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THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE (717-1453)
CHAPTER VIII
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE FIRST BULGARIAN EMPIRE
LIKE the Serbs, but unlike the Albanians, the Bulgarians are not
autochthonous inhabitants of the Balkan country to which they have given their
name. It was not till 679 that this Finnish or Tartar race, after numerous
previous incursions into the Balkan provinces of the Byzantine Empire,
definitely abandoned the triangle formed by the Black Sea, the Dnieper, and the
Danube (the modern Bessarabia), and settled between the Danube and the Balkans
(the ancient Moesia). Thus, the first Bulgarian state practically coincided
with the Bulgarian principality created 1200 years later by the Treaty of
Berlin. The Finnish or Tartar invaders found this country already peopled with
Slays, immigrants like themselves but of different customs and language. As
time went on, the conquered, as so often happens, absorbed the conquerors; the
Bulgarians adopted the Slav speech of the vanquished; the country received the
name of the invaders, and became known to all time as "Bulgaria."
Still, after the lapse of more than twelve centuries, the “Bulgarians”, as this
amalgam of races came to be called, possess qualities differing from those of
their purely Slav neighbors, and during the recent European war Bulgarian
political writers reminded the world that the Bulgarian people was not of Slavonic
origin.
The Patriarch Nicephorus has left the earliest account of this Bulgarian
invasion and settlement. He tells how the Bulgarians originally lived on the
shores of the Sea of Azov and on the banks of the river Kuban; how their chief, Kovrat (identified with the “Kurt” of the earliest
list of Bulgarian rulers), left five sons, the third of whom, Asparuch (or Isparich), migrated
to Bessarabia. There he and his Bulgarians might have remained, had not the
Emperor Constantine IV Pogonatus undertaken an
expedition for the purpose of punishing them for their raids into the
borderlands of his dominions. The strength of the Bulgarian position in a
difficult country and an attack of gout obliged the Emperor to retire to Mesembria. A panic seized the troops left behind to
continue the siege; the Bulgarians pursued them across the Danube as far as
Varna. Neither Greeks nor Slays offered resistance; the Emperor had to make
peace and pay a tribute, in order to save Thrace from invasion.
The Bulgarians established their first capital in an entrenched camp at Pliska, the modern Turkish village of Aboba to the north-east of Shumla. Recent excavations have
unearthed this previously unknown portion of Bulgarian history, and have laid
bare the great fortifications, the inner stronghold, and the palace of the “Sublime
Khan”, as the primitive ruler was called. Unlike modern Bulgaria, early
Bulgaria was an aristocratic state, with two grades of nobility, the boljarin and the ugain, but
leading nobles of both orders bore the coveted title of bagatur (“hero”). As in Albania
today, the clan was the basis of the social system. The official language of
the primitive Bulgarian Chancery was Greek, but not exactly the Greek of
Byzantium—a native tribute to the far more advanced culture of the Empire. The
first two centuries of Bulgarian history down to the introduction of
Christianity are an almost continuous series of campaigns against the Byzantine
Empire, for which, with scarcely an exception, our sources are exclusively Greek
or Frankish. Justinian II began these Greco-Bulgarian wars by refusing to pay
the tribute to Isparich, and narrowly escaped from a
Bulgarian ambuscade. Yet this same Emperor, after his deposition and banishment
to the Crimea, owed his restoration to the aid of Isparich’s successor Tervel. Escaping to Bulgaria, he promised
his daughter to Tervel as the price of his
assistance, and bestowed upon his benefactor a royal robe and the honorary
title of “Caesar”. Three years later, however, in 707, he so far forgot the
benefits received as to break the peace and again invade Bulgaria, only to
receive a severe defeat at Anchialus, whence he was
forced to flee by sea to Constantinople. Once more we find him appealing, not
in vain, for Tervel’s assistance, and during the
brief reigns of Justinian II’s three successors hostilities were spasmodic. But
when Leo the Isaurian had firmly established himself on the throne, Tervel found it useless to renew the part of king-maker and
attempt to restore the fallen Emperor, Anastasius II. Indeed, after Tervel’s day and the reigns of two shadowy rulers, the
overthrow of the Bulgarian reigning dynasty of Dulo (to which Kurt and his successors had belonged) by the usurper Kormisosh of the clan of Ukil,
led to civil war, which weakened the hitherto flourishing Bulgarian state at
the time when an energetic Emperor, Constantine V Copronymus, sat upon the
Byzantine throne.
