Bulgaria Mediaevalis
Bulgaria Mediaevalis is an international journal for Medieval Bulgarian and Byzantine Studies. Four main sections are to be outlined in the series: Studia, Fontes, Recensiones, Bibliographia.
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Bulgaria Mediaevalis is an international journal for Medieval Bulgarian and Byzantine Studies. Four main sections are to be outlined in the series: Studia, Fontes, Recensiones, Bibliographia.
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The book "Byzance, la Bulgarie, les Balkans" is a collection of more than 70 selected works, devoted on the Byzantine Empire, Bulgaria and the Balkans in the Middle Ages of the eminent doyen of Byzantine and medieval studies prof. Vasilka Tapkova-Zaimova. The collection includes articles published during the period 1979-2009 and is a kind of continuation of the issued in 1979 work "Byzance et les Balkans a partir du VIe siecle" by renowned London Publishing House "Variorum Reprints".
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The present study is dedicated to a particular Bulgarian commodity, which gained vast popularity in the Middle Ages and was of high regard on markets in Europe, Asia and Africa – the Zagora wax, i.e. the wax, made in Bulgaria. The instances when it was mentioned in written records in the period between the 14th and the beginning of the 16th century have been traced out. An attempt has been made to study the fluctuations in its current market price of that time in Genoa, Venice, Florence, Damascus and Constantinople. The various names and designations it went under, as noted down in the records, have been systematically revised and placed together in a chronological chart. In the appendix applied to the study, there is a bulk of published documents, taken out mainly from the Datini archive in Prato (Italy): lading bills of ships, carrying goods from Romania (Kaffa, Tana, Constantinople, Negroponte, Modon, Coron and Corfu), along with price-lists for vendibles on offer at various market-places (Avignon, Alexandria, Venice, Genoa and Damascus). The aim of this very issue is, on the one hand, to mark the spot where wax made on the list of commodities, exported to Italy and Western Europe, and on the other – to register both the value and the demand for Zagora wax on the markets. By way of exemplification, facsimile reproductions of assorted documentation, as well as a photograph of the sculpture representation of Francesco di Marco Datini (1335–1410) have been applied to the study. The study makes a contribution mostly to the history of economics in Bulgaria, the Balkans and Europe in-between the 14th–15th centuries. It demonstrates the part cera Zagora had in the spread of popularity of Bulgaria of repute.
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In the initial stages of preparation for the 22nd International Congress of Byzantine Studies, the Organizing Committee consulted with the National Committees. Out of those consultations there emerged the five main themes around which the roundtable discussions have been constructed. These are: Philology, Palaeography, Codicology; Archaeology and History; History of Art and Music; Theology and Philosophy; Economy, Politics, Urban Life. From the themes proposed there emerged thirty-nine round-table sessions. Nearly five hundred scholars from all over the world have so far submitted the abstracts for their papers to be discussed in the round-table sessions. The abstracts are presented in this volume. Similar to the plenary-papers volume, this volume displays little, if any, editorial interference with the texts. Please note that RT stands for “Round Table”: this abbreviation appears before each consecutive number in the Congress Program.
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The present volume contains a diverse collection of more than 500 abstracts of free communications and posters presented at the 22nd International Congress of Byzantine Studies. As readers will realize, the forty Congress sessions have been constructed so as to include eminent scholars with substantial experience along with young and upcoming researchers striving to establish themselves in their respective fields. The arrangement of the abstracts follows the structure of the Congress program as put together under the supervision of Vassil Gjuzelev, President of the Organizing Committee. Considerable assistance, during his visit to Sofia in early April 2011, was also provided by Peter Schreiner, President of the International Association for Byzantine Studies, to whom we extend our sincere gratitude. The title of each session is prefixed by the letters FC (“Free Communications”) followed by the number of the respective session. The texts are reproduced with minimal editorial amendments and reflect the personal style and preferences of their authors.
