Zograf Charter of Ivan Alexander
1342
A confirmation of the Bulgarian monastery of Zograf's possessions on Mount Athos and in Bulgaria.
The object
No facsimile has been added to this entry yet.
Text and translation
No passage has been transcribed and translated for this entry yet.
Why it matters
A forgery, and useful precisely for that. The document is not an authentic act of Ivan Alexander, but it was made by someone who knew how a Bulgarian chancery wrote and what a Bulgarian court looked like, and it preserves vocabulary that survives nowhere else — including the purely Bulgarian word чертог for the royal chamber.
It also belongs to a group of texts — with the Rila charter, the Mesembria charter, the colophons in the Manasses Chronicle and the genealogical tree at Matejče — through which the chancery and unnamed men of letters advanced Ivan Alexander's descent as an ideological weapon.
Further information
Its authenticity is not in question among specialists: it is described in the literature straightforwardly as the false Zograf chrysobull. The interest lies in what a forger thought a Bulgarian royal charter should contain.
Description
- Date
- 1342
- Held at
- Zograf Monastery, Mount Athos