Messengers and communications

This general designation encompasses various officials involved in carrying information and travelling between the ruler’s centre and the provinces. The evidence comes mainly from the protective formulas of chrysobulls—rulers’ charters authenticated with a gold seal—which exempted particular monasteries and estates from interference by specified officials. These texts mention apokrisiarioi, izgonchii, and nakhodnitsi. The surviving list is undoubtedly incomplete and cannot be treated as a full record of the communications administration of the Second Bulgarian Empire.

The sources do not reveal the service’s chain of command, internal hierarchy, or precise division of responsibilities. Nor is it known how communications were coordinated with road maintenance, local government, and the central administration. Some of the terminology and documentary formulas are Greek, but this is insufficient to reconstruct a directly adopted Byzantine postal organization or to define how Bulgarian practice differed from it. Mounted military units may have helped carry messages and provide replacement animals along the route, but there is not enough evidence for a securely attested network of relay stations.

The inclusion of these officials in protective clauses shows that their duties could impose burdens on the population. They probably did not collect regular taxes, but while travelling they could demand transport, animals, food, fodder, and lodging. Charters therefore placed them alongside fiscal and other officials whose access to exempt estates was restricted. The communications system consequently depended not only on specialist messengers but also on services owed by the communities along their routes.

One important obligation was the podklada, the compulsory provision of transport for state purposes. It served travelling officials and armies and probably also supported the carriage of taxes collected in kind. A charter of Stefan Dušan contains the phrase “prokoda poklisar,” associating a comparable transport obligation with an envoy. A charter of Mircea the Elder dated 11 May 1409 mentions podkoza and podklada, probably as related duties. The terms prokoda, pokoz, and ponos are also known in Serbia, while podklad, although attested there, appears to have been less characteristic. A similar Balkan practice survived into the Ottoman period under the name vozarlık.

Travelling officials could also benefit from psomozemia, an obligation to supply foodstuffs. Documents sometimes use this Greek term, while others list particular provisions such as bread, wine, and fodder. Another burden, the priselnitsa, comprised lodging and more general support for representatives of authority passing through a community. These obligations did not exist solely for the communications service: the army was the principal consumer of transport and supplies. Messengers nevertheless depended on the same system because their official duties required continual travel within the country or abroad.

A Mesembrian charter for the monastery of the Theotokos Eleousa contains the obscure Greek word “βάρξ.” Its position in a protective formula makes it possible that the word designated an official forbidden to trouble the monastery’s estates. Its proposed interpretations vary greatly, however, ranging from a person connected with payments or collections to a troublemaker or wanderer. The Greek text does not permit the secure reconstruction of an official title, so this piece of evidence must be treated with considerable caution.

No insignia, seals, or coins can be securely associated with these officials, and there is insufficient evidence to determine their rank. Documents of the Second Bulgarian Empire demonstrate the existence of several kinds of messengers and communications agents, but they provide no precise first or last date for the institution as a whole. Evidence from neighbouring states and the charter of 1409 demonstrates the longer survival of transport obligations, not necessarily the uninterrupted existence of a particular Bulgarian office. Because the sources are sparse, the organization of communications, the relationship between central and local authorities, and the possible connection with the mounted military establishment remain uncertain.