In the intervals of his struggle with the monks, the Iconoclast Emperor
conducted seven campaigns against the Bulgarians, whom he had alarmed by
planting Syrian and Armenian colonists in Thrace. He took vengeance for a
Bulgarian raid to Constantinople by invading Bulgaria, but on a second invasion
suffered a severe defeat at Veregava (now the Vrbitsa pass between Shumla and Yamboli). Another dynastic revolution prevented the victors
from reaping the fruits of their victory. The usurper disappeared from history,
but the old dynasty did not profit by his removal from the scene. On the
contrary, a general massacre of the house of Dulo ensued, and a certain Telets of the clan of Ugain was proclaimed Khan. Telets was, however, defeated by the Emperor near Anchialus,
and his disillusioned countrymen put him to death, and restored the dynasty of Kormisosh in the person of his son-in-law Sabin. The
latter's attempt to make peace with the Emperor was followed, however, by his
deposition, and it was reserved for his successor, Bayan, to come to terms with
Byzantium, where Sabin had taken refuge. But Bayan had a rival in his own country,
Umar, Sabin's nominee, and to support him the Emperor invaded Bulgaria, and
defeated Bayan's brother and successor Toktu in the
woods near the Danube in 765. Both brothers were slain, most of the country was
plundered, and the villages laid in ashes. Next year, however, the Greek fleet
was almost destroyed by a storm in the Black Sea, but the Emperor routed the
Bulgarians at Lithosoria during a further punitive
expedition known as “the noble war”, because no Christians fell. These sudden
reverses of fortune are characteristic of Bulgarian history. The next Bulgarian
Khan, Telerig, warned by these events of the
existence of a Byzantine party in Bulgaria, obtained by a ruse from the Emperor
the names of the latter’s adherents, whom he put to death. Constantine was in
an ecstasy of rage, but died in the course of a fresh expedition against the
barbarian who had outwitted him. Telerig, however,
was obliged to seek refuge with the next Emperor, Leo IV, who conferred upon
him the rank of patrician and the hand of an imperial princess, besides acting
as his godfather when he embraced Christianity. Telerig’s successor, Kardam, after defeating Constantine VI,
wrote to him an insolent letter, threatening to march to the Golden Gate of
Constantinople unless the Emperor paid the promised tribute. Constantine
sarcastically replied that he would not trouble an old man to undertake so long
a journey, but that he would come himself—with an army. The Bulgarian fled
before him, and for ten years there was peace between the Greeks and their
already dangerous rivals.
Krum
In the first decade of the ninth century the first striking figure in
Bulgarian history mounted the throne of Pliska. This
was Krum—a name still familiar to readers of Balkan polemics. Krum, whose realm
at his accession embraced Danubian Bulgaria and
Wallachia, “Bulgaria beyond the Danube”, coveted Macedonia—the goal of so many
Bulgarian ambitions in all ages. He invaded the district watered by the
Strymon, defeated the Greek garrisons, and seized a large sum of money intended
as pay for the soldiers. More important still, in 809 he captured Sardica, the
modern Sofia, then the northernmost outpost of the Empire against Bulgaria, put
the garrison to death, and destroyed the fortifications. The Emperor Nicephorus
I retaliated by spending Easter in Krum’s palace at Pliska,
which he plundered; he foresaw Bulgarian designs upon Macedonia and endeavored
to check the growth of the Slav population there by compulsory colonization
from other provinces. He then resolved to crush his enemy, and, after long
preparation, marched against him in 811. Proudly rejecting Krum’s offer of
peace, he again occupied Pliska, set his seal on the
Bulgarian treasury, and loftily disregarded the humble petition of Krum: “Lo,
thou hast conquered; take what pleaseth thee, and go
in peace”. Krum, driven to desperation, closed the Balkan passes in the enemy's
rear, and the invaders found themselves caught, as in a trap, in an enclosed
valley, perhaps that still called “the Greek Hollow” near Razboina.
Nicephorus saw that there was no hope: “Even if we become birds”, he exclaimed,
“none of us can escape!”. On 26 July the Greek army was annihilated; no
prisoners were taken; for the first time since the death of Valens four
centuries earlier an Emperor had fallen in battle; and, to add to the disgrace,
his head, after being exposed on a lance, was lined with silver and used as a
goblet, in which the savage Bulgarian pledged his nobles at state banquets. Yet
the lexicographer Suidas would have us believe that
this primitive savage was the author of a code of laws—one of which ordered the
uprooting of every vine in Bulgaria, to prevent drunkenness, while another bade
his subjects give to a beggar sufficient to prevent him ever feeling the pinch
of want again. To complete the disaster, Nicephorus’ son, the Emperor Stauracius,
died of his wounds.
This was not Krum’s only triumph over the Greeks. In 812 he captured Develtus and Mesembria, as the
war party at Constantinople, headed by Theodore of Studion, declined to renew
an old Greco-Bulgarian commercial treaty of some fifty years earlier, which had
permitted merchants duly provided with seals and passports to carry on trade in
either state, and under which the Bulgarian ruler was entitled to a gift of clothing
and 30 lbs. of red-dyed skins. The treaty also fixed the Greco-Bulgarian
frontier at the hills of Meleona, well to the south
of the Balkans, and stipulated for the extradition of deserters. When the
Emperor Michael I marched against him in 813, Krum inflicted a severe defeat at Versinicia near Hadrianople,
and the rare circumstance of the Bulgarians defeating the trained hosts of
Byzantium in the open country led to the suspicion of treachery on the part of
the general, Leo the Armenian. At any rate, he profited by the disaster, for he
supplanted Michael on the throne, and thus the rude Bulgarian could boast that
he had slain one Roman Emperor and caused the death of another and the
dethronement of a third. He now burned to take the Imperial city; but this was
a task beyond his powers. His strange human sacrifices before the Golden Gate,
his public ablutions, and the homage of his harem, did not compensate for lack
of experience in so formidable a siege. He then claimed to erect his lance over
the Golden Gate, and, when that insolent request was refused, demanded an
annual tribute, a quantity of fine raiment, and a certain number of picked
damsels. The new Emperor, Leo V, offered to discuss these last proposals, in
order to set an ambush for his enemy. Krum unsuspectingly accepted the offer,
and narrowly escaped assassination, thanks, so a monkish chronicler expresses
it, to the sins of his would-be assassins. The smoking suburbs of Byzantium
were the testimony of his revenge; the palace of St Mamas perished in the
flames; the shores of the Hellespont and the interior of Thrace were
devastated. Exactly a thousand years later, another Bulgarian army reached Chatalja, the last bulwark of Constantinople, and the
Bulgarian siege of 813 was exhumed as an historical precedent.
