June 1343
A charter of privileges granted to the Albanian town of Kruja by the deposed tsar Ivan Stefan, twelve years into his exile — the only charter of the corpus addressed to a town, and the only one issued far outside Bulgaria.
Ivan Stefan held the Bulgarian throne for barely a year (1330–1331) before he was deposed and driven into exile — yet this charter shows him still acting as a sovereign a dozen years later, granting privileges in 1343 to the Albanian town of Kruja from far outside Bulgaria. It is unique in the corpus in every respect: the only charter to a town rather than a monastery or a foreign power, the only one issued by an exiled ruler, and the only one that reached us by way of Naples and the Aragonese royal archives in Spain.
For all that, it is a working act of government. It confirms the people of Kruja in the ancient rights they held over their winter pastures, vineyards, olive groves and fisheries, frees them from the exactions of prefect, captain and castellan, and guarantees them trial before punishment — and in doing so it preserves a detailed map of the toponymy and rural economy of the Kruja district.
The charter survives only in a slightly Italianate Latin; its original, drawn up in Greek, is lost. It was first printed from the Latin by L. Thallóczy and identified for Bulgarian scholarship by Iv. Pechev in 1975. Its travels are extraordinary: Ivan Stefan probably carried it to the Kingdom of Naples, and through the Angevin and then Aragonese archives it passed to Spain by 1457. Its date is a copyist's blunder — the “year 7851” is a thousand years too many and resolves to 1343. To shore up his standing the exile invokes the emperors Manuel Komnenos and Laskaris, calling Laskaris “our grandfather”; no such kinship existed — the claim is a bid to present himself as a legitimate ruler and a pretender to the Bulgarian throne, in the medieval manner of manufacturing a pedigree.
On this text: A synopsis in our own words. On the charter's discovery and transmission see Iv. Pechev, „Грамота на цар Иван Стефан от 1343 г.“, Векове (1975), pp. 64–68.
The bishop of Kruja, his clergy and the town's notables set out the rights the town and its people had held from of old — over a long list of named winter pastures with their vineyards, olive groves, fisheries and lands, granted by earlier rulers going back to the emperors Manuel Komnenos and Laskaris. The tsar confirms them all, to be enjoyed freely and for ever.
No prefect, captain or castellan may demand of them any penalty, forced service (angaria), tax or toll (gabela); they owe no gabela anywhere they go, Durrës included; and no cartage of wood or other service may be exacted at the town gates, whether they enter or leave.
They may not be seized by those in power, but punished for any fault or suit only after a trial and inquiry; and none may do them wrong or hindrance, for the privilege is granted for their protection and untroubled peace.
Given in the month of June, eleventh indiction, in the year [miswritten 7851, for] 1343, and signed “Stefan, in Christ faithful king of the Bulgarians” — the title abbreviated and Latinized, but his own.
