Kastrophylax
The kastrophylax was a local official concerned with fortress defence and with the military responsibilities of the kephale. The office is attested in Bulgarian imperial charters, although the authenticity or dating of some of these documents is disputed. It probably entered the administration of the Second Bulgarian Empire in the fourteenth century during a reorganization of territorial government.
The title derives from the Greek καστροφύλαξ and may be translated as “guardian of a fortress.” It originally denoted the commander of a fortified place and, in the institution’s later development, the principal military deputy of the kephale. A kephale was the governor of a town or district, so the kastrophylax belonged to the local military-administrative hierarchy. The Bulgarian documents, however, do not describe his powers in detail.
The forms “КАСТРОФИЛАКЪ” and the plural “КАСТРОФИЛАЦИ” occur in two imperial charters. In the Virgin Charter, the office appears twice in lists of officials: once after the sebast, praktor, and knez, and once after the sebast and doux. In the Vitosha Charter, the kastrophylax stands immediately after the praktor among the subordinates of the kephale of Sredets. These positions suggest a significant local rank, but they do not reveal a fully fixed hierarchy of offices.
The Serbian evidence is likewise limited. A charter of King Milutin from 1300 contains the same sequence—“sebast–praktor–knez–kastrophylax”—as the Virgin Charter. This exact correspondence strengthens doubts about the Bulgarian chrysobull, a ruler’s charter authenticated with a gold seal, and raises the possibility that it was produced to support the later Serbian act. A kastrophylax named Dragoman is also known from the reign of Stefan Dušan. Kaloyan, recorded in Antonio Barberius’s account book as kastrophylax of Mesembria, was probably not a Bulgarian official. Because the dating of the Vitosha Charter is disputed, the safest conclusion is that the office appeared in Bulgaria during the fourteenth century and was connected with the consolidation of districts governed by kephalai. The surviving evidence does not show precisely when the institution disappeared.