Replica of Bulgaria’s Medieval Imperial Crown, Gift by Pope Innocent III, Unveiled by National Museum of History
The newly unveiled replica of the crown worn by the Tsars from the Second Bulgarian Empire; the crown was a present to Tsar Kaloyan by Pope Innocent III made in 1204 AD. It vanished in 1395 after Bulgaria’s invasion by the Ottoman Turks. The replica crown is made of 1.5 kg and precious stones. Photo: bTV
Bulgaria’s National Museum of History in Sofia has unveiled a full-fledged replica of the gold crown worn by the Tsars of the medieval Bulgarian Empire in the High and Late Middle Ages, which was a gift from the Papacy in Rome.
The replica restores the Bulgarian imperial crown from the time of the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185-1396 AD) which was made in the Vatican and presented to Tsar Kaloyan (r. 1197-1207 AD) by Papal emissaries on behalf of Pope Innocent III (r. 1198-1216 AD) in 1204 AD.
This same crown was worn by every Tsar of the Second Bulgarian Empire until the last legitimate ruler on the throne in Tarnovgrad (today’s Veliko Tarnovo), Tsar Ivan Shishman, perished fighting the invading Ottoman Turks in 1395 AD.
The production of the replica of the Bulgarian imperial crown, which has been made 1.5 kg of gold and precious stones – emeralds, sapphires, and rubies – was commissioned by the National Museum of History in Sofia in October 2015.
It was produced for free by Bulgarian jeweler Stoycho Vezenkov who donated his labor and craftsmanship. The 1.5 kg of gold needed for recreating the original crown have been donated to the National Museum of History in Sofia by the Bulgarian copper mining company Asarel Medet Jsc, and the emeralds, sapphires, and rubies were a donation by Elena Vasileva.
In addition to the Bulgarian Tsar’s crown, the Museum has also commissioned the production of a female crown worn by the Bulgarian Tsaritsas (Empresses) which is yet to be completed.
While Bulgaria has been part of the Eastern Orthodox Christianity ever since it adopted the Christian faith in 865 AD, in 1204, Tsar Kaloyan made a church union with the Papacy in Rome in exchange of the Pope’s recognition of his royal title.
For a couple of years, the medieval Bulgarian Empire was briefly under the diocese of the head of the Roman Catholic Church. The union, however, proved to be short lived after Kaloyan’s murder in 1207 AD, not to mention the war between Bulgaria and the Latin Empire (formed by the Western European knights of the Fourth Crusade after their capture of Constantinople in 1204) which was soundly defeated by the Bulgarians in the 1205 Battle of Adrianople.
The way the imperial crown of the Second Bulgarian Empire looked is known from several frescoes such as the 1259 AD murals of the Boyana Church in Sofia and the bone vault of Bachkovo Monastery near Asenovgrad in Southern Bulgaria, and a miniature in the 1355 Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander (r. 1331-1371), also known as the London Gospels because its original is kept at the British Library.
One of the murals in the Boyana Church known internationally as a monument of Early Renaissance art or Pre-Renaissance art shows the then Bulgarian Tsar Konstantin Asen Tih (r. 1257-1277 AD) and his wife, Tsaritsa (Empress) Irina, in their imperial attires, and wearing their imperial crowns.
Learn more about the Boyana Church in the Background Infonotes below.
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The replica of the medieval Bulgarian imperial crown is based on images in frescoes such as the one in the Boyana Church – compare below. Photos: bTV
The 1259 AD murals of Tsar Konstantin Asen Tih (r. 1257-1277 AD) and his wife, Tsaritsa (Empress) Irina in the Boyana Church in Sofia show the crowns worn by the Bulgarian imperial couple that the replicas commissioned by the National Museum of History have been modeled after. Photos: TV grabs from News7
The initiative for the creation of the replica of the Bulgarian Tsars’ crown came from the Director of the National Museum of History in Sofia, Bozhidar Dimitrov, after a visit in Hungary where he saw the Holy Crown of Hungary, also known as the Crown of St. Stephen, named after King Stephen I (r. 997/1001-1037 AD) as the first King of Hungary.
The Holy Crown of Hungary is kept in the Hungarian Parliament building as a symbol of Hungarian statehood. Dimitrov says he thought it would be a good idea to commission the making of a replica of the medieval Bulgarian crown upon “finding out that the crown kept in the Hungarian Parliament is also a replica of the original”.
In a statement on the unveiling of the crown replica, Bulgaria’s National Museum of History has reminded that, unfortunately, the imperial crowns of the Bulgarian Tsars from both the First Bulgarian Empire (632/680-1018 AD) and the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185-1396 AD) had “an unhappy fate” as they were captured by invaders and lost.
