Sofia Psalter of Ivan Alexander
1337
Also known as: Song-book of Ivan Alexander
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
Text and translation
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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.
Further information
No further notes have been added yet.
Description
- Date
- 1337
- Language
- Middle Bulgarian
- Script
- Uncial
- Material
- Parchment
- Held at
- SS Cyril and Methodius National Library
- Place
- Sofia
- Shelfmark
- НБКМ 2