A psalter copied for Ivan Alexander in the first years of his reign, with a portrait of the tsar and his first family.
The object
Folio with the portrait of Ivan Alexander
Text and translation
From the eulogy
Original — Middle Bulgarian
пѣснь кънѧземъ, Господа при давшааго намъ великааго воеводѫ… Іѡана Алеѯандра
Translation
a song to the princes, of the Lord who gave us the great voivode … Ivan Alexander
Note: The eulogy goes on to record the tsar seizing fortified towns, "and Bdin, and the whole Danube land, as far as the Morava" — which is how a psalter became a principal source for the extent of Belaur's revolt. Ivan Alexander is styled великъ воевода, great voivode, a military epithet rather than a dynastic one.
Why it matters
Ivan Alexander's first book, made six years into a reign he had taken by coup. It is an ornamental manuscript rather than an illuminated one — well laid out, but without the miniature cycles of the three great codices he commissioned later.
Its value is documentary. The eulogy written into it records the tsar seizing fortified towns, "and Bdin, and the whole Danube land, as far as the Morava" — the clearest surviving statement of how far the revolt of his uncle Belaur reached, and of how it was put down. A psalter is thus one of the main sources for a civil war.
