Към въпроса за култа на княз Борис-Михаил в средновековна България
The Question of the Cult of Prince Boris-Michael in Medieval Bulgaria

Summary/Abstract: The article expresses an attitude to the controversy on the existence of a cult of the Bulgarian ruler and Christianizer Boris-Michael. A review is made of all the sources that are believed to provide some information on the question and all the sources that are believed to provide some information on the question and all the available historiography. Proceeding from the fact that some of the examined monuments: one of the letters of Patriarch Nicholas Mysticus to King Simeon, two lives by the Archbishop of Ohrid Theophylact – of the 15 martyrs of Tiberiupolis and the Detailed Life of Clement of Ohrid, as well as the well-known image of the Bulgarian Prince in a copy of the “Exegetic Homilies on the Gospel” by Constantine of Preslav, contain information that his cult was developed, it is assumed that very early, probably at the time of King Simeon, he was canonized as a saint. On the basis of other monuments, such as the Synodikon of the Bulgarian Church (“Boril’s Synodikon”) where, however, Boris-Michael is not mentioned as a saint, it is presumed that his cult was shortlived and faded soon. Assumption are made about the causes for that, both on an ideological and a formal level: the loss of Bulgaria’s state independence, the shifting of the state centre to the western parts of the Kingdom and some changes of the typikons. Among these causes a priority one emerges: the absorption of the cult of Boris-Michael by the greater and stronger cult of his Christian patron - Archangel Michael.

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