MA and PhD students, but researchers with interest in the Middle Ages and / or History of Science can also apply.
Available places: The School offers twelve places for in-person participants wishing to attend both the morning (lectures) and afternoon (workshops) sessions.
There is no limit for the number of online participants, but their registration is restricted solely to the morning sessions.
We cannot offer any financial support to cover travel and accommodation expenses.
There is no registration fee.
In order to apply, please send a short bio and description of what motivates your application (maximum one page altogether). Please indicate in your application whether you would like to attend the Summer School in person or online.