Omurtag
Hadrianople succumbed to hunger; its inhabitants and those of other Thracian towns were
carried off to “Bulgaria beyond the Danube”, among them the future Emperor,
Basil I. But, by one of those sudden changes of fortune with which recent
Bulgarian history has familiarized us, Leo inflicted such a crushing defeat
upon the Bulgarians near Mesembria, that the spot
where he had lain in wait was long pointed out as "Leo's hill." To
avenge this disaster, Krum prepared for another siege of Constantinople, and
this time intended to appear with a complete siege train before the walls. But,
as in the case of the great Serbian Tsar, Stephen Dugan, death cut short the
Bulgarian’s enterprise. On 14 April 814 Krum burst a blood-vessel. After a brief
period of civil war, Krum’s son, Omurtag, became “Sublime Khan”, and concluded
a thirty years' peace with the Empire, of which a summary has been preserved.
By this treaty Thrace was partitioned between the Greeks and the Bulgarians,
and the frontier ran from Develtus to the fortress of Makrolivada, between Hadrianople and Philippopolis, whence it turned northward to the Balkans. It was not a
paper frontier such as diplomacy loves to trace on maps, but consisted of a
rampart and trench, known to Byzantine historians as “the Great Fence” and to
the modern peasants, who still tell strange stories of how it was made, as the Erkesiya, from a Turkish word meaning a “cutting in the
earth”.
Thus guaranteed against a conflict with the Greeks, the Bulgarians turned
their attention westward, and for the first time came into touch with the
Frankish Empire, which had established its authority as far south as Croatia.
In 824 a Bulgarian embassy appeared at the court of Louis the Pious, in order
to regulate the Franco-Bulgarian frontiers, which marched together near
Belgrade. The Western Emperor, knowing nothing about the Bulgarians and their
geographical claims, sent an envoy of his own to make inquiries on the spot,
and, after keeping the Bulgarian mission waiting at Aix-la-Chapelle, finally
sent it back without any definite reply. Omurtag, anxious to maintain his
prestige over the Slays beyond the Danube, who had shown signs of placing
themselves under the protection of his powerful neighbor, invaded Pannonia and
set up Bulgarian governors there. In fact, Syrmia and
eastern Hungary remained Bulgarian till the Magyar conquest.
A Greek inscription on a pillar of the church of the Forty Martyrs at Trnovo commemorates the works of “the Sublime Khan Omurtag”
the “house of high renown” which he “built on the Danube”, and the “sepulcher”
which he “made mid-way” between that and his “old house” at Pliska.
Of these two constructions the former has been identified with the ruined
fortress of Kadykei near Turtukai on the Danube (the Bulgaro-Roumanian frontier
according to the Treaty of Bucharest of 1913), the latter with a mound near the
village of Mumdzhilar. Another Greek inscription,
recently discovered at Chatalar, records a still more
important creation of this ruler—“a palace on the river Tutsa”
intended to overawe the Greeks. This “palace”, founded, as the inscription
informs us, in 821-22, was none other than the future capital of Bulgaria,
Great Preslav, or “the Glorious”, a little to the
south-west of Shumla. Despite the prayer uttered in
this inscription that “the divine ruler may press down the Emperor with his
foot”, Omurtag, so far from attacking the Greek Empire, actually aided Michael
II in 823 against the rebel Thomas, who was besieging Constantinople. Thus Byzantium,
besieged by one Bulgarian ruler, was, ten years later, relieved by another.
There is little continuity of policy in the Balkans.
First Serbo-Bulgarian War. Conversion of the Bulgarians
Omurtag, who was still alive in 827, was succeeded by his son Presiam, or Malomir as he was
called in the increasingly important Slavonic idiom of Bulgaria. His reign is
important historically because it was unfortunately marred by the first of the
long series of SerboBulgarian wars, of which our own
generation has seen three. Characteristically it seems to have arisen out of
the Bulgarian occupation of western Macedonia. The Serbian prince, Vlastimir, during a three years' struggle, inflicted heavy
losses on the Bulgarians. Presiam’s nephew and
successor, the famous Boris, who began his long reign in 852, was again
defeated by Vlastimir’s three sons, and his own son
Vladimir with twelve great nobles was captured. Boris had to sue for peace to
save the prisoners; he was no more fortunate in his quarrel with the Croats,
and he maintained towards the Greeks the pacific policy of Omurtag.
The name of Boris is indelibly connected with the conversion of the
Bulgarians to Christianity. Sporadic attempts at conversion had already been
made, and with sufficient success to provoke persecution by Omurtag, whose
eldest son is even said to have become a proselyte. But in the time of Boris
Christianity became the State religion. In the Near East politics and religion
are inextricably mingled, and it is probable that political considerations may
have helped to influence the Bulgarian ruler. Boris, placed midway between the
Western and the Eastern Empire, had played an equivocal part between Louis the
German and Rostislav of Moravia, now supporting the
German, now the Slav. The Moravian prince pointed out to Byzantium the danger
to the whole Balkan peninsula of a Bulgaro-German
alliance, especially if Boris, as his German ally desired, adopted the Western
faith. Michael III at once saw the gravity of the situation; he made a hostile
demonstration against Bulgaria, whose ruler submitted without a blow, agreed to
accept the Orthodox form of Christianity, thus becoming ecclesiastically
dependent on the Ecumenical Patriarch, and received, as a slight concession, a
small rectification of his frontier in the shape of an uninhabited district.
