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The Church of St. Nicholas, together with the annexed paraklis of St. Panteleimon, completed the Boyana church complex, the reconstruction, ex-tension and painting of which were finished, according to the interpretation of contradictory chronological data from the donor’s inscription, in 1258/9. The walls bear extraordinary examples of the fresco portraiture of the time. In question are two pairs of portraits of contemporary historical figures, the ktetors and the ruling couple – sebastokrator Kaloyan with sebastokratorissa Desislava, and emperor Constantine Asen with Empress Eirene. With the ex-ception of the Empress Eirene (a descendant of the Asens and the Laskarids, whose genealogy is well-known), the origins of these figures are mysterious, and many attempts have been made to elucidate them. One such extensive prosopographic attempt was made by Professor Ivan Božilov in an article published in a volume dedicated to the problems connected with the Boyana church, and we have ourselves recently proposed a theory on the ancestry of emperor Constantine1. We believe that an addendum can also be made to the prosopography of sebastokrator Kaloyan, although, due to the nature of the original sources, it must remain largely speculative, as are many other contributions on the subject. The origins of sebastokrator Kaloyan cannot be viewed separately from the question of the origins of emperor Constantine, so these will also be addressed. Our most important sources are the works of con-temporary Byzantine historians George Akropolites and George Pachymeres, emperor Constantine Asen‘s charter for the Monastery of St. George (or Gorg) near Skopje – the so-called Virgino Charter – and the well-known ktetor‘s inscription from the Boyana portrait of Kaloyan and Desislava2.

1 Божилов, И. Портретите в Боянската църква: легенди и факти. – Проблеми на изкуството, 1, 1995, 3-9 (further: Божилов, 1995); idem, Фамилията на Асеневци (1186-1460). С., 1985, н. 24, 115-118 (f: Божилов, 1985); Пириватрић, С. Једна претпоставка о пореклу бугарског цара Константина Асена „Тиха“. – ЗРВИ, 46, 2009, 313-331 (f: Пириватрић, 2009). For older opinions and literature see Пурковић, М. Принцезе из куће Немањића. Виндзор, 1956, 14-15, 21-22 (f: Пурковић, 1956).2 Georgius Acropolites, I, ed. Heisenberg, A. Studgardiae, 1903 (=19782), 152.1-153.3, 154.3, 176.1 (f: Acropolites); George Pachymérès relations historiques, I-V, ed. Failler, A., Paris, 1984-2000, II, 449.20-451.6 (f: Pachymérès); Nicephori Gregorae byzantina historia, vol. 1, ed. Schopenus, L. Bonnae 1829, 60.3-61.18; Грамоти на българските царе, прир. Даскалова, А., Райова, М., С., 2005, 31-36, л. 12 (f: Грамоти на българските царе); Грамоти на манастирот Св. Георги – Горг Скопски, Ι. Грамота на цар Константин Асен,

ThE BOyANA ChurCh POrTrAiTS. A CoNtrIButIoN to tHe ProSoPoGrAPHy oF SEBASTOKrATOr KALOyAN

Srdjan Pirivatrić, Belgrade

the first question regarding the origin of these figures, which in many ways determines the direction of further research, is whether or not they belonged to Asen‘s family tree. The writings of the somewhat later Byzantine historian Nicephorus Gregoras, as well as those of their contemporaries, Akropolites and Pachymeres, and their descriptions of the crisis over the rights to the throne in Bulgaria after the assassination of emperor Michael Asen in 1256 and the murder of his assassin Kaliman in 1257, suggest a negative answer. these re-ports show that there was no legitimate heir to the throne, meaning that, at the time, there were no males left in Asen‘s family. During the crisis there were two pretenders to the throne: despot Mitso, son-in-law of Ivan Asen II, who proclaimed himself emperor, and Constantine, son of a certain tih (τοῦ Τοίχου), who was supported by the tarnovo nobility and eventually gained the Bulgarian throne. The new emperor then dismissed his wife and – probably in the autumn of 1258 – married Eirene Laskaris, daughter of the Nicaean emperor Theodore ii Laskaris and granddaughter of ivan Asen ii. in this way he secured blood relations to rival those of his opponent Mitso3. From the time of Peter and Asen to Michael Asen the principle of government in Bulgaria had transformed from a patrimonial to a dynastic one, which was undergoing a crisis at that very time, enabling the emperor‘s close and distant relatives – both his blood relatives and those married into his family – to gain the highest titles and even supreme power. To translate this into a model, the right of blood of the emperor’s sons (Kaliman Asen and Michael Asen) was jeopardized by rebellious relatives (Kaliman), and when there were no relatives, there were newcomers, who used marriage to obtain rights to the throne or to strengthen their title to what they had already taken (Mitso, Constantine Tih’s)4.According to Pachymeres, emperor Constantine was „half-Serbian”, and ac-cording to the Virgino Charter St. Simeon Nemanya was „the grandfather of [Constantine’s] empire”. this information usually leads to the assumption that

