Michail Asen (Bulgarian: Михаил Асен ) (c. 1322 – 1355) was the eldest son of Emperor Ivan Alexander (1331–1371) from his marriage with Theodora of Wallachia .
After
his father acceded to the throne in 1331, the young prince was
proclaimed co-Emperor. He was to succeed his father under the name
Michail IV Asen. The heir to the throne was the pride of the royal
family and was said to possess "all virtues". He married Maria, renamed
Irina, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos and his second wife Anna of Savoy .
In 1354–1355 the Ottoman Turks invaded Bulgaria and headed towards Plovdiv and Sofia . It is mentioned in an anonymous Bulgarian
chronicle that Michail Asen gathered the Bulgarians and engaged the
Turks near Sofia. The Bulgarians were defeated and suffered heavy
casualties including Michail himself. But the battle was not in vain:
the Ottomans failed to capture the cities and did not attack the country
up to 1370. In the Bulgarian folklore is mentioned that the son of the
Emperor perished with the death of the brave.
Ivan Alexander (Bulgarian: Иван Александър , transliterated Ivan Aleksandǎr ;; original spelling: ІѠАНЪ АЛЄѮАНдРЪ ), also known as John Alexander , ruled as Emperor (Tsar ) of Bulgaria from 1331 to 1371, during the Second Bulgarian Empire
. The date of his birth is unknown. He died on February 17, 1371. The
long reign of Ivan Alexander is considered a transitional period in
Bulgarian medieval history. Ivan Alexander began his rule by dealing
with internal problems and external threats from Bulgaria's neighbours,
the Byzantine Empire and Serbia , as well as leading his empire into a period of economic recovery and cultural and religious renaissance.
However, the emperor was later unable to cope with the mounting incursions of Ottoman forces, Hungarian invasions from the northwest and the Black Death
. In an ill-fated attempt to combat these problems, he divided the
country between his two sons, thus forcing it to face the imminent
Ottoman conquest weakened and divided.
// Early rule
Ivan Alexander was the son of the despotēs Sracimir of Krǎn by Petrica , a sister of Michael Asen III of Bulgaria . Therefore, Ivan Alexander was a nephew of Michael Asen III. Paternally, Ivan Alexander descended from the Asen dynasty . By 1330 Ivan Alexander was himself a despotēs and governed the city of Loveč . Together with his father and his father-in-law Basarab of Wallachia , Ivan Alexander fought in the Battle of Velbǎžd against the Serbs at modern-day Kjustendil
in 1330, in which Bulgaria suffered defeat. The defeat, combined with
the worsening relations with the Byzantine Empire, precipitated an
internal crisis, which was exacerbated by an invasion of the Byzantines.
A coup d'état drove Ivan Stefan out of the capital Tǎrnovo in 1331, and the conspirators placed Ivan Alexander on the throne.
The
new ruler set about consolidating his position by regaining territories
recently lost to the Byzantine Empire. In 1331 Ivan Alexander
campaigned around Adrianople and reconquered northeastern Thrace . Meanwhile, Stefan Uroš IV Dušan deposed his father Stefan Uroš III Dečanski and became Serbian king
in 1331. This helped normalize the previously tense relations between
the two countries. Ivan Alexander and Stefan Uroš IV Dušan concluded an
alliance, which was cemented by the marriage of the Serbian king to Helena of Bulgaria , a sister of Ivan Alexander, on Easter 1332.
At about the same time, Belaur, a brother of Michael Asen III, rebelled in Vidin , probably in support of his deposed nephew Ivan Stefan's claim to the throne. The advance of the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos
against Bulgaria in the summer of 1332 protracted military operations
against the rebels. The Byzantines overran Bulgarian-controlled
northeastern Thrace, but Ivan Alexander rushed southward with a small
army and swiftly caught up with Andronikos III at Rusokastro.
