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Both the Thracians and the Romans, who came in their wake, were not romantics, they had a sober sense of reality. After advancing to the north from the Stara Zagora Plain down through the Hainboaz Pass, they stationed their troops at the hill to be later called Momina Krepost. They saw the strategic importance of the place, and not the graceful curves of the Yantra among the rocky terraces. The place was suitable for a military camp, which could secure their advance into the Danubian Lowland. Certain traces of the Thracian camp at Momina Krepost have come down to us, although they are quite insignificant, compared with what the Romans left afterwards.
When in 106 A. D. the Roman Emperor Trajan built the town of Nicopolis ad Istrum not far from presentday Tarnovo, Momina Krepost gained further in importance. The military camp was turned into a fortified station and later into a fortress. But this fortress must have proved too small to defend the region. The Romans soon realized the strategic importance of the natural fortresses beyond the Yantra - Tsarevets and Trapezitsa hills - and were the first to fortify them. To the ignorant man, the earth is like a closed book, but to those interested in the past it offers great wealth. So parts of stone blocks, broken pillars and sacrificial altars, coins buried in the earth help the visitor to visualize the life of the Roman colonists in these places. They lived here for several centuries and built not only fortifications and dwelling houses, but temples as well. Roman buildings were preserved up to the 17th century. In 1640 Peter Bogdan, the Bulgarian Catholic missionary, noticed well-preserved Roman buildings on Tsarevets.
After the Romans, the Byzantines captured the hills of Tarnovo alley. The big fortifications on Momina Krepost were probably built by them. They rose on the foundations of the old Roman fortress during the 6th century, when huge masses of Slavs pressed upon them in their advance to the south. Momina Krepost, however, proved unable to withstand their attacks, and they penetrated into the Haemus, from where no one succeeded to drive them away.
The Byzantines extended the Roman fortresses on both sides of the Yantra, using building materials from Nicopolis ad Istrum, which had been destroyed in the 5th century. They hardly suspected in those days that their own fortresses would be used against them two centuries later and they would make useless attempts to win them back from the new masters, the Bulgarians.
In all probability, King Krum (803-814), one of the great rulers, reconstructed the Tarnovo fortresses after defeating the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus in 811. It was from here that the brave king started his campaign toward Constantinople two years later. The construction work with large blocks of stone at the entrance to Tsarevets immediately after the connecting strip, shows complete similarity with the methods applied in the oldest buildings in Pliska.
Little is known about the history of this region in the course of the following four centuries, from the reign of Krum to that of Assen and Peter (1185-1197). Nobody knows who governed the fortress in those days and how did its defenders behave when the Еastern Bulgarian State was defeated by John Tzimisces in 972 and the Western, by Basil II the Bulgar-Slayer in 1018. The conquerors must have granted the governor of this fortress certain rights, hoping, that in case of revolt they could resort to their own garrisons on the surrounding hills and may be on Momina Krepost, itself.
The fact that the Tarnovo rulers enjoyed certain rights was also confirmed by the brothers Assen and Peter’s audience with Isaac II Angelus, the Byzantine Emperor, to ask him to confirm their power over these lands, acknowledge their autonomy and give them permission to recruit troops.
The town’s association with Bulgarian history began after the meeting of Assen and Peter with the Byzantine Emperor and the revolt which subsequently broke out. Both brothers, Assen and Peter, who succeeded each other as kings, found their death in those stormy events. The revolt had been prepared for a long time. The Byzantine rule grew more and more unbearable and the people showed unrest, but Assen and Peter waited for the suitable moment. They hoped to win allies in the Danubian Lowland. At last the suitable moment came, the taxes were increased once more, and the people could no longer be pacified.
The revolt spread like wild fire and it was not long before it embraced the whole of North Bulgaria. The clashes with the invader lasted for two years, till finally the independence of the Tarnovo Kingdom was proclaimed in 1187.
The free town of Tarnovo was like a thorn in the flesh of the Byzantine, Empire, it gave its feudal lords and patriarchs no peace. They tried to subjugate it again by every possible means - military power, bribery, plots, intrigues, unions with Tartars from the north and Ottomans from the south, till they finally caused both Bulgaria’s disaster and their own. For the Tartars stayed in the Balkans for only naif a century — from the middle of the 13th century to the beginning of the 14th - but Ottomans never left the peninsula once they had set foot on it. They conquered not only Bulgaria, but Byzantium as well.