Boris was baptized in 864-65, the Emperor acted as his sponsor, and the convert
took his sponsor's name of Michael. Other less mundane reasons for his
conversion are given. It is said that, during a severe famine, he was moved by
the appeals of his sister (who had embraced Christianity during her captivity
in Constantinople) and by the arguments of a captive monk, Theodore Koupharas, to become a Christian. Another story represents
him as terrified into acceptance of the faith by the realistic picture of the
Last Judgment painted for him by a Greek artist, Methodius. His attempt,
however, to force baptism upon his heathen subjects led to a revolt of the
nobles. He put down this insurrection with the utmost severity; he executed 52
nobles with their wives and families, while sparing the common folk. The
celebrated Patriarch Photius sent a literary essay to his “well-beloved son” on
the heresies that beset, and the duties that await, a model Christian prince,
and missionaries—Greeks, Armenians, and others—flooded Bulgaria. Perplexed by
their different precepts and alarmed at the reluctance of the Patriarch to
appoint a bishop for Bulgaria, Boris craftily sent an embassy to Pope Nicholas
I, asking him to send a bishop and priests, and propounding a list of 106
theological and social questions, upon which he desired the Pope's
authoritative opinion. This singular catalogue of doubts included such diverse
subjects as the desirability of wearing drawers (which the Pope pronounced to
be immaterial), the expediency of the sovereign dining alone (which was
declared to be bad manners), the right way with pagans and apostates, and the
appointment of a Bulgarian Patriarch. Nicholas I sent Formosus, afterwards
Pope, and another bishop as his legates to Bulgaria with replies to these
questions, denouncing the practice of torturing prisoners and other barbarous
customs, but putting aside for the present the awkward question of a Patriarch;
Bulgaria was, however, to have a bishop, and later on an archbishop. Photius in
reply denounced the proceedings of the Roman Church in Bulgaria, and the
reluctance of the new Pope Hadrian II to nominate as archbishop a person
recommended by Boris made the indignant Bulgarian abandon Rome for Byzantium,
which gladly sent him an archbishop and ten bishops. The Archbishop of Bulgaria
took the next place after the Patriarch at festivities; Boris’ son, the future
Tsar Simeon, was sent to study Demosthenes and Aristotle at Constantinople. One
further step towards the popularization of Christianity in Bulgaria remained to
be taken—the introduction of the Slavonic liturgy and books of devotion. This
was, towards the end of Boris’ reign, the work of the disciples of Methodius,
one of the two famous “Slavonic Apostles”, when they were driven from Moravia.
Boris in 888 retired into a cloister, whence four years later he temporarily
emerged to depose his elder son Vladimir, whose excesses had endangered the
state. After placing his younger son Simeon on the throne in 893, Boris lived
on till 907, and died in the odor of sanctity, the first of Bulgaria’s national
saints.
Simeon’s love of
learning
With Simeon began again the struggle between Greeks and Bulgarians. Two
Greek merchants, who had obtained from the Emperor Leo VI the monopoly of the
Bulgarian trade, diverted it from Constantinople to Salonica,
and placed heavy duties upon the Bulgarian traders. The latter complained to
Simeon, and Simeon to the Emperor, but backstairs influence at the palace prevented
his complaints from being heard, and forced him to resort to arms. He defeated
the imperial forces, and sent back the captives with their noses cut off. Leo
summoned the Magyars across the Danube to his aid; Simeon was defeated and his
country devastated up to the gates of Preslav. But,
when the Magyars withdrew, he defeated a Greek army at Bulgardphygos near Hadrianople and ravaged the homes of the Magyars
during their absence on a distant expedition. An interval of peace ensued,
during which the classically educated ruler endeavored to acclimatize Byzantine
literature among his recalcitrant subjects. Simeon collected and had translated
135 speeches of Chrysostom; Constantine, a pupil of the “Apostle” Methodius,
translated another collection of homilies, and, at Simeon’s command, four
orations of St Athanasius; John the Exarch dedicated to Simeon his Shestodnev (or “Hexameron”), a compilation describing the creation from
Aristotle and the Fathers; a monk Grigori translated
for him the chronicle of John Malalas with additions;
while several unknown writers drew up an encyclopaedia of the contemporary knowledge of Byzantium. There was nothing original in this
literature; but, if it was not the natural product of the Bulgarian spirit, it
diffused a certain culture among the few, and reflected credit upon the royal
patron, whom his contemporaries likened to the Ptolemies for his promotion of
learning. Simeon had learned also at Constantinople the love of magnificence as
well as of literature. If we may believe his contemporary, John the Exarch, his
residence at Great Preslav, whither the capital had
now been removed from Pliska, was a marvel to behold,
with its palaces and churches, its paintings, its marble, copper, gold, and
silver ornaments. In the palace sat the sovereign “in a garment studded with
pearls, a chain of coins round his neck and bracelets on his wrists, girt about
with a purple girdle, and with a golden sword at his side”. Of all this splendor,
and of a city which Nicetas in the thirteenth century
described as “having the largest circuit of any in the Balkans”, a few scanty
ruins remain.
