Family, Marriage and Children

The family was simultaneously a household, a working community, and the individual’s most reliable source of support. Kinship offered particular protection to dependent people in a society marked by insecurity and strict hierarchy. The evidence, however, is uneven: laws describe prescribed conduct, saints’ lives offer moral models, chronicles are chiefly concerned with rulers, and archaeology permits only approximate conclusions about ordinary families.

Rural households probably most often contained four to six people. One basis for estimates is provided by grain pits known as rupi, which were sometimes dug directly into sunken-floored houses. The largest could hold about 2.2 tonnes of grain, while smaller ones held roughly one tonne. If annual consumption is set at about 300 kilograms per person, this would suggest families of four to seven members, but such calculations are uncertain: a pit was not always full, and the assumed food allowance is a modern reconstruction. Fourteenth-century documents also record extended households. At Radolivo, for example, parents, married sons, sons-in-law, and their children sometimes lived under one roof, although newly married couples more commonly appear to have established a separate home.

Urban families were probably larger. A workshop required more labour, and journeymen and apprentices were often counted as members of the master’s household. Married sons of craftsmen might also remain with their parents until they obtained a workshop of their own. A figure of approximately eight to ten people per urban household has been proposed for Tarnovo, but it is not based on a complete census. Even ruling families rarely exceeded about ten surviving children and parents: Ivan Asen II had six daughters and two sons by three marriages, while Ivan Alexander had five sons and four daughters by two wives.

The household was headed by the domovladika, the man who represented the family and controlled its property. Full legal capacity in property matters was acquired relatively late, at about twenty-four or twenty-five, which kept sons who married young under paternal authority. A father’s social status could also pass to his descendants. The law gave the household head powers that now appear extreme, including the ability to sell a child. After his death, this authority might be exercised by his widow. In the twelfth century, Dobrana “gave” her child to a priest in return for a field, wheat, and specified quantities of cotton and linen cloth. The fourteenth-century Rila Charter of Ivan Shishman likewise lists the priest Tudor and his children among the people granted to the monastery.

Children were expected to show unconditional respect for their elders. Didactic writings urged them to obey parents and old people, speak with restraint, and avoid contradiction even after establishing households of their own. Parents also decided whether a child would study or take part in domestic and agricultural work. The Life of Cosmas of Zograph gives seven as the age for beginning to read and write in Bulgarian. The Life of Philothea mentions the age of six, but this example more probably reflects Byzantine school practice.

Schools were chiefly attached to churches and monasteries, although the Life of Romylos of Vidin also allows for the existence of a private lay teacher. Not every church maintained a school, even in a city with many churches such as Tarnovo. Royal children probably received court instruction: a Byzantine chronicle reports that after Kaloyan’s death, the young Ivan Asen II fled to the Cumans together with his tutor. The earlier rule of Bachkovo Monastery reveals another model: six pupils received food and clothing, in return undertaking to enter the clergy after completing their studies.

Elementary instruction began with a pinakida, a small tablet on which the letters were displayed. Its other side was coated with wax and written on with a bone or metal stylus. The pointed end scratched the characters, while the flat end smoothed the wax and erased the writing. The alphabet was memorised aloud, both forwards and backwards. When reading, children first pronounced the names of the letters, then the syllables, and only finally the complete word. Under this old method, even a short word became a slow sequence of separate vocal steps.

In the second half of the fourteenth century, Patriarch Euthymius was associated with the introduction of a more phonetic teaching method, in which a letter was pronounced by its sound rather than its full name. Constantine of Kostenets believed that this system could teach a child to read and identify correct church texts within a year. After the alphabet and syllabic reading came abbreviations, ligatures—letters joined into single signs—and calligraphy. The principal schoolbooks were the Psalter and the Book of Hours, whose contents were learned through questions, answers, and explanations. The first educational cycle lasted approximately three years.

The teacher was expected not merely to transmit knowledge but to shape the pupils’ Christian worldview. Experience, persistence, and the ability to explain were highly valued. Instructions recommended correcting children with words rather than with a rod, but this was a moral prescription and does not prove that corporal punishment was absent. The claim that Euthymius introduced a monitorial system, in which advanced pupils helped teach younger ones, is not supported by medieval testimony.

Traces of teaching survive in Tarnovo’s churches. In the Church of St Peter and St Paul, the letters A, V, G, D, and E were scratched with titla—lines above the letters marking their numerical values from one to five. Because the inscription is low above the floor, the column may have served as a teaching board. The columns of the Church of the Forty Holy Martyrs bear triangles, rhombuses, and squares. These may have been visual examples for geometry or exercises connected with masonry, but their purpose remains uncertain. Instruction in numbers was probably intertwined with ideas about the special significance of seven, nine, and forty.

More able pupils and future clerics continued at monastic schools, where they read and interpreted theological texts and studied church music, Greek, and calligraphy. Urban inscriptions show that basic literacy was not limited to the clergy: potters, builders, stonecutters, coppersmiths, and weavers left names, monograms, openings of prayers, and sometimes longer texts. The hundreds of inscriptions from Tarnovo and the finds from Cherven demonstrate widespread practical literacy, but the suggestion that nearly 30 per cent of the capital’s population could read and write is probably too high. Only three women’s names occur among the Tarnovo signatures, suggesting that girls rarely attended school. This is strong evidence, but it does not justify the conclusion that literate women were entirely absent.

