The royal charters

The charters issued by the Bulgarian tsars in favour of monasteries are extremely valuable sources for the medieval history of Bulgaria. They are a kind of encyclopaedia for the organisation of state power, for the tax system, for the judicial system, for the obligations of dependent people towards feudal lords and monasteries. In this sense, it could be said that the charters, as state-legal acts, have not been sufficiently deciphered as a source for understanding the complex social, economic, and political processes, relating also to the everyday life of the common man, and which could enrich our conception of all that we are accustomed to defining by the term Bulgarian Middle Ages.

Here an attempt has been made, so to speak, to "untie" the charters and to expand our knowledge of the life of the medieval Bulgarian, who, at least to some extent, still seems to remain an enigma.

Starting from the understanding that the charters are the most valuable domestic monuments for revealing not only the feudal relations in the Bulgarian lands but also the spirit of the medieval era, dominated by the dogma of Eastern Orthodoxy and the conception of the divine origin of power, we decided to offer a comprehensive edition of these remarkable monuments of the Bulgarian past, and in order for them to "speak," to provide them with a thorough commentary based also on the latest research in the field of medieval studies. The number of Bulgarian royal charters, as can be judged from direct and indirect evidence, was quite large, since every ruler felt obliged, driven by statesmanlike and moral motives, to endow, by virtue of a deeply rooted tradition, churches and monasteries. Due to the turbulent and often tragic fate of the Bulgarian lands, the following charters have reached us: the Vatopedi chrysobull of Ivan Asen II (1230), the Dubrovnik chrysobull of Ivan Asen II, the Virgin chrysobull of Konstantin-Asen Tih (between 1257-1277), the Zograf chrysobull of Ivan Alexander (1342), the chrysobull of Ivan Stefan from 1343, the Mrachka chrysobull of Ivan Alexander (1347), the Venetian chrysobull and the three Meselvria chrysobulls of the same ruler, the Rila chrysobull of Ivan Shishman (1378), and the Vitosha chrysobull of the same tsar (before 1382). To these charters can, and justifiably, be added the sigillion of despot Alexius Slav, given to the Melnik monastery "St. Bogoroditsa Spileotisa" (1220), since at that time despot Slav had the status of an independent ruler.

Ventseslav NACHEV