January 1220
Also known as: Spelaiotissa Sigillion
The oldest charter in the corpus: the act by which Alexius Slav, ruling in his own right from Melnik, endowed the monastery of St Mary Spelaiotissa that he had founded there.
It is included among the Bulgarian royal charters on the strength of its author's standing: in 1220 Alexius Slav held Melnik as an independent lord, a nephew of the Asen tsars who ruled the south-west as his own principality. His sigillion therefore shows a Bulgarian-sphere ruler acting with full sovereign authority — founding a monastery, endowing it with land, and granting it immunity — a generation before the great imperial chrysobulls.
It is also the clearest window in the corpus onto Melnik itself: a wealthy, cosmopolitan town whose Greek-speaking elite, many of them refugees from Latin-held Plovdiv, set the intellectual tone that led Slav to have his charter drawn up in Greek rather than Bulgarian.
The document is written in Greek — then the language of international dealings — which suits Melnik's largely Greek civic elite. Diplomatically it is a lesser, not fully solemn act, but drawn up to every requirement of Byzantine chancery practice by a trained scribe. It survives because a copy was found in the Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos; the text used here follows the edition of Iv. Duychev (Из старата българска книжнина II, 1944). The signature was entered in black ink — imperial charters used red — and the pendant seal of the Melnik ruler was later lost or stolen.
On this text: A synopsis in our own words, following the act's own order. The Greek text is edited in Iv. Duychev, Из старата българска книжнина II (1944), pp. 30–35.
It opens by contrasting those who chase transient things with those who love the house of God: quoting the Psalmist and the promise “I will glorify those who glorify me,” it frames the endowment as a lasting spiritual gain.
Having moved his seat from Chepino to Melnik, Slav built the monastery of St Mary Spelaiotissa and gave it the village of Katunitsa with its people, to hold in full and for ever, together with a garden in Zagoria and sacred books, icons, vessels and livestock.
At the monks' request neither the bishop nor the praktor (the tax-officer) may enter the village or the house to demand levies, billeting, cartage (angaria) or any other due; the bishop may come only if summoned by the monks, to judge a matter and leave without taking anything.
The charter directs that after Slav's death the house be named a royal (imperial) monastery, dependent on the ruler's own person; a bishop who is not his kinsman may claim no hereditary right in it, and the abbacy is to pass by the monks' own choice.
A curse falls on anyone — noble, bishop, boyar, monk or layman — who dares undo the grant. It was signed and sealed and given to the monastery in the month of January, eighth indiction, in the year 1220, “written and signed, Alexius Despot Slav.”