In a little over two centuries as many as 19 rulers ascended the Tarnovo throne and every one was in power for about eleven years on an average. Strong anti far-sighted kings like Assen I (1187-1196), Kaloyan (1197-1207), Ivan Assen II (1218-1241), Teodor Svetoslav (1300-1321) and Ivan Alexander (1331-1371) changed places with weak and insignificant rulers, like Boril (1207-1218), Konstantin Assen (1257-1277) and Smilets (1292-1298).
There were times when the enemy got very close to Tarnovo's fortresses and the town was seized with gloom. But there were also days when the Bulgarian kings returned to Tsarevets triumphant. On such a day, the captured Byzantine Prince Isaac walked behind the horse of Assen I, the Latin Emperor Baldwin followed in the wake of Kaloyan, and the despot of Epirus, Kir Theodor Comnenus was brought to Tarnovo as the captive of Ivan Assen II.
At times of peace and progress the Tarnovo state carried on relations with other lands and peoples. Maria, Kaloyan's daughter, for instance, became a Latin Empress, Beloslava, the daughter of Ivan Assen II, was the wife of Manuil Comnenus, Elena, the nine-year-old daughter of Ivan Assen II, was engaged to the eleven-year-old Theodor Lascaris, the son of the Nicaean Emperor John Vatasces, Maria, Ivan Alexander’s second daughter, became the wife of the Byzantine Emperor Andronicus Palaeologus, and his sister Elena, the wife of the Serbian King Stefan Dusan. There were times, however, when the Tarnovo kings had to sacrifice their daughters or sisters in order to strengthen their power. Such was the case with Georgi Terter I (1321-1323), who married his daughter Elitsa to Chaka, the son of Nogai, the Tartar ruler, and a century later, with Ivan Shishman, who married his sister Tamara to Sultan Murad.
To ward off the assaults of the enemy, Tarnovo had to be fortified and become impregnable. At moments of danger, all eves were turned to the old fortress walls with the question: would they be strong enough? Each ruler added something new to them, and the fortress walls grew longer and longer, till they encircled the whole town. In those days the river bed was higher than it is today, and the Yantra washed the vertical rocks of the two citadels at many places, while at the spots where the enemy could get a foothold, the slopes were protected by thick stone walls, cemented with mortar. The northwestern side of Tsarevets gives us a good idea of the fortress walls, which were quite thick and elaborate.
The fortress walls were strengthened with buttresses, some of which reached as far down as the river, with pilasters, fortified canopies, sham niches and turrets. Towers with embrasures rose a dozen metres away from each other, and at the corners of the fortress walls there were high square towers, at the top of which sentinels kept watch day and night.
Some of the towers served as prisons. Cells were dug out in the cliffs beneath them, from which it was impossible to escape. One of them, built in the southeastern part of Tsarevets, was known as Baldwin’s Tower. It survived up to 1913, when it was destroyed by an earthquake. Restored with part of the fortress wall in 1938, it is visited today by tourists as one of the interesting spots on Tsarevets.
Tsarevets had a central position in Tarnovo’s defence system. This was due to its location. Surrounded by water on all sides, the hill had only one passage through Sechena Skala to the rocky plateau, which the Turks later called Kayabash. Today it is the Square of Assen I.
At this place, Tsarevets was connected by a wide and strong drawbridge, attached to the stone wall by thick iron chains. The entrance of Tsarevets was strongly fortified. Three gates, not tar from each other, led from the central entrance towards the interior of the citadel. Every one of them was built of strong stone blocks and protected by tall turrets. The third and innermost gate survived up to 1889, when it was pulled down, as it was no longer safe.
There is every evidence that court life was full of decorum as the Bulgarian rulers tried to keep up to the standard of their Constantinople rivals in every respect. Parts of columns, friezes and steps, armour, sword handles, spearheads and arrows, pieces of gold garments, bracelets, necklaces, rings, metal buttons, medallions, crosses, candlesticks and icon-lamps are among the many relics which have come down to us as a proof of the life of splendour in those days.