Outside school, children played with simple objects made from clay, bone, and discarded materials. Finds include small clay marbles, wheels made from the bottoms of broken vessels, sheep knucklebones or astragals, miniature spindle whorls, and hollow rattles containing pellets. Girls probably used the small spindles to practise spinning, while smoothed pottery fragments served in games resembling hopscotch. One literary text mentions a children’s prank in which inflated animal bladders were burst behind adults. In winter, children skated on horse bones secured with straps. A small clay loaf in a dish, bearing a child’s fingerprints, was also found at Tsarevets. It has sometimes been connected with the famine during the siege of 1393, but that dramatic interpretation cannot be established from the object alone.

Church law permitted boys to marry after the age of fifteen and girls after thirteen. Because they were so young, the parents usually had the decisive voice. They might select a daughter-in-law during a church service, while young people could meet at a communal dance, spring, or well. Courtship there might involve drinking from a girl’s water vessel, taking her flowers, or making other conspicuous gestures. Law codes also recognised the abduction of girls, but treated it as an offence rather than as the usual path to marriage.

Betrothals could be arranged when children were only seven or eight. Among rulers, they functioned as diplomatic agreements and were sometimes concluded even earlier. Elena, daughter of Ivan Asen II, was not yet three when she was promised to the Latin emperor Baldwin II; subsequent political changes repeatedly rearranged her marital future. In 1355, eight-year-old Keratsa, daughter of Ivan Alexander, was betrothed to the Byzantine heir Andronikos Palaiologos. Their age required special ecclesiastical permission, and the future union was presented as a means of joint resistance to the Ottomans.

A prospective wife was expected to display chastity, modesty, obedience, and diligence. Gregory Tsamblak relates that when Metropolitan Cyprian arrived in Tarnovo, even girls who did not normally appear in a crowd came out to see him. This may indicate restrictions on women’s public presence or the use of face coverings, but the exact custom is unclear. Ideals of beauty favoured a light complexion, rosy cheeks, large eyes, a slender figure, and a long braid. A drawing on a vessel from Tsarevets shows a woman with an almond-shaped eye and a thick braid, while a miniature in the Tomic Psalter depicts a richly dressed girl spinning. The ability to prepare her own dowry demonstrated that a young woman could manage a household. In men, tall stature, strength, courage, and nobility of character were praised, although chronicles frequently exaggerated the physical qualities of their heroes.

Marriage was forbidden between relatives within seven degrees and between people linked through baptism or godparenthood. A violation was treated as incest, and the laws prescribed severe bodily punishment. Marriage to heretics, pagans, or Jews was also prohibited unless the non-Christian partner accepted baptism. This was done by Sarah, a Jewish woman of Tarnovo who took the name Theodora before marrying Ivan Alexander. Rulers, however, could disregard restrictions: Ivan Asen II married Irene, daughter of Theodore Komnenos, despite ecclesiastical objections concerning a kinship impediment.

The Orthodox Church regarded marriage as lifelong and permitted divorce only on specified grounds. These included adultery, heresy, an attempt on a spouse’s life, leprosy, persistent impotence established during the first three years, and serious drunkenness. Mental illness was not accepted as sufficient cause. A second marriage was tolerated as a concession to human weakness, a third was permitted only exceptionally, and a fourth was categorically forbidden. Patriarch Euthymius strictly defended the unique purity of the first marriage, although he acknowledged that a blessed third union was a lesser evil than unregulated cohabitation. Aristocrats and rulers often found ways around these rules. George I Terter, for example, was barred from church until he restored his first wife.

Marriage law was considerably harsher toward women. A husband who caught his wife with a lover could kill both without prosecution; if he knowingly tolerated her infidelity, he himself risked public beating and exile. Adulterers might be paraded almost naked on donkeys, and in winter they were sometimes immersed in a river. Such punishments demonstrate both ecclesiastical efforts to control sexuality and the assumption that the honour of the household depended above all on the wife’s behaviour.

Evidence for ordinary wedding ceremonies is limited, but feasting, food, and drink clearly played an important part. At his wedding to the daughter of a Byzantine aristocrat, the Bulgarian lord Dobromir Chrysos celebrated and ate abundantly, while his bride observed a restrained Byzantine court etiquette. Her refusal to join in angered him and reveals a clash between different aristocratic customs. Marriages were normally contracted within the same social estate. Ivaylo’s union with Empress Maria was an exceptional case, while marriage between a free and a dependent person was more likely to lower the free partner’s status than to liberate the dependent one.

Rulers’ daughters were important instruments of foreign policy. A daughter of George I Terter was married to the Tatar prince Chaka, while around 1371 Kera Tamara, daughter of Ivan Alexander, was sent to Sultan Murad I. Bulgarian memory praised her for retaining her Christian faith and interceding for her people. Other Bulgarian princesses entered the courts of Byzantium, Serbia, Hungary, Bosnia, and Poland. Elena of Bulgaria, sister of Ivan Alexander and wife of Stefan Dušan, participated actively in Serbian politics and was known for her speeches and advice, although her actions did not always coincide with Tarnovo’s interests.

Childlessness was regarded as both a personal misfortune and a dynastic danger. Elena of Bulgaria remained without an heir for six years after marrying Stefan Dušan, and the Serbian court even discussed a new marriage for the ruler. The birth of a son secured her position. Chronicles also describe passions at the Tarnovo court: Kaloyan’s wife was accused of offering her love to the captive Baldwin I; Ivan Asen II fell in love with the captive Irene; and Ivan Alexander abandoned his first wife for Sarah-Theodora. The principal marriages and kinship ties are historically attested, but romantic motives, secret letters, and personal intentions often come from partisan or late narratives and must be treated with caution.