A Bulgarian Tsar and
Patriarch
Alexander, the successor of Leo VI, mortally offended Simeon by
rejecting his offer to renew the treaty concluded with his father. The
accession of the child Constantine Porphyrogenitus gave him his opportunity for
revenge. In 913, a century after Krum, he appeared with an army before
Constantinople; next year he obtained Hadrianople by
treachery; and, on 20 August 917, he annihilated the Byzantine army at Anchialus, where half a century later the bones of the
slain were still visible. Bulgaria by this victory became for a brief period
the dominant power of the Balkan peninsula. Simeon’s dominions stretched from
the Black to the Ionian Sea, except for a few Byzantine fortresses on the
Albanian coast; Nis and Belgrade were Bulgarian; but the Aegean coast remained
Greek. In 923 Simeon besieged Constantinople, and Hadrianople again surrendered to the Bulgarians. The title of “Sublime Khan” or even that
of “Prince” seemed inadequate for the ruler of such a vast realm; accordingly
Simeon assumed the style of “Tsar of the Bulgarians and Greeks”, receiving his
crown from Rome, while, as a natural concomitant of the imperial dignity, the
head of the Bulgarian Church became Patriarch of Preslav,
with his residence at Silistria.
Simeon’s career closed in the midst of wars against the Serbs and
Croats, in the course of which he had laid Serbia waste but had been defeated
by the Croats. He died in 927, and, like most strong Balkan rulers, was
succeeded by a weak man. He had excluded his eldest son Michael from the
succession and confined him in a monastery; but his second son, Tsar Peter, had
the temperament of a pacifist. His first act was to marry the grand-daughter of
the Byzantine co-Emperor, Romanus I Lecapenus, thus
introducing for the first time a Greek Tsaritsa into
the Bulgarian court. He obtained by this marriage the recognition of his
imperial title and of the Bulgarian Patriarchate. But the war-party in
Bulgaria, headed by the Tsar’s younger brother John, revolted against what they
considered a policy of concession to the Greeks; and, when John was defeated,
Simeon’s eldest son emerged from his cell to lead a fresh rebellion. Upon his
death, a far more serious opponent arose in the person of the noble, Shishman of Trnovo, and his sons. Shishman separated Macedonia and Albania from old
Bulgaria, and established a second Bulgarian Empire in the western provinces.
Torn asunder by these rivalries, Bulgaria was also menaced by her neighbors,
the Serbs, the Patzinaks, and the Magyars, while the Bogomile heresy spread
through the land from the two parent Churches of the Bulgarians proper and of
the Macedonian or Thracian Dragovitchi. In Bulgaria,
as in Bosnia, the Bogomile tenets aroused vehement opposition, the leader of
which was the presbyter Cosmas. Apart from their
beliefs, the Bogomiles, by the mere fact of dividing the nation into two
contending religious factions, weakened its unity and prepared the way for the
Turkish conquest. Even today the name of the Babuni,
as the Bulgarian Bogomiles were called, lingers in the Babuna mountains near Prilep, the scene of fighting between
the Bulgarians and the Allies in the late war. Simultaneously with this
important religious and social movement there arose a race of ascetic hermits,
of whom the chief, John of Rila, became the patron
saint of Bulgaria. Native of a village near Sofia and a simple herdsman, he
lived for twenty years now in the hollow of an oak, now in a cave of the Rila mountains, an hour’s climb above the famous monastery
which bears his name. Here the pious Tsar Peter visited him, and here he died
in 946. His body was removed by Peter to Sofia, but restored to Rila in 1469.
The Bogomile Heresy
The last years of Peter’s weak reign coincided with the great revival of
Byzantine military power upon the accession of Nicephorus II Phokas. The
Bulgarians had the tactlessness to demand from the conqueror of Crete, just
returned from his triumphs in Asia, “the customary tribute” which Byzantium had
paid to the strong Tsar Simeon. The victorious Emperor—so the historian of his
reign informs us—“although not easily moved to anger”, was so greatly incensed
at this impertinent demand that he raised his voice and exclaimed that “the
Greeks must, indeed, be in a sorry plight, if, after defeating every enemy in
arms, they were to pay tribute like slaves to a race of Scythians, poor and
filthy to boot”. Suiting the action to the word, he ordered the envoys to be
beaten, and bade them tell their master that the most mighty Emperor of the
Romans would forthwith visit his country and pay the tribute in person. When,
however, the soldierly Emperor had seen with his own eyes what a difficult country
Bulgaria was, he thought it imprudent to expose his own army to the risks which
had befallen his namesake and predecessor in the Balkan passes. He therefore
contented himself with taking a few frontier-forts, and invited the Russians,
on payment of a subvention, to invade Bulgaria from the north and settle
permanently there. Svyatoslav, the Russian Prince, was only too delighted to
undertake this task. He landed in 967 at the mouth of the Danube, drove the
Bulgarians back into Silistria, and took many of
their towns. This Russian success made Nicephorus reflect that a
Russian-Bulgaria might be more dangerous to Constantinople than a weak native
state—the same argument led to the Berlin treaty—so he offered to help the
Bulgarians to expel his Russian allies, and requested that two Bulgarian
princesses should be sent to Byzantium to be affianced to the sons of the late
Emperor Romanus, one of whom was destined to be “the slayer of the Bulgarians”.