The palace was surrounded by various other buildings, such as water cisterns, granaries, bakeries, wine cellars and warehouses. South of the palace rose the royal chapel of St. Petka, built by Ivan Assen II in 1232. In 1436, four decades after Tarnovo’s fall under the Ottomans, the commander Gaazi Ali Ferus Bei built the once famous Hissar Mosque on the foundations of the destroyed royal chapel. Preserved in perfect condition, it was razed to the ground by the terrible earthquake in 1913. This earthquake inflicted irreparable damages on all monuments.
Old Tarnovo lay on both banks of the Yantra river in the valley below Tsarevets and Trapezitsa. The houses of the lesser nobility, clergymen and persons whom the kings trusted, were at the foot ot Trapezitsa. Close to the river the potters, blacksmiths, tanners, painters, goldsmiths, carvers, furriers and weavers had their workshops. And the Jewish quarter lay to the northwest below Trapezitsa, where the Trapezitsa railway station stands today.
The northern slope of Tsarevets was also densely populated between the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul and the monastery St. Mary/Mother of God/ Temniska but the quarter on the opposite bank of the Yantra, east of the Church of St. Dimitar, between the river and the Arbanassi road, was probably the liveliest. In the early 13th century, this quarter was named Assenova mahala, after King Assen, land retained this name under Ottoman rule.
The lower slopes of Momina Krepost were also populated. In all probability, the poorest inhabitants of Tarnovo lived here -farmhands and servants, as well as owners of small plots of land in the western part of the valley. The foundations of a church of an unknown name have been discovered in this region.
Foreign merchants and craftsmen lived near Momina Krepost, southeast of Tsarevets, between the two branches of the meandering river. The name of Frenkhissar, left over from Ottoman days, shows that this place was also fortified (hissar means fortress in Turkish). In earlier days it was probably called Frankcastron, or ‘Frank town’ as in old Bulgaria all Western Europeans were regarded as Frenchmen.
It was probably not only because of the danger of foreign invasion from the east (the river could easily be crossed here in summer when the water was low) that Frenkhissar was fortified, but also to protect the quarter from the river in autumn and spring, when it overflowed its banks. Frenkhissar was the place where captured Latin soldiers were first settled. Later on, merchants from Genoa, Venice and Dubrovnik made their homes here with their families, having decided to stop in Tarnovo for a longer time. Their offices and warehouses were also here. The inhabitants of the Jewish district beyond Trapezitsa competed with those of Frenkhissar both in their business and banking operations and in their political machinations. They became dangerous rivals to the Western merchants, when King Alexander married Sarrah, the Jewess.
It was King Kaloyan who first made Tarnovo known in other lands. He was helped by Pope Innocent III, of whom he asked recognition as an emperor. In 1204, Cardinal Leo, the Pope’s representative, solemnly proclamed Kaloyan King of the Bulgarians, and presented him with the royal insignia - a crown, a sceptre and a flag, at the church of Sts. Peter and Paul. At the same time, on the Pope’s order, Archbishop Vassili was proclaimed Primas of the Bulgarian Church.
Kaloyan defeated the Latins, the new pretenders to power over the peninsula, and earned with his might the respect of the Byzantines, Bulgaria’s age-old enemies. But it was under the reign of Ivan Assen II that the country attained its greatest might. After he was crowned King of the Bulgarians in the church of St. Dimitar in 1221, Ivan Assen II fortified Tarnovo and set about improving his capital in every respect. He did a great deal for the embellishment of the existing churches such as St. Dimitar, built by the brothers Assen and Peter on the eve eve of the glorious Tarnovo Uprising in 1185, St. Ivan built by King Assen I on Trapezitsa Hill in 1195, and Sts. Peter and Paul, built by King Kaloyan for his crowning in 1204.
Ivan Assen II also promoted the building of new churches and monasteries. One of them was the church of the 40 Holy Martyrs, inaugurated on the eve of the famous Klokotnitsa Battle on March 9/22, 1230, in which Theodor Comnenus, the despot of Epirus was defeated and taken prisoner with his generals; the royal chapel of St. Petka on Tsarcvets Hill; the cathedral of St. Spas also on Tsarevets; the chapel of Sts. Peter and Paul on Trapezitsa, and presumably several others which have been totally destroyed.