“ | Nobody
of our first tsars seems to us like this great tsar Ivan Alexander, in
his military power he looks to us like a second ancient Alexander the Great , in faith and piety he is a second Saint Constantine ; he captured thus all his enemies, put them under his knees and established firm peace in the Universe. | ” |
—Praise to Ivan Alexander by an anonymous contemporary of the tsar |
After giving the impression that he wished to negotiate, Ivan Alexander, reinforced by Mongol cavalry, overwhelmed the smaller but better organized Byzantine army in the Battle of Rusokastro
. The contested cities surrendered to Ivan Alexander, while Andronikos
III sought refuge within the walls of Rusokastro. The war ended with
Ivan Alexander meeting Andronikos and agreeing a peace based on the status quo .
To seal the alliance, he betrothed his eldest son, Michael Asen IV, to
Andronikos's daughter Maria (Eirene), the marriage eventually taking
place in 1339. The Bulgarian emperor was now free to turn his attentions
to Belaur, but it was not until 1336 or 1337 that the rebellion in the
northwest was put down.
In about 1332 Ivan Alexander had crowned
his eldest son Michael Asen IV co-emperor, perhaps to safeguard
possession of the throne by his own family. He followed up this
traditional association with the coronation of his younger sons Ivan Sracimir
and Ivan Asen IV in 1337. Ivan Alexander may have intended the creation
of two younger co-emperors to establish immediate control over
important cities and regions, as Ivan Sracimir was eventually based in
Vidin, and Ivan Asen IV perhaps in Preslav . Nevertheless, this was a marked departure from Byzantine practice, in which younger sons of the sovereign were made despotēs , whether they were charged with a territorial administration or not.
Relations with the Byzantine Empire The Bulgarian lands during the reign of Ivan Alexander
In
the early 1340s relations with the Byzantine Empire temporarily
deteriorated. Ivan Alexander demanded the extradition of his cousin
Šišman, one of the sons of Michael Asen III, threatening the Byzantine
government with war. Ivan Alexander's show of force backfired, as the
Byzantines managed to see through his intentions and sent against him
the fleet of their ally, the Turkish emir of Smyrna Umur Beg. Landing in the Danube Delta
, the Turks of Umur Beg pillaged the countryside and attacked nearby
Bulgarian cities. Forced to restrain his demands, Ivan Alexander invaded
the Byzantine Empire again at the end of 1341, claiming that he was
summoned by the people of Adrianople. However, Ivan Alexander's troops
were defeated twice by Turkish allies of the Byzantines near the city.
In 1341–1347 the Byzantine Empire was plunged into a protracted civil war between the regency for Emperor John V Palaiologos under Anna of Savoy and his intended guardian John VI Kantakouzenos
. The neighbours of the Byzantines took advantage of the civil war, and
while Stefan Uroš IV Dušan of Serbia sided with John VI Kantakouzenos,
Ivan Alexander backed John V Palaiologos and his regency. Although the
two Balkan rulers picked opposite sides in the Byzantine civil war, they
maintained their alliance with each other. As the price for Ivan
Alexander's support, the regency for John V Palaiologos ceded him the
city of Philippopolis (Plovdiv) and nine important fortresses in the Rhodope Mountains in 1344. This peaceful turnover constituted the last major success of Ivan Alexander's foreign policy.
Rise of Serbia and the Ottoman threat
During the same period, the Serbian king took advantage of the Byzantine civil war to take possession of what is now Macedonia , and of most of Albania and northern Greece . In 1345 he began to call himself "Emperor of Serbs and Greeks", and in 1346 he was crowned as such by the newly created Patriarch of Serbia .[6] These actions, which the Byzantines received with indignation, appear to have been supported by Bulgaria, as the Patriarch of Bulgaria Simeon had participated in both the creation of a Serbian patriarchate and the imperial coronation of Stefan Uroš IV Dušan.
By
the second half of the 1340s, little remained of Ivan Alexander's
initial successes. John VI Kantakouzenos' Turkish allies pillaged parts
of Bulgarian Thrace in 1346, 1347, 1349, 1352 and 1354, to which were
added the ravages of the Black Death. The Bulgarians' attempts to repel
the invaders met with repeated failure, and Ivan Alexander's third son
and co-emperor, Ivan Asen IV, was killed in battle against the Turks in
1349, as was his older brother Michael Asen IV in 1355 or a little earlier.