Peter sent the princesses and his two sons as hostages, but his death, the
assassination of Nicephorus, and the withdrawal of the Russians in 969, menaced
by the Patzinaks at home, ended this episode. The biblically-named sons of Shishman—David, Moses, Aaron, and Samuel—endeavored to
avail themselves of the absence of the lawful heir, Boris II, to reunite
eastern and western Bulgaria under their dynasty, but the arrival of Boris
frustrated their attempt. It was reserved for the new Byzantine Emperor, John I
Tzimisces, to end the eastern Bulgarian Empire.
Svyatoslav had been so greatly charmed with the riches and fertility of
Bulgaria that he returned there, no longer as a Byzantine ally but on his own
account, preferring, as he said, to establish his throne on the Danube rather
than at Kiev. He captured the Bulgarian capital and the Tsar, crossed the
Balkans, took and impaled the inhabitants of Philippopolis, and bade the Greek
government either pay him compensation or leave Europe. The warlike Armenian
who sat on the Greek throne invaded Bulgaria in 971, traversed the unguarded
Balkan passes, took Great Preslav, and released Boris
and his family from Russian captivity, saying that he had “come to avenge the
Bulgarians for what they had suffered from the Russians”. But when Silistria, the last Russian stronghold, fell, and the
Russians had evacuated Bulgaria, Tzimisces deposed Boris and the Bulgarian
Patriarch, and annexed eastern Bulgaria to the Byzantine Empire. Boris was
compelled to divest himself of his regalia, and received a Byzantine court
title; his brother was made an eunuch. Great Preslav was baptized Ioannotipolis after its conqueror; the
eastern Bulgarian Empire was at an end. Western Bulgaria under the sons of Shishman remained, however, independent for 47 years
longer. Of these four sons, the so-called Comitopouloi (or “Young Counts”),
David was killed by some wandering Wallachs, Moses
was slain while besieging Seres, and Aaron with most
of his family was executed for his Greek sympathies by his remaining brother
Samuel, who thus became sole Bulgarian Tsar. His realm, at the period of its
greatest extent (before the Greek campaigns of 1000-1002), included a
considerable part of Danubian Bulgaria, with the
towns of Great Preslav, Vidin, and Sofia, and much of
Serbia and Albania, but was essentially Macedonian, and his capital, after a
brief residence at Sofia, was moved to Moglena, Yodel
and Vodená (where an island in the lake still preserves the name of his “castle”),
and finally to the lake of Ochrida, the swamps of which he drained by 100
canals into the river Drin.
Upon the death of Tzimisces in 976, the Bulgarians rose; both Boris II
and his brother, Roman, escaped from Constantinople, but the former was shot by
a Bulgarian in mistake for a Greek, while the latter, being harmless, received
a post from Samuel, who overran Thrace, the country round Salonica,
and Thessaly, and carried off from Larissa to his capital at Prespa the remains
of St Achilleus, Bishop of Larissa in the time of
Constantine the Great. The ruined monastery of the island of Ahil in the lake still preserves the memory of this
translation. Samuel even marched into continental Greece and threatened the
Peloponnese, but was recalled by the news that the young Emperor Basil II had
invaded Bulgaria. The first of his Bulgarian campaigns, that of 981, ended,
however, ingloriously for the future conqueror of the Bulgarians. Whilst on his
way to besiege Sofia, he was defeated at Shtiponye near Ikhtiman and with difficulty escaped to
Philippopolis. Fifteen years of peace between the hereditary enemies ensued,
which Samuel employed in making war upon John Vladimir, the saintly Serbian
Prince of Dioclea, in ravaging Dalmatia, and in occupying Durazzo. Bulgaria
thus for a brief space—for Durazzo was soon recovered by the Greeks—became an
Adriatic power. The Serbian prince, carried captive to Prespa, won the heart of
Samuel's daughter Kosara, who begged her father to
release him and allow her to marry him. Samuel not only consented, but allowed
him to return and rule over his conquered land.
Samuel and Basil II
In 996 began the second war between Basil II and the Bulgarians. Basil,
free at last from the cares of the civil wars, had appointed Taronites governor of Salonica for the special purpose of checking Samuel's raids. The new governor, however,
fell with his son into a Bulgarian ambush and was killed; whereupon Basil sent
Nicephorus Uranus to take his place. Meanwhile Samuel, elated at his success,
had marched again through the vale of Tempe as far as
the Peloponnese, ravaging and plundering as he went. But this time he was not
to return unscathed. On his way back Uranus waited for him on the bank of the
swollen Spercheus, and, crossing in the night, fell
upon the sleeping Bulgarian soldiers, who had believed it impossible to ford
the river. Samuel and his son, Gabriel Radomir Roman,
were wounded and only escaped capture by lying as if dead among the corpses
which strewed the field, fleeing, when it was dark, to the passes of Pindus.
From that moment Samuel's fortune turned. His next loss was that of Durazzo,
betrayed to the Greeks by his father-in-law, the chief man of the place, and by
the captive son of Taronites, who had obtained the
affections of another of the Tsar's susceptible daughters, and had been allowed
to marry her and had received a command at that important position. The Greeks
everywhere took the offensive. In 1000 they entered and again subdued Danubian Bulgaria, taking Great and Little Preslav and Pliska, which is now
mentioned after a long interval. Next year Basil cleared the Bulgarian
garrisons out of the south Macedonian towns of Berrhoea, Servia, and Vodená and out of the Thessalian castles,
removing them to Voleros at the mouth of the Maritza.
