FAMILY OF ASENIDS (1186-1460)

The Second Bulgarian Empire (Bulgarian: Vtorо Bălgarskо Tsartsvo) was a medieval Bulgarian state which existed between 1185 and 1396. A successor of the First Bulgarian Empire, it reached the peak of its power under Kaloyan and Ivan Asen II.

Up until 1256, the Second Bulgarian Empire was the dominant power in the Balkans. The Byzantines were defeated in several major battles, and in 1205 the newly established Latin Empire was crushed in the battle of Adrianople by Emperor Kaloyan. His nephew, Ivan Asen II (1218–1241), defeated the Despotate of Epiros and made Bulgaria a regional power once again. However, in the late 13th century the Empire declined under the constant invasions of Tatars, Byzantines, Hungarians, Serbs, and internal instability and revolts. After the empire was divided into several independent small kingdoms (Kingdom of Tarnovo, Kingdom of Vidin, Despotate of Dobruja) in the late 14th century, they were conquered by the Ottoman Empire.

Until recent a gold perpera was the only surviving gold coin, not only of a medieval Bulgarian monarch, but also of any Slavonic ruler of the period. One example was found in 1934 among other coins in the area of Prilep (contemporary Republic of Macedonia). It is now in the National Archaeological Museum of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Its weight is 4.33 g, the diameter is 33 mm, and it is made of 16 carat gold. The shape is slightly hollow. On one side Ivan Asen II and Saint Demetrius of Thessaloniki are depicted upright. With one of his hands the Saint gives the Emperor a sword and with the other he is placing a crown on Ivan Asen's head. The inscription is in Bulgarian and abbreviated, and says: "Ivan Asen, Tsar" and "Saint Dimitar". On the other side of the coin is depicted Christ Pantocrator. The inscription is "Jesus Christ, Tsar of the Glory". Due to similarities with the coins of Theodore Komnenos Doukas, it was presumed that the coin might have been minted in the Thessalonica mint, which was at the time under Bulgarian rule.

Year 2010 — A team of Bulgarian archaeologists discovered seven 13th-century gold coins in the northern city of Veliko Tarnovo. Archaeology professors Nikolay Ovcharov found the treasure while excavating the St. Petar and St. Paul Church in the medieval Bulgarian capital, on the Tsaravets Hill, which hosted the Bulgarian royal palaces back in the 1200s-1300s. The coins were discovered about 10 m away from the church at a depth of 40 cm in the ground. This is the largest golden treasure ever found in Veliko Tarnovo, which was the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185-1396). Each of the coins features an image of Virgin Mary on one side, and an image of Jesus Christ on the other. Even though they are dated back to the rule of Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Asen II (1218-1241) who was the first Bulgarian ruler to mint gold coins, the coins in question did not originate in Bulgaria.

Picture 1: As it is easy to amend artifacts of past glory, we checked for persistency of medieval coinage in our archive. Expert in Bulgarian Numismatics from first half of XX c. Nikola Moushmov didn't describe the gold perpera at hand. The coin was concealed in a private collection (Anonymous) and was only incidentally reported by Todor Gerasimov in the "Bulletin of Archaeological Institute" (1935). Further developments on the issue occurred some 70 years later.

(i). Gold Perpera of Ivan Asen II + Seven Gold Coins with Ecclesiastic Images of Saints.

Addendum: The Second Bulgarian Empire requires special attention from historiography in Bulgaria. It is not that Bulgarians didn't have their void in the affairs — political and military — which took place at the Balkans before the Ottoman conquest and parallel to Byzantium disintegration. This was a tremendous moment for the Western Civilization which even the "father" of West History Edward Gibbon couldn't surpass unemotionally in his "Decline and Fall of Roman Empire". The time from 11th to 15th cc. was a defining moment for the outline of western superiority which continues up until now a millennium later.

We shouldn't deal here with the topic of Medieval Crusades. Literature in Bulgarian language has been accumulated from the first half of XX century. Regrettably it is pending as to how those references were treated fairly and objectively by tycoons of Bulgarian History such as Vasil Zlatarski, Petar Mutafchiev, Petar Nikov, etc. I reckon the names of authors such as Svetlozar Georgiev, Vsevolod Nikolaev and Boris Primov were ultimately forgotten by time. We shall talk about that later.

How about the role of Medieval Serbia. This neighbor state which until the 11th c. was practically non-existent was in fact the foundation on which Bulgaria existed as realm during the Medieval Crusades. Yet no Bulgarian author has shown keen interest on Serbian (and Bosnian) historiography. I found in my private research a singular book that treats objectively the symbiotic co-existence of Serbs and Bulgarians from that epoch — viz., Dimitar Krandjalov's "History of Yugoslav People" (1947). Shame on any other attempts to obscure the great medieval heritage of Serbs and Bulgars under the banner of Macedonism. Emphatically it was the Czech scholar Konstantin Jireček (1854 - 1918) that firstly adopted the united approach in his "Geschichte der Serben", "Geschichte der Bulgaren", etc.

Reading is believing. For the time being we preclude our commentaries on zenith of Bulgaria and Serbia in Middle Ages. A a proper reader we found online and mustered up fragments from "Cambridge Medieval History, vol. IV, chaps. VIII - XVII - XVIII. Cambridge (UK), 1923" by William Miller (planned by John B. Bury)