Second Bulgarian Empire

The Byzantines ruled Bulgaria from 1018 to 1185, although initially it was not fully integrated into the Empire; for example preserving the existing tax levels and the power of the low-ranking nobility. The independent Bulgarian Orthodox Church was subordinated to the authority of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, and the Bulgarian aristocracy and tsar relatives were given various byzantine titles and transferred to the Asian parts of the Empire. There were rebellions against Byzantine rule in 1040-41, the 1070s and the 1080s, but these failed. By the late 12th century the Byzantines were in decline after a series of wars with the Hungarians and the Serbs. In 1185, Peter and John Asen (described in contemporary accounts as Vlachs) led a revolt against Byzantine rule and Peter declared himself Tsar Peter II (also known as Theodore Peter). After little more than a year of warfare, the Byzantines were forced to acknowledge the rebells independence, though fighting continued. The rebells occupied the territory between the Black Sea, the Danube and Stara Planina, including a part of eastern Macedonia and the valley of the Morava.

Frescoes from the Boyana Church (1259): Desislava

The new polity emerged under the name of Wallachia (or more rarely occuring, Wallachia and Bulgaria). However, as the confusion surrounding crusaders chronicles and later papal letters to Kaloyan indicates, the name of Wallachia was often referring to the former province of Moesia. In those documents, Wallachia/Wallachians and Bulgaria/Bulgarians were used interchangebly. As the authority of the Asenides sthrenghtened, the sought to legitimise their ruling: the new formulae which they started to adopt, were meant to emphasise that their power drew from a recognised royalty, an essential criteria in the politics of the Middle Ages. As such, besides the openly stated Roman ancestry, Kaloyan (1197-1207), the new Tsar after the death of John and Peter, desired to link himself to the former Bulgar Empire, stressing the Papal origins of his crown by claiming that the Papacy had granted an imperial crown to the rulers of the previous empire, of whose authority he asserted that he inherited. Ultimately, Kaloyan's union with the Papacy, secured his recognition as "Rex" (King), although he desired to be recognized as "Emperor" or "Tsar".

Roughly from this moment, the name of Wallachia starts to fell into fell into abeyance, at the gain of the name Bulgaria, and the Vlach charachter of the polity diminishes. The linking with the former Bulgar Empire, corroborated with the power of the Old Church Slavonic, the language of culture and of the Wallachian-Bulgarian churh (Bulgarorum et Blacorum Ecclesiam), caused a slavicisation of the state and ultimately of it's multiethnic population, and the subsequent preponderant usage of the name Bulgaria, in both contemporary and later written sources.

Kaloyan, while still "King of Wallachia", waged wars on the Byzantine Empire and (after 1204) on the Knights of the Fourth Crusade, conquering large parts of Thrace, the Rhodopes, as well as the whole of Macedonia. The power of the Hungarians and to some extent the Serbs prevented significant expansion to the west and northwest. Under Ivan Asen II (1218-1241), Bulgaria once again became a regional power, occupying Belgrade and Albania. The Bulgarian Orthodox Patriarchate was restored in 1235 with approval of all eastern Patriarchates, thus putting an end to the union with the Papacy. Ivan Asen II had a reputation as a wise and humane ruler, and opened relations with the Catholic west, especially Venice and Genoa, to reduce the influence of the Byzantines over his country.

Second Bulgarian Empire under Ivan Asen, 1218-41

But under Ivan II's successors, Bulgaria once again declined. The Mongols raided the Balkans in the early 13th century, devastating Bulgaria in 1242, and Bulgaria was forced to pay tribute to the Khans of the Golden Horde (see Mongol invasion of Europe). After 1246 the Empire of Nicaea annexed Macedonia, Rhodope mountains and part of Thrace. The Kingdom of Hungary occupied the province of Belgrade. By the reign of Michael II Asen 1246-1256, Bulgaria was reduced to a small state on the south bank of the lower Danube. The crisis drove to peasant war, raised by the swineherd Ivailo, who managed to sit on the Bulgarian throne from 1277 to 1280.

The withdrawal of the Mongols from Europe in the early 14th century stabilised the situation in the Balkans and Bulgaria reassumed something like its modern borders. But Bulgaria was threatened by the rising powers of Hungary to the north and Serbia to the west. In 1330 the Bulgarians under Michael III were heavily defeated by the Serbs at Velbuzhd, and large parts of the kingdom came under Serbian sway. Under Ivan IV (Ivan Alexander) 1331-1372 Serbian control was ended, but Bulgaria was left divided into rival states; of the two largest, one was based at Veliko Turnovo and the other at Vidin, ruled by Ivan's two sons.

Tsar Ivan Alexander (1331-1371), an illustration from the Four Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander (Tetraevangelia of Ivan Alexander), ca. 1356, the British Library

In the 13th and 14th centuries Bulgaria became a thriving cultural centre. The flowering of the Turnovo school of art was related to the construction of palaces and churches, to literary activity in the royal court and the monasteries, and to the development of handicrafts. Remarkable achievements of this school have been preserved down to this day: the murals of the Boyars' houses in Trapezitsa and Saint Forty Martyrs Church in Veliko Tarnovo, the Boyana Church (1259) and the Rock-hewn Churches of Ivanovo. Book illuminations also developed, examples include the Manasses Chronicle, the Tetraevangelia of Ivan Alexander and the Tomich Psalter.

Weakened Bulgaria was thus no match for a new threat to the south, the increasingly powerful Ottoman Empire, who crossed into Europe in 1354. In 1362 they captured Philippopolis (Plovdiv), and in 1382 they took Sofia. The Ottomans then turned their attentions to the Serbs, whom they routed at the Battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389. In 1393 the Ottomans occupied Turnovo after a three-month siege. It is thought that the south gate was opened from inside and so the Ottomans managaed to enter the fortress. In 1396 the Kingdom (Tsarstvo) of Vidin was also occupied, bringing the Second Bulgarian Empire and Bulgarian independence to an end.

References

• Florin Curta: Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1250, Cambridge University Press.

See also

• Byzantine-Bulgarian Wars
• Latin-Bulgarian Wars