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The main theme of the congress, Byzantium without borders, aims at exploring the role of this great empire in the medieval world and its undiminished contemporary significance. Th e Congress program was designed so as to encourage the presentation of research in both traditional and novel areas. Th e participants’ contributions were arranged in seven plenary sessions and more than eighty associated round tables and panels of free communications, displaying an amazing variety of directions of research. All papers, submitted to the Organizing Committee in time, were published in advance and so we have now a fine collection of three volumes, containing the plenary papers, the abstracts of papers for the round-table discussions, as well as the free-communication abstracts.
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The monograph analyzes the basic thematic entities, the demographic and financial data, as well as the topography of the estates described in 12 genuine (dated from 980 to 1279) and 2 falsified (presumably dating from 1049 and 1142 but actually composed in about 1583—1586 and after 1267) acts, which are presently kept in the archive of the Bulgarian Athonite monastery of Zographou. An attempt is made at illustrating most of the affairs discussed in Zographou archival charters with maps adequate in precision to the data provided by the documents. The philological and historical analysis of the acts is supported by a new, critical edition of the original texts, which is based on photographs available in the Central State Archive of Bulgaria.
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Instead of a short abstract, please refer to the PDF-files of the introduction to the book, its table of content and the sample-PDF (in English), which, each of them, you can download for free from here. We hope you'll get through these files a more comprehensive impression about the book than would be provided by just a few lines of an abstract / summary.
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The presentation and analysis of the evidence about the Bulgarian society, lifestyle and culture in the hagiography from the thirteenth through the fifteenth century give diverse types of information that refers to different areas. The strong idealization of the lives of saints, propagated political ideology and the great number of legendary motifs make it difficult to discern what is real in the hagiographic texts. This does not affect their value as sources of information; it just requires that they be used with the necessary attention due to the specifics of this type of works. They are undoubtedly rich in evidence about the spiritual world of the Bulgarians, curious details of their everyday life, and especially in information that we can derive for the Bulgarian society, the attitude towards certain social groups, their functions and position. Hagiography definitely deserves a place at least as an additional source for the medieval Bulgarian history, although there are issues such as education and religious life, for example, where hagiographic works should be considered primary sources par excellence. The evidence derived from the hagiographic literature in this book by no means exhausts all the topics one can find data about in it. It contains also information about political events, about the economy of monasteries, as well as data about towns and villages. Collecting and summarizing this information can reveal interesting new details from the Bulgarian history and can be of help when dealing with other sources.
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Instead of a short abstract, please refer to the PDF-files of the introduction to the book, its table of content and the sample-PDF (in English) which, each of them, you can download for free from here. We hope you'll get through these files a more comprehensive impression about the book than would be provided by just a few lines of an abstract / summary.
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This book is the fruit of many years of research on the social organization in 14th-century Bulgaria and its composition. The information collected makes it possible for the reader to get an idea of the horizontal and vertical structure of society, the ties that created it as a community. The book contains prosopographical catalogue that includes the names of 507 individuals. Its data build a realistic notion of those in power, those who ruled the country and fought to protect others; of ecclesiastics and monks; of the people who created the culture of the Bulgarians and at the same time were part of the institutions; of those who fed others with their work; of the people outside society – the dissidents.
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Instead of a short abstract, please refer to the PDF-files of the introduction to the book, its table of content and the sample-PDF (in English) which, each of them, you can download for free from here. We hope you'll get through these files a more comprehensive impression about the book than would be provided by just a few lines of an abstract / summary.
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This book offers an overall research on the history of mediaeval Bulgarian women trying to encompass all aspects of life over the whole period of existence of Bulgaria during the Middle Ages. The first chapter of the book is devoted to the task of revealing as much thoroughly as possible the mediaeval model about the woman, about her place and role in society, the term ideological model constituting the combination of religious, ethic, social and political and esthetical notions, concepts and ideas about women characteristic for the mediaeval Bulgarian society. All data about women’s rights and obligations that can be found in mediaeval Bulgarian legal sources are thoroughly analyzed in the second chapter of the book. The peculiarities of the sources revealed and the goals set to be achieved in the first two chapters of the book define the main aim of the last part, which is to try to reveal the real presence of women in the economic, religious and political life in mediaeval Bulgaria.
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Instead of a short abstract, please refer to the PDF-files of the introduction to the book, its table of content and the sample-PDF, which, each of them, you can download for free from here. We hope you'll get through these files a more comprehensive impression about the book than would be provided by just a few lines of an abstract / summary.
