Монархија или тетрархија
Monarchy or Tetrarchy

Summary/Abstract: The paper is about the government of the Macedonian Empire or Samuel’s State in the first years of its creation toTsar Samuel’s coming to power. In the historiography from the XVII century to the second half of the XIX century and until 1908 it was considered that there has been a monarchical principle of government, and that David under the principle of primogeniture was the first tsar. In 1908 the medievalist B. Prokic imposed the thesis that the four Cometopuli, David, Moses, Aaron, and Samuel had common government under the cooperative principle of tetrarchy. This Prokic’snationalist thesis in the period when Serbia became a kingdom, was adopted in the Bulgarian historiography by V. N. Zlatarski. From 1962, and particularly after 1969 also from the young Macedonian historiography of S. Antoljak. In 1981 it was outlined that probably David, asthe eldest brother, had the leading role in the state, that the principle of primogeniture has been honored, which was somehow addressed as some criticism of Prokic’s thesis. At the end of the XX andin particular in the first two decades of the XXI century there was serious criticism of the tetrarchy principle of governance, whereasthe efforts of the monarchist principle of governance intensified, which is a bit imprecise also in the Macedonian historiography. A contribution tothe thesis of the tetrarchy principle of governance is the imprecision of the contemporary sources that have not considered this issue, unlike the church books and the sources of the revival that suggest that David was tsar, and therefore, he was artistically representedin the copperplate engravingsand in the church frescoes. Thus, Prokic’s thesis about some cooperative government or tetrarchy of the Comitopuli had to make way for the monarchy, as a normal principle of governance,where the principle of primogeniture of power has been strictly respected, that is David, as the eldest brother of the four Comitopuli was a tsar, or self-proclaimed tsar.

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