Ivan Asscn II carried on the tradition, established by Assen I, of raising Tarnovo’s prestige by collecting the relics of martyrs whom the church had proclaimed saints. Assen I brought over the relics of Ivan Rilski and placed them in a special church built for this purpose on Trapezitsa, Kaloyan brought over those of Filoteya and placed them in the charge of the monastery of St. Mary /Mother of God/ Temniska in Assenova mahala. The relics of several eminent clergymen were also transferred to the capital on the orders of Ivan Assen II. In 1237, when the Serbian saint Sava, the son of Stefan Neman and brother of the Serbian King Vladislav, died in Tarnovo as guest of the King on his way back from Jerusalem, Ivan Assen II had him buried in the yard of the church of the 40 Holy Martyrs.
The presence of so many relics gave both the churches where they were kept and the capital itself the prestige of a sacred place. So Tarnovo began to attract worshippers from all parts of the country and abroad. The pilgrims who visited the holy places returned home with most excellent memories of the town and its vicinity.
The churches of St. Georgi and St. Paraskeva were built under Ivan Alexander’s rule, right and left of Trapezitsa, and so was the monastery of St. Mary Platytera on Sveta Gora, Teodosii Tarnovski, the well-known priest, philosopher and writer lived here before withdrawing to the monastery of St. Mary, built with Ivan Alexander’s assistance near Kilifarevo, where he founded his famous literary school. Over 400 pupils were trained in this school, the more distinguished of whom were Evtimius, Roman, Panaret, Timotei, Dionisius and Yossif.
Ivan Alexander did a great deal for the construction of the Preobrazhenski Monastery and the restoration of the patriarchal Sveta Troitsa Monastery, founded in the 11th century. Both of these monasteries exist to this day in the picturesque Dervent Gorge, north of Tarnovo. Of all monasteries built near Tarnovo, Sveta Troitsa played the most important part during Ivan Alexander s reign. It was there that before being proclaimed Patriarch of Tarnovo in 1375, Evtimius corrected the texts of the liturgy books and laid the Lum dations of the Tarnovo school, which produced such outstand scholars as Grigorius Tsamblak, Kipryan, Sava and Andronik writers such as Priest Philip, Monk Simeon, Father Lavrentius, Monk Lalos, among others. .
Although the country was impoverished economically and rich areas of land were cut off under Ivan Alexander's reign, the long period of peace paved the way for the progress of literature, art and the crafts. They flourished particularly in Tarnovo. The arts and crafts marked unprecedented development. Artistically made objects came into use far and wide. Not only the women in the royal family, but the wives and daughters of the nobility also wore jewels, gold and expensive clothes. But the works of the Tarnovo masters sometimes failed to satisfy their exacting tastes and the merchants of Frenkhissar imported expensive weapons for the men, and jewels and fabrics for the ladies.
Construction was also extended during this period. Many of the materials used for it were obtained from old ruins. It was no accident that sacrificial stones inscribed in Greek and Latin were used in the building and decoration in many of the churches. Ceramics were also largely used in construction. Construction in this period is characterized by stone masonry, alternated with flat bricks or beams and decorated with glazed tiles and other ornaments. Decorative mosaics were also greatly used, painted in about 35 different colours.
During Ivan Alexander’s reign, many icons and murals in the old churches were renewed, but some of the paintings dating from earlier periods were preserved intact, such as for instance, the frescos in the church of Sts. Peter and Paul, depicting the seven oecumenical councils, and the frescos in the church of the 40 Holy Martyrs, showing the well-known calendar scenes. Few relics have come down to us from the decorative art of that period. Nevertheless, these insignificant fragments carry our imagination back to that wonderful world of beautiful colours and forms. We can evaluate their high artistry by the portraits of warrior-saints, preserved in some of the churches on Trapezitsa, and by the exquisite interlaced ornaments, left in a corner or two in the ruined small chapels, the broken pillars and capitals, the pottery shards, the fragments of mural paintings.
The writing of illuminated manuscripts also reached a high level of development. In the first half of the 14th century, Tarnovo made a name for itself as one of the main centres of Slav literature and philosophy.
