Kaloyan of Bulgaria - Alternate Titles

Alternate Titles

When referring to Kaloyan's realm and subjects, contemporary Crusader sources (including the works of Geoffroy de Villehardouin, Henri de Valenciennes, Robert de Clari) other contemporary sources (like that of William de Rubruquis and Roger Bacon's "Opus Maius"), as well as the letters of the Latin Emperor Henry of Flanders) represent Kaloyan as King of Wallachia, ruler of Wallachians and leader of Wallachian armies, and sometimes as ruler of Wallachians and Bulgarians. Such sources talk mostly of Wallachians and call Ioanitsa a Wallachian and "lord of Wallachians" (Blachorum domino).

Contemporary papal and native sources name Kaloyan ruler of (omnium) Bulgarorum atque Blachorum ("(all) Bulgarians and Wallachians"), of (totius) Bulgarie ac Blachie ("(all) Bulgaria and Wallachia"), or simply of Bulgaria/Bulgarians in the diplomatic exchange. Similarly, the head of the church (Archbishop Vasiliy of Tărnovo) is described as presiding over Bulgarorum et Blacorum Ecclesiam ("the Bulgarian and Wallachian Church").

The contemporary Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates alternates interchangeably between the terms Mysoi, Boulgaroi, and Blachoi for the people, preferring Mysia for the country, and Blachos for describing persons and language. It is inferred that geographically the medieval Wallachia in question (distinct from both Great Wallachia in Thessaly and the later Wallachia north of the Danube), overlaps with the former Roman province of Moesia Inferior (Greek Mysia, Choniates, 481), as distinct from the Byzantine theme of Bulgaria further west (Choniates, 488). This distinction is corroborated by a slightly earlier contemporary, the chronicler of the Third Crusade, who describes Kaloyan's predecessors as rulers "of the Wallachians and the greater part of the Bulgarians" (Blacorum et maxime partis Bulgarorum) in 1189 (Ansbert, 58).

The Byzantine historian from 13th century Theodor Scutariota named Kaloyan "the Bulgarian Ioan" or "Bulgarian basileus" and wrote about "Bulgarians", "Bulgarian land", "Bulgarian matters"; also he defined Ivan Asen I as "tsar of the Bulgarians". The same "probulgarian" point of view about the same persons and events was shared by several other Byzantine authors from 13th and 14th centuries like George Acropolites, George Pachymeres and Nicephorus Gregoras.

The native sources, written in Old Bulgarian language and used domestically, including the lead seals of the Bulgarian rulers from Ivan Asen I to Boril use the term "Emperor of the Bulgarians", as do the literary sources (for example the Synodik of Boril) together with the terms "Bulgarian land", and "Bulgarian tongue".

Roughly from the reign of Tsar Boril and already in the time of Tsar Ivan Asen II the names Wallachia, Wallachians and Wallachian totally disappeared from all historical sources, connected with the Second Bulgarian Empire. The subsequent native sources, all written in Old Bulgarian language, without exceptions treat the state as Bulgarian in the line of tsar's title of Ivan Asen II from his Turnovo's inscription from 1230 "In Christ the Lord good and faithful Tsar and autocrat of the Bulgarians, son of the old Asen", an inscription from Boyana Church from 1259 "This was written in the Bulgarian Empire under the pious and devout Tsar Constantine Asen" and one marginal note from 1269/70 "In the days of the faithful tsar Constantine, who ruled the Bulgarian throne". (Still more, the names Wallachia, Wallachians and Wallachian weren't mentioned by the earlier Byzantine authors like Michael Psellos, Anna Komnene and Michael Attaliata in similar context about the lands and population between the Danube and the Rhodope mountains. This historiographical situation narrows the usage of the "Vlach's terminology" in corresponding meanings for period of only two decades - between 1186 and 1207.)

The evidence of much later works involves various levels of contradictory inference. For example, the Venetian chronicle of Paolo Ramusio, finished in 1573 and printed in Italian and Latin from 1604 to 1634, states that Mysia (Moesia Inferior) was composed of the provinces of Wallachia and Bulgaria. The contemporary work of Mauro Orbini, Il Regno degli Slavi, published in Pesaro in 1601, cites similar sources but virtually ignores "Wallachians" and uses "Bulgarians" throughout. The "Vlach interpretation" was totally ignored also by the Franciscan monk Blasius Kleiner in his History of Bulgaria, written in 1761, and the Serbian historian Jovan Rajić in his History of Various Slav peoples and Especially of Bulgarians, Croats and Serbs, published in 1795. The same treatment was accepted also by the Bulgarian enlightener Paisiy Hilendarski in his Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya, written in 1762.

The modern implications of these names are ethnic and cultural rather than geographical, and they are fiercely disputed. Much can be conjectured from them concerning the Romance-speaking and Slavic-speaking populations over which Kaloyan ruled, the precise extent of his empire, and his own ethnic connections. These formulae and descriptions emphasise that his power drew on more than one source. He desired to link himself to the former Bulgarian Empire, stressing the Papal origins of his crown by claiming (perhaps with some accuracy), that the Papacy had granted an imperial crown to the rulers of the First Bulgarian Empire, as noted above. In his correspondence with him, Pope Innocent III suggested that Kaloyan was descended both from the emperors of the First Bulgarian Empire, and from the nobility of the city of Rome.

The academic tradition of interpretation of the wide use of the name "Vlachs" in this particular case as nothing more than a transient substitution and confusion of several medieval authors was affirmed in the second half of the 19th century by the Czech historian Konstantin Josef Jireček in his "History of the Bulgarians", first published in 1876, in which he ignored the idea of significant ethnic Vlach participation in these processes, and is supported by the contemporary Bulgarian medievalist and researcher of the Asens Ivan Bozhilov.