It says that the crown of the First Bulgarian Empire was captured as a trophy by the Byzantines in 971 AD when Tsar Boris II was taken captive, and was lost; the same probably happened to the crown worn by Tsar Roman (r. 977-991/7 AD), and the crown of Tsar Samuil (r. 997-1014 AD) and his heirs, Tsar Gavril Radomir (r. 1014-1015) and Tsar Ivan Vladislav (r. 1015-1018 AD).
The fate of what likely was the first crown of the Second Bulgarian Empire worn by the co-emperors, Tsar Asen I (r. 1190-1197) and Tsar Petar IV (r. 1186-1197) is also unknown.
The crown of the Second Bulgarian Empire which was presented to Tsar Kaloyan (r. 1197-1207 AD) by Pope Innocent III (r. 1198-1216 AD) in 1204 AD was captured by the Ottoman Turks in 1395 AD after the Battle of Nikopol and disappeared.
The Tsars of the Third Bulgarian Tsardom (1878-1944) – Knyaz (King) Alexander I Batenberg, Tsar Ferdinand, and Tsar Boris III – were not entitled to wearing crowns as per Bulgaria’s setup as a parliamentary monarchy after its Liberation from the Ottoman Empire in 1878.
“Lots of the crowns exhibited in museums around the world are replicas from later periods. For example, this is the case with the crown of the Hungarian Kings. It is not even exhibited in the National Museum of Hungary but in the Parliament,” Bulgaria’s National Museum of History concludes.
The replica of the Bulgarian imperial crown of the Tsars from the Second Bulgarian Empire has been put on display at the National Museum of History in its exhibition halls in the Boyana Quarter in Sofia as of December 23, 2015.
Update: Also check out the replica of the crown of the medieval Bulgarian Empresses unveiled by the National Museum of History in June 2016:
Replica of Crown of Medieval Bulgarian Tsaritsas (Empresses) Unveiled by the National Museum of History
The Boyana Church “St. Nikola and St. Panteleimon” (St. Pantaleon) is a medieval / Early Renaissance Bulgarian church located in today’s Boyana, a suburb of the Bulgarian capital Sofia. It was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979. It is a two-storey tomb church, with the lower storey designed as a crypt (tomb), and the upper storey – as a chappel for the family of the local feudal lord.
The earliest construction of the Boyana Church took place at the end of the 10th and the beginning of the 11th century AD when a small one-apse cross dome church was erected. It was expanded in the 13th century when it was turned into a two-storey family tomb church by the local feudal lord, Sebastokrator Kaloyan, ruler of Sredets (today’s Sofia, known as Serdica in the Antiquity period), and his wife, Sebastokratoritsa Desislava, as testified by a donor‘s inscription in the church from 1259 AD. (Sebastokrator (pronounced sevastokrator) was a senior court title in the late Byzantine Empire and in the Bulgarian Empire. It comes from “sebastos” (“venerable”, the Greek equivalent of the Latin “Augustus”) and “kratоr” (“ruler”). The wife of a sebastokrator was named sebastokratorissa in Greek and sevastokratitsa in Bulgarian.)
A second expansion dates back to the mid 19th century, during Bulgaria’s National Revival period, when residents of the then village of Boyana funded further construction. After Bulgaria’s National Liberation from the Ottoman Empire in 1878, local residents wanted to tear down the Boyana Church in order to build a bigger one in its place but was saved by Bulgaria’s Tsaritsa-Consort Eleonore (1860-1917), the second wife of Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand (r. 1887-1918).
The unique murals of the Boyana Church also date back to different periods. The oldest layer is from the 11th-12th century, while the 240 most valuable mural depictions from the second layer date back to 1259 AD. There are also murals from the 14th century, the 16th-17th century, and 1882. The world famous murals from 1259 AD, which have been described by many scholars as Early Renaissnace or precursors of Renaissance Art, are the work of the unknown Boyana Master and his disciples who are believed to have been representatives of the Tarnovo Art School in the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185-1396 AD).
They have sometimes been described as belonging to the tradition of the so called Byzantine Palaiologos (Palaeologus or Palaeologue) Renaissence. In addition to the many biblical scenes, the murals at the Boyana Church feature depictions of Sebastokrator Kaloyan and Sebastokratoritsa Desislava as donors, as well as of Bulgarian Tsar Konstantin Asen Tih (r. 1257-1277 AD) and his wife, Tsaritrsa Irina. Two other small churches preserved in today’s Sofia are also attributed to the donorship of Sebastokrator Kaloyan. The frescoes of the Boyana Church were restored several times between 1912 and 2006. The Boyana Church was first opened for visitors as a museum in 1977.
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