Rila Charter of Ivan Shishman
21 September 1378
A donation charter confirming the estates of Rila Monastery — the only Bulgarian royal charter that survives as a physical original.
The object
Text and translation
No passage has been transcribed and translated for this entry yet.
Why it matters
Every other Bulgarian royal charter reaches us through a copy, a translation, or a foreign archive. This one is the parchment itself, with the tsar's seal still attached — fifteen years before Tarnovo fell.
Because it is an original it can be used for things copies cannot support: the hand, the formulary, the chancery's Latin-influenced layout, the exact wording of the imperial title. It also lists the monastery's villages and boundaries one by one, which makes it a map of landholding in the Rila valley as much as a legal act.
Further information
With the Zograf charter, the Mesembria charter, the colophons in the Manasses Chronicle and the genealogical tree at Matejče, it belongs to the group of texts through which Ivan Shishman's line advanced its descent as an ideological argument for its right to the throne.
Description
- Date
- 21 September 1378
- Language
- Middle Bulgarian
- Material
- Parchment, with pendant seal
- Held at
- Rila Monastery
- Place
- Rila