To this campaign we owe the first description, which enlivens the prose of Cedrenus, of the waterfall of Vodená—the Tivoli of
Macedonia. In 1002 Vidin and Skoplje fell, and
Samuel, believing that the Vardar could not be crossed, once again nearly
became the prisoner of the Greeks. Hostilities dragged on, and Basil for the
next twelve years annually invaded the western Bulgarian Empire, which was now
reduced to part of Macedonia, Albania, and the mountains round Sofia. But in
1014 the third and last Bulgarian war of the reign broke out. On 29 July
Nicephorus Xiphias turned the strong Bulgarian
position of Kleidion (“the key”) in the Struma valley, near the scene of King Constantine’s
victories over the Bulgarians 900 years later. Samuel escaped, thanks to his
son's assistance, to Prilep, but Basil blinded the
15,000 Bulgarian captives, leaving one man in every hundred with one eye, so
that he might guide his totally blinded comrades to tell the tale to the
fugitive Tsar. Samuel fainted at the ghastly sight and two days later expired.
The western Bulgarian Empire survived him only four years. His son,
Gabriel Roman, by a captive from Larissa succeeded him, but excelled him in
physique alone. Barely a year later Gabriel was murdered by his cousin John Vladislav, Aaron’s son, whose life he had begged his father
to spare when Aaron and the rest of his family were put to death. The
ungrateful wretch likewise assassinated his cousin’s wife, blinded her eldest
son, and invited the Serbian Prince, John Vladimir, to be his guest at Prespa
and there had him beheaded. Having thus removed all possible rivals in his own
family, the new Tsar began to treat with Basil, whose vassal he offered to
become. Basil, mistrusting the murderer, marched upon his capital of Ochrida,
blinding all the Bulgarians whom he took prisoners on the way. He captured Ochrida
and was on his way to relieve Durazzo, which was invested by the Bulgarians,
when a sudden defeat, inflicted upon a detachment of his army by the Bulgarian
noble, Ivats, caused him to retire on Salonica. The Bulgarians continued to make a vigorous defence
of their difficult country; Pernik successfully
resisted a siege of 88 days; the Tsar even endeavored to make an alliance with
the Patzinaks from beyond the Danube against the Greeks. But he fell by an
unknown hand while besieging Durazzo in 1018. Bulgaria, left without a head,
was divided into two parties—one, headed by the widowed Tsaritsa Maria, the Patriarch David, and Bogdan, “the
commander of the inner fortresses”; the other and weaker party, led by the late
Tsar’s son Fruyin, and the soldierly Ivats. Upon the news of the Tsar’s death, Basil marched
into Bulgaria to complete the subjection of the country. At Strumitsa the Patriarch met him with a letter from the Tsaritsa,
offering on certain conditions to surrender Bulgaria. Bogdan was rewarded with a Byzantine title for his treachery, and then the Emperor
proceeded to Ochrida, where he confiscated the rich treasury of the Tsars. In
his camp outside there waited upon him the Tsaritsa with her six daughters and three of her sons, a bastard son of Samuel, and the
five sons and two daughters of Gabriel Radomir Roman.
The conqueror received her kindly, as well as the notables who made their
submission. Her three other sons, however, of whom Fruyin was the most prominent, had fled to Mt. Tomor near Berat, where they endeavored to maintain the independence
of Bulgaria in the Albanian highlands, while Ivats held out in his castle of Pronishta in the same
mountainous region. The young princes, however, were forced to surrender and
compensated with court titles; the brave Ivats was
treacherously seized and blinded. The last two nobles who stilll held out then surrendered. After nearly 40 years of fighting, Bulgaria was
subdued.
The “Bulgar-slayer”, as Basil II is known in
history, celebrated his triumph in the noblest of all existing churches, the
majestic Parthenon, then Our Lady of Athens. On his march he gazed upon the
bleaching bones of the Bulgarians who had fallen by the Spercheus twenty-two years before, and upon the walls erected in the pass of Thermopylae
to repel their invasions. The great cathedral he enriched with offerings out of
the Bulgarian treasury, and 900 years later the Athenians were reminded of his
triumph there. Thence he returned to Constantinople, where the ex-Tsaritsa, Samuel’s daughters, and the rest of the
Bulgarians were led through the Golden Gate before him.
BULGARIA A BYZANTINE PROVINCE (1018-1186).
Bulgaria remained for 168 years a Byzantine province. Her nobles had
lost their leaders, her princes and princesses had disappeared amidst the
pompous functionaries of the Byzantine Court. Only her Church remained
autonomous, but that only on condition that the Patriarchate, which during the
period of the western Bulgarian Empire had had its seat successively at Vodená,
Prespa, and finally at Ochrida, was reduced to the rank of an Archbishopric. In
1020 Basil II issued three charters confirming the rights of “the Archbishop of
Bulgaria”—the additional title of “Justiniana Prima”
was added in 1157—whose residence continued to be at Ochrida, whither it had
been moved by Simeon. He expressly maintained intact the rights and area of its
jurisdiction as it had been in the times of both Peter and Samuel, which
therefore included 30 bishoprics and towns, such as Ochrida, Kastoria, Monastir, and Skoplje in Macedonia; Sofia and Vidin in old Bulgaria;
Belgrade, Nis, Prizren, and Rasa in what is now Jugoslavia; Canina (above Avlona), Cheimarra, Butrinto, and Joánnina in South
Albania and Northern Epirus; and Stagi (the modern Kalabaka) in Thessaly. We may therefore safely assume that
in the palmy days of Peter and of Samuel these places
were included within their respective Empires. In 1020 these thirty bishoprics
contained 685 ecclesiastics and 655 serfs. But after Basil II's reign the number
of the suffragans was reduced practically to what it
had been in the time of Samuel, and after the first archbishop no more
Bulgarians were appointed to the see of Ochrida during the Byzantine period.