Not only prayer books and various writings on religious themes, such as the lives of saints and religious treatises, came into being under the pen of the Turnovo writers, but also philosophical essays, annals, legends and parables.
The Tarnovo scholars maintained close relations with other cultural centres in their own country and abroad. Quite often they fulfilled orders from Serbia, Wallachia, Moldavia and Russia. Miniature painting also developed. Remarkable manuscripts were written and illuminated with pictures in the Tarnovo scriptoria. Among these were Georgi Terter’s Gospel, the Chronicle of Manasscs, the Tarnovo Song-Book, Ivan Alexander's Bible, known as the London Bible, and numerous others, which have disappeared. A considerable number of them were bound in precious metal, decorated with precious stones. There was also a well-known school of stone sculpture in Turnovo, which has left quite a few monuments of high artistic value.
After Ivan Alexander’s death in 1371, the Ottomans began their incursion on Bulgarian territory, and in some thirty years the once glorious kingdom of Kaloyan and Ivan Assen II was completely subjugated. One after the other, the towns in the Thracian Plain tell into Ottoman hands. Sofia surrendered, and so did Pleven. The Bulgarians, however, still held the strong fortresses of Nikopol and Drustur on the Danube, and as Tarnovo stood on the wav the enemy patiently prepared its siege.
In the summer of 1393, vast masses of Ottoman troops crossed the Balkan Range from the south and encircled the town in an iron hoop. This is how Grigori Tsamblak, the old Bulgarian writer, began his sad tale of Turnovo's fall: "Proud of his conquests and victories over many a nation, the barbarian ruler, who had heard of the town of Tarnovo - of its size, of its fortresses and of its splendour, of its location which makes it almost inaccessible, because it is protected not only by walls but also by natural fortresses, of its great treasures, large population and famous churches and palaces - set his mind on destroying it. Hence he collected all his eastern troops, from the Persian lands, Lycaonia and Asia, crossed the Hellespont and found his western troops all gathered together as he had commanded them, exceeding in numbers not only those of King Darius of the Persians and Mydians, but also those of Alexander the Great, he arrived and assaulted the town unexpectedly, not only from one side or from two, but besieged it entirely."
Hoping that he could recruit some forces and continue the light from without, the last Bulgarian king, Ivan Shishman, left the town before it was completely encircled. At the head of his small army he went to the Nikopol fortress, which was also captured later.
* * *
Tarnovo's defenders fought courageously, hoping that Ivan Shishman would come to their aid with fresh forces. Their supplies dwindled and the enemy s pressure increased with every passing day.
In troublesome days all hopes of the people were turned o Patriarch Evtimius, who inspired them with courage and faith, but who could not show them the way to salvation. There was no such way, the town was doomed.
On the fatal night of July 17, 1393, a traitor opened one of the gates to Tsarevets. A detachment of fanatic Turks penetrated into the fortress, killed the guards at the main entrance, dropped the drawbridge over Sechena Skala and when the sun came up in the morning, the sky over Tsarevets was aflame. That night was bathed in blood. The brave defenders of Tarnovo were put to the sword, and the beautiful palace was pillaged and destroyed.
With the hope that their lives and property would be spared, the inhabitants of Trapezitsa opened the gates of their fortress to the enemy. But their hopes were deceived. They, too, met their death and their churches and homes were turned into ashes. Only the church of St. Ivan Rilski was miraculously preserved.
A large part of Assenova mahala was also put to the fire. The monastery of St. Mary in Tarnovo' Sveta Gora was pillaged and burned down, while the prominent men of the towm, a hundred and ten in number, were tricked into gathering in the church of Sts. Peter and Paul, where they were savagely slaughtered.
The Patriarchate on Tsarevets Hill was also pillaged and the cathedral of St. Spas was set on fire. Hence Patriarch Evtimius established his seat near the church of Sts. Peter and Paul, where the prominent men of the town had met with their death and which the people now regarded as a holy place. The high prestige of the Patriarch saved his life, but he was sent to exile. The other more prominent inhabitants who were left alive shared his fate. Evtimius was placed at the head of the exiles. Their parting with the town and their families was a heart-rending sight. As the annalist put it, even the stones in the street burst into tears when they witnessed it.
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