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The present title is an attempt to outline the relations, which the Papacy had with the Bulgarians in a rather continuous period of time – since they first established contacts in the middle of the ninth century up to the role of the Roman Church in the aftermath of the Ottoman invasion in the Bulgarian lands. The book has been divided into three parts. In the first part of the book, the history of the Papacy in the Middle Ages – from the foundation of the Roman episcopate to the dealings of the Renaissance Popes in the second half of the fifteenth century – has been retraced chronologically. The written account is structured along verified sources and reliable historic works of affluent church historians, combined along with general overview on the history of Byzantium and its dealings with apostolic Rome. The second part represents the core of the book; the particular aspects of the links that Bulgaria maintained with the Papacy in the Middle Ages, from the ninth up to the fifteenth century, as well as the various historic periods, have been analyzed there. The research is based on published, as well as unpublished or rather obscure sources. A considerable stress has been placed on those particular stages in times (the second half of the ninth century; the first half of the thirteenth century) when a possibility had arisen for a firm affiliation of Bulgaria to the Roman Church. In the third part, there are translated versions of various documents and narrative sources, which to a great extent illustrate the account, given in the second part of the book. The sources, cited in this section offer a viable opportunity for further research, and because of this they could be considered as an adequate prospect of on-going studies and consequential work on fascinating problem matter of the sort.
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Instead of a short abstract, please, refer to the PDF-files of the introduction to the book, its table of content and the sample-PDF which, each of them, you can download for free from here. We hope you'll get through this files a more comprehensive impression about the book than would be provided by just a few lines of an abstract / summary.
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Instead of a short abstract, please, refer to the PDF-files of the introduction to the book, its table of content and the sample-PDF which, each of them, you can download for free from here. We hope you'll get through this files a more comprehensive impression about the book than would be provided by just a few lines of an abstract / summary.
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Instead of a short abstract, please, refer to the PDF-files of the introduction to the book, its table of content and the sample-PDF which, each of them, you can download for free from here. We hope you'll get through this files a more comprehensive impression about the book than would be provided by just a few lines of an abstract / summary.
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Instead of a short abstract, please refer to the PDF-files of the introduction to the book, its table of content and the sample-PDF, which, each of them, you can download for free from here. We hope you'll get through these files a more comprehensive impression about the book than would be provided by just a few lines of an abstract / summary.
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Instead of a short abstract, please refer to the PDF-files of the introduction to the book, its table of content and the sample-PDF (in English) which, each of them, you can download for free from here. We hope you will get through these files a more comprehensive impression about the book than would be provided by just a few lines of an abstract / summary.
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The present collection comprises 73 medieval documents from the period between 716–1509 of various origins (Bulgarian, Byzantine, Ragusian, Genoese, German, Hungarian, Venetian, etc). They represent a great variety of sub-genres, sizes, as well as contents: ledgers, contracts and statute-books, notary and written agreements, labour contracts, sales certificates, price-lists, trade manuals, wages- sheets, receipts, etc. What they have in common is the fact they all belong to the business documentation of the Middle Ages. This collection of documents is a representation of the tangible and actual history in the utmost degree. Its significance from the point of view of a historical source is paramount since it is remarkable for its impartiality, authenticity and credibility. It is because of that it can be considered as being thoroughly reliable. The collection in question, apart from being meant to disclose the role of both accounting and the actual, as well as tangible consideration to the history of the Bulgarian and European Middle Ages, also communicates a number of activities, phenomena and processes to have taken place in the economic and commercial history. All too often, the documents it contains also come off as the most credible source of information for a number of events and activities making up the military and political, as well as diplomatic history. It also gives an idea of the currency units, length, weight and capacity measures, items of commerce, commodity circulation, and the dynamics of the economic relations. The book comes with a study on the accountancy and trade ledgers, introductory notes for each and every document, annotations, as well as a thesaurus. The editor hopes that medievalists and historians dealing with economics and commerce of the Middle Ages will benefit from its publication for it provides suitable, as well as reliable means to a fruitful and honest scientific research.
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