The head of the autonomous Bulgarian Church was always a Greek and often a
priest from St Sophia itself, except on one occasion when a Jew was nominated,
and the list includes the distinguished theologian and letter-writer,
Theophylact of Euboea, who felt as an exile his separation from culture in the
wilds of Bulgaria, and John Camaterus, afterwards
Ecumenical Patriarch at the time of the Latin conquest of Constantinople. The
Bogomile heresy made great progress during this period, especially round
Philippopolis, despite its persecution by the Emperor Alexius I. For the civil
and military administration of Bulgaria a new (Bulgarian) theme was created
under a Pronoetes and also a duchy of Paristrium, while the neighbouring themes had their territory enlarged. The various governors, holding office
usually for only a year, made as much out of their districts as possible in the
customary Oriental fashion; but the local communities retained a considerable
measure of autonomy, and we are expressly told that Basil left the taxes as
they had been in the time of Samuel, payable in kind.
The Bulgarians did not, however, remain inactive during this long period
of Byzantine rule. A succession of weak rulers and court intrigues followed the
death of Basil “the Bulgar-slayer”. The Bulgarian
prince Fruyin, and his mother the ex-Tsaritsa, were mixed up in these intrigues, both imprisoned
in monasteries, and the former blinded. In 1040 a more serious movement arose.
Simultaneous insurrections broke out among the Serbs of what is now Montenegro
and the Bulgarians, who found a leader in a certain Peter Delyan,
who gave himself out to be a son of the Tsar Gabriel Radomir Roman. Greeted enthusiastically as Tsar, he had the country at his feet, so
lively was the memory of the old dynasty. But a rival appeared in the person of
the warlike Tikhomir, who was acclaimed Tsar by the
Slavs of Durazzo. Delyan invited his rival and the
Bulgarians that were with him to a meeting, at which he told them that “one
bush could not nourish two redbreasts”, and bade them choose between Tikhomir and the grandson of Samuel, promising to abide
loyally by their decision. Loud applause greeted his speech; the people stoned Tikhomir and proclaimed Delyan their sole sovereign. He marched upon Salonica,
whence the Emperor Michael IV the Paphlagonian fled,
while his chamberlain, Ivats, perhaps a son of the
Bulgarian patriot, went over with his war chest to the insurgents. One
Bulgarian army took Durazzo; another invaded Greece and defeated the imperial
forces before Thebes; the entire province of Nicopolis (except Naupactus) joined the Bulgarians, infuriated at the
exactions of the Byzantine tax-collector and at the substitution, by the
unpopular finance minister, John, the Emperor’s brother, of cash payments for
payments in kind. But another Bulgarian leader now appeared in the person of Alusian, younger brother of the Tsar John Vladislav, and Delyan’s cousin,
whom the grasping minister's greed had also driven to revolt. Delyan wisely offered to share the first place with this
undoubted scion of the stock of Shishman—for his own
claims to the blood royal were impugned. But a great defeat of the Bulgarians
before Salonica, which was ascribed to the
intervention of that city's patron saint, St Demetrius, led to recriminations
and suspicions. Alusian invited his rival to a
banquet, made him drunk, and blinded him. The double-dyed traitor then betrayed
his country to the Emperor, the revolt was speedily crushed, and Delyan and Ivats were led in
triumph to Constantinople.
Another Bulgarian rising took place in 1073, and from the same cause—the
exactions of the imperial treasury, which continued to ignore the wise practice
of Basil II and the lessons of the last rebellion. Having no prominent leader
of their own to put on the throne, the Bulgarian chiefs begged Michael, first
King of the Serbian state of Dioclea, to send them his son, Constantine Bodin, whom they proclaimed “Tsar of the Bulgarians” at Prizren under the popular name of Peter, formerly borne by
Simeon's saintly son. But there was a party among the Bulgarians hostile to
what was doubtless regarded as a foreign movement; the insurgents made the
mistake, after their initial successes, of dividing their forces, and were
defeated at Paun (“the peacock” castle) on the
historic field of Kossovo, where Bodin was taken prisoner. Frankish mercenaries in Byzantine employ completed the
destruction by burning down the palace of the Tsars on the island in the lake
of Prespa and sacking the church of St Achilleus.
Worse still were the frequent raids of the Patzinaks and Cumans,
while Macedonia was the theatre of the Norman invasion. But, except for
occasional and quickly suppressed risings of Bulgarians and Bogomiles, there
was no further serious insurrection for over 100 years. Under the Comnenian dynasty the Bulgarians were better governed, and
they lacked local leaders to face a series of energetic Emperors.
CHAPTER IX
THE GREEK CHURCH ITS RELATIONS WITH THE WEST UP TO 1054
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