The titular character of the despot's dignity
In the Second Bulgarian Empire, the dignity of despot was the highest court title but not a permanent state office with administrative duties of its own. It is attested in a Bulgarian context in the first half of the thirteenth century, and its appearance moved the sebastokrator to second place in the hierarchy, although the title initially remained uncommon at the court of Tarnovo.
In medieval court titulature, “despot” meant the holder of an exalted dignity, not a ruler in the modern sense of the word. Its titular character lay in conferring rank and precedence at court without automatically carrying an administrative office. The dignity was introduced in Byzantium in 1163 and remained at the head of the hierarchy of titles until the empire ended in the fifteenth century. The Bulgarian evidence offers no reason to assume a different institutional principle.
The Byzantine treatise of Pseudo-Kodinos explicitly states that the despot, sebastokrator, and caesar “οὐδεμίαν ὑπερεσίαν ἔχουσιν”—held no office by virtue of their titles. They could separately be entrusted with a command, described by the expression “εἰς ἡγεμονίαν.” It is not entirely clear whether this refers specifically to military leadership or to command in a broader sense. Under either interpretation, however, the task was temporary and arose from a particular order of the ruler rather than from the dignity of despot itself. The same applies to other affairs of state that might be entrusted to a despot.
The adoption of the title in Bulgaria altered precedence at court: the despot occupied the first position, while the sebastokrator moved to second place. Suggestions that the sebastokrator ranked higher in the early thirteenth century, or that the two dignities were equal under Tsar Smilets, are not supported by the sources. Such a reversal would also be inconsistent with the stable Byzantine model from which the Bulgarian system derived.
The main dispute concerns a passage in the Synodikon, an ecclesiastical commemorative text listing people who were to be remembered. Despot Alexios Slav appears there after the sebastokrators Alexander and Strez. The order of names in such a memorial register is not an official table of ranks and does not demonstrate the superiority of the dignity of sebastokrator. The title of despot was most probably already known in the Bulgarian lands during the first half of the thirteenth century, although it was not yet customary at Tarnovo. The award of the lower title of sebastokrator to Alexander, a brother of the ruler, therefore does not indicate a reversed hierarchy.
A degree of precedence also existed among the despots themselves. Pseudo-Kodinos records that an emperor’s sons took precedence over his brothers and sons-in-law when they all held the dignity. This was probably a rule of court ceremonial rather than a division of the title into formally distinct grades. The Bulgarian evidence does not reveal a separate system of internal ranks among despots.
Detailed Byzantine descriptions of court ritual cannot be transferred mechanically to the court of Tarnovo. The Bulgarian tsars imitated the basileis, but Constantinopolitan ceremonial required numerous titled participants and considerable resources, for which the Bulgarian evidence is insufficient. Only two despots can be identified with relative confidence as residents of Tarnovo: Georgi Terter and Constantine, who was connected to the dynasty through his marriage to a daughter of Tsar Ivan Alexander. Because the surviving evidence is sparse, the participation of Bulgarian despots in court ceremonies cannot be reconstructed in detail.