By 1351 the Byzantine civil war was over, and John VI Kantakouzenos had realized the threat posed by the Ottomans to the Balkan Peninsula
. He appealed to the rulers of Serbia and Bulgaria for a united effort
against the Turks and asked Ivan Alexander for money to construct
warships, but his appeals fell on deaf ears as his neighbours distrusted
his intentions. A new attempt for cooperation between Bulgaria and the
Byzantine Empire followed in 1355, after John VI Kantakouzenos had been
forced to abdicate and John V Palaiologos had been established as
supreme emperor. To cement the treaty, Ivan Alexander's daughter Keraca Marija was married off to the future Byzantine Emperor Andronikos IV Palaiologos , but the alliance failed to produce concrete results.
Further stability problems and external conflicts
At home Ivan Alexander compromised the internal stability of his realm by divorcing his first wife Theodora of Wallachia (in about 1349) and marrying a converted Jew , also named Theodora
. The new marriage produced new sons, whom Ivan Alexander proceeded to
crown co-emperors, Ivan Šišman in about 1356 and Ivan Asen V by 1359.
Ivan Alexander's last surviving son from his first marriage, the
co-emperor Ivan Sracimir, became effectively independent around 1356;
and Ivan Alexander's control over other powerful vassals, such as the
rulers of Wallachia and Dobruja , who pursued their own foreign policies, was hardly stronger.
From the middle of the 14th century, Bulgaria fell prey to the aspirations of the Angevin king Louis I of Hungary , who annexed Moldavia in 1352 and established a vassal principality there, before conquering Vidin in 1365,[6][23] and taking Ivan Sratsimir and his family into captivity.
Military campaign of Amadeus VI against Bulgaria (1366–67) In
the meantime Bulgarians and Byzantines had clashed again in 1364. In
1366, when Emperor John V Palaiologos was returning from his trip to the
west, the Bulgarians refused to let him pass through Bulgaria. This
stance backfired, as another Byzantine ally, Count Amadeus VI of Savoy , captured several Bulgarian maritime cities in retaliation, including Ankhialos (Pomorie) and Mesembria (Nesebǎr), though he failed to take Varna . Outmanoeuvred, Ivan Alexander was forced to make peace.
The captured cities were turned over to the Byzantine Empire, while Emperor John V Palaiologos paid the sum of 180,000 florins to Ivan Alexander. The Bulgarian emperor used this sum and territorial concessions to induce his at least de jure vassals Dobrotica of Dobruja and Vladislav I of Wallachia
to reconquer Vidin from the Hungarians. The war was successful, and
Ivan Sracimir was reinstalled in Vidin in 1369, although the Hungarian
king forced him to acknowledge his overlordship.
The relatively
successful resolution of the crisis in the northwest did nothing to help
recover the losses in the southeast. To make matters worse, in 1369
(the date is disputed), the Ottoman Turks under Murad I
conquered Adrianople (in 1363) and made it the effective capital of
their expanding state. At the same time, they also captured the
Bulgarian cities of Philippopolis and Boruj (Stara Zagora).
As Bulgaria and the Serbian princes in Macedonia prepared for united
action against the Turks, Ivan Alexander died on February 17, 1371. He
was succeeded by his sons Ivan Sracimir in Vidin and Ivan Šišman in
Tǎrnovo, while the rulers of Dobruja and Wallachia achieved further
independence.
Culture and religion See also: Architecture of the Tarnovo Artistic School
During
Ivan Alexander's rule, the Second Bulgarian Empire entered a period of
cultural renaissance, which is sometimes referred to as the "Second
Golden Age of Bulgarian culture", the original one being the rule of Simeon the Great . A large number of Bulgarian monasteries and churches were constructed or renovated on the order of Ivan Alexander. Mural portraits of him as a donor can be seen in the Bachkovo Monastery 's ossuary and in the Rock-hewn Churches of Ivanovo
. Donor's deeds of Ivan Alexander prove that the monasteries of the
Holy Mother of God Eleoussa and St Nicholas in Nesebǎr were
reconstructed during that period, as was the St Nicholas monastery near Pernik , according to a Hilandar monastery deed. In addition, the tsar also initiated the construction of the Dragalevci and Kilifarevo monasteries.
Literary
activity also flourished during the reign of Ivan Alexander. Several
important literary works were created in the period, such as the Middle Bulgarian translation of the Manasses Chronicle (1344–1345), currently preserved in the Vatican Secret Archives in Rome, the richly illustrated Tetraevangelia of Ivan Alexander (1355–1356), now exhibited in the British Library , the Tomić Psalter (1360), today in Moscow , and the Sofia Psalter (1337).
Ivan Alexander's rule was also marked by efforts to strengthen the position of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church by pursuing heretics and Jews. He organized two anti-heretical church councils, in 1350 and 1359–1360, that condemned various sects such as the Bogomils , the Adamites and the Judaizers .
The spiritual practice of hesychasm , a form of incantatory prayer, deeply influenced certain areas of the Eastern Orthodox world of the 14th century. A notable Bulgarian representative of the movement during Ivan Alexander's reign was Theodosius of Tǎrnovo .
During this time, the Bulgarian Empire had trade relations with the Mediterranean maritime powers Venice , Genoa and Ragusa . In 1353, Ivan Alexander issued a charter allowing Venetian merchants to buy and sell goods throughout Bulgaria after Doge Andrea Dandolo assured him they would observe the prior treaties between the two countries.
In modern times, the rule of Ivan Alexander inspired Bulgarian national writer Ivan Vazov to write the novelette Ivan-Aleksandǎr and the drama Kǎm propast (Towards an Abyss ), in both of which the tsar is the main character.
A piece of a garment signed by Ivan Alexander and interwoven with gold was discovered in a noble's grave near Pirot in the 1970s; today it is preserved in the National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade
. It is the first find of its kind, demonstrating a medieval tradition
attested in writing according to which Orthodox rulers would present
their most eminent dignitaries with a piece of a garment they had worn.
Ivan Alexander Point on Nelson Island in the South Shetland Islands , Antarctica is named after Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria.[54]
Family
By
his first wife Theodora of Wallachia (nun Teofana), a daughter of
Basarab of Wallachia, Ivan Alexander had several children, including
Ivan Sracimir, who ruled as emperor of Bulgaria in Vidin 1356–1397,
associated emperors Michael Asen IV (co-ruled c. 1332–1354/5) and Ivan
Asen IV (co-ruled 1337–1349), and a daughter called Thamar (Kera
Tamara), who was married first to the despotēs Constantine (Konstantin), and then to Sultan Murad I of the Ottoman Empire.
By
his second wife Sarah-Theodora, Ivan Alexander had several other
children, which included Keraca Marija, who married the Byzantine
Emperor Andronikos IV Palaiologos, Ivan Šišman, who succeeded as emperor
of Bulgaria in Tǎrnovo 1371–1396, Ivan Asen V, associated as emperor of
Bulgaria by 1359–1388?, as well as two daughters named Desislava and
Vasilisa.
Family tree of Ivan Alexander | Sracimir of Krǎn | Petrica | |
| | |
1 | | | 2 |
Theodora of Wallachia | Ivan Alexander (d. 1371, ruled 1331–1371) Sarah (Theodora) | |
| |
| 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
Michael Asen IV | Thamar (Kera Tamara) | Ivan Šišman (b. 1350–1351, d. 1395, ruled 1371–1395) Ivan Asen V | Vasilisa | |
| | | | |
| Ivan Asen IV | Ivan Sracimir (b. c. 1324, d. c. 1397, ruled 1356–1397) Keraca Marija (b. 1348, d. 1390) Desislava | | |
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