II. Грамота на крал Милутин. – В: Споменици за средновековната и поновата историја на Македонија, том Ι, подг. Мошин, В., Л. Славева, К. Илиевска, Скопје, 1977, 181-204, 185, 205-238 (f: Грамоти на манастирот Св. Георги, Ι, II); Гълъбов, И. Надписите към Боянските стенописи. С., 1963, 24-25 (f: Надписите към Боянските стенописи); for previous bibliography s. Смядовски, С. Българска кирилска епиграфика. С., 1993, 191. 3 More details in: Златарски, В. История на българската държава през средните векове. т. 3, С., 1940 (= 1994) 465 sq (f: Златарски, 1940); Божилов, И. България при наследниците на Иван II Асен: 1241-1280 г. – В: Божилов, И., В. Гюзелев. История на средновековна България, С., 1999, 501-526, 507-510 (f: Божилов, 1999). For a general framework of the events s. Nicol, D. the Despotate of epiros. oxford, 1957, 157-168 (f: Nicol, 1957). the latest on the subject: Господинов, К. Г. Известията на Акрополит и Пахимер за българската история от 1256-1257: анализ и съпоставка. – В: ТАНГРА. Сборник в чест на 70-годишнината на акад. Васил Гюзелев. ed. Каймакамова M. et al. С., 2006, 105-123; George Akropolites, The history. introduction, translation and commentary Macrides, r. oxford, 2007 (f: Macrides 2007). 4 the principles of inheritance in Bulgaria are exposed shortly by Божилов, И. Иван I Асен и Стефан Немања – родоначелници две породице. – В: Стефан Немања – Свети Симеон Мироточиви. Историја и предање. ed. Калић, Ј. Београд, 2000, 47-54.

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some unknown daughter of Stefan Nemanya was Constantine‘s mother5. however, there is no reason to interpret Pachymeres‘s information about the emperor‘s ancestry in one way only, as it is, in fact, commonly understood, as following the female line. Konstantin Jireček expressed his dilemmas re-garding this presumption decades ago in a forgotten parenthetical remark6. On the contrary, it is quite possible, and even more likely, that Pachymeres was referring to the male line. At least that is what his description of events suggests – the fact that Constantine was half-Serbian – unlike Mitso, who was Bulgarian – was an obstacle to his candidacy for the throne. The Constantine/Mitso dilemma contained a strong component of legitimacy. it is highly un-likely that Constantine‘s Serbian roots through his mother would have been an obstacle in those circumstances, but a Serbian origine through his father certainly would. On the whole it seems that, so far as we can gather from his treatment of cases of mixed ethnic origin, descent along the male line went without saying for Pachymeres, whereas he explicitly mentioned descent along the female line when he deemed it important for one reason or another. So, for instance, he wrote that emperor Theodore Svetoslav was Bulgarian on his mother‘s side, because his father Terter was Cuman7. it is also worth not-ing that in a charter of king uroš, the king calls Nemanya’s brother Miroslav his grandfather8. This example of referring to one‘s indirect lineage is of sig-nificance for our case. it follows from this that emperor Constantine could have been Nemanya‘s grandson along an indirect male line through one of Nemanya‘s brothers. According to reliable sources, Nemanya had three brothers. the first, whose name is believed to have been tihomir, was a grand župan of Serbia9. The second, Miroslav, was a knez, the third, Stracimir, was also a knez. Miroslav and his descendants ruled over the hum region (nowadays herzegowina), while Stracimir was connected to the (West) Morava region and the city of Gradac (modern Čačak), but we know nothing about his descendants, so any connection between him and the future Bulgarian emperor would be pure guesswork. On the other hand, we can assume that Constantine’s father was a son of (Stefan) tihomir, the overthrown Serbian grand župan, who spent the time between his overthrow and his death exiled in the Byzantine Empire, and probably dwelt in Skopje between 1166 and 1168. the similarity in the name

5 More details, with sources in: Пириватрић, 2009, 315-317. 6 Иречек, К. История на Българите. С поправки и добавки от самия автор. С., 1939, 184. 7 Pachymérès, III, 291.28-29. A contrary opinion: Божилов, 1995, 6. 8 Споменик Српске краљевске академије (f: СКА) III (1890) 8. I am thankful to acad. Miloš Blagojević who kindly passed me this information. 9 The name Tihomir is a convincing hypothesis, made after study of a spoiled inscription, see Ковачевић, Љ. Неколика питања о Стефану Немањи. – Глас СКА, LVIII, 1900, 1-108, 54-57; Пириватрић, 2009, 318. the name of the eldest brother of Nemanya had been put under the damnatio memorii, for dynastic reasons.

of Constantine’s father, Tih, and Nemanya’s brother, Tihomir, is one of the arguments in favour of this hypothesis10.

tihomir ↔ Nemanja ↕ ♂ tih ∞ n.n. ♀ ↕ Constantine

A certain archon John (Ivan) tihomir, or tihomir`s, mentioned in a 1220 judi-cial act issued by Demetrios Chomatenos, was the de facto ruler of Skopje in the late twelfth century. Based on the similarity in the names and his high so-cial status we can assume that he was related to emperor Constantine. Modern scholarship often claims or assumes that Constantine was from Skopje by origin11. We can also assume that John (ivan) Tihomir, or Tihomir`s, was Constantine‘s uncle or father, or that he was a son of the overthrown great prince Tihomir. Another possibility is that one of Nemanya‘s daughters or nieces was married to a man named Tih. Altough we consider it less likely that Constantine‘s con-nection to Nemanya was along the female line, it should be kept in mind that Nemanya ruled Skopje for a while during the late 1180s, when he produced his charter for the Monastery of St. George, prior to the Battle of the Morava in 119012. it should be added that the sources mention an unnamed daughter of Nemanya, who is said to have been married around 1216 to Manuel Angelos, brother of Michael Angelos and despot (subsequently emperor) Theodore Angelos, rulers of Epirus13. We can only assume that they were married be-tween 1205 and 1210. It would have to be her second marriage, so we can assume that she had been married for the first time during her father‘s rule14.

10 For more details s. Пириватрић, 2009. 11 Chomatenus, no. 59, 209-213. on the name of this archon of Skopje, problem of his patronymic, surname and so-called „double name“ s. Џелебџић, Д. Словенски антропоними у судским актима Димитрија Хоматина. – ЗРВИ, 43, 2006, 483-498; see also Илиев, И. Охридският архиепископ Димитър Хоматиан и Българите. С., 2010, 184, 211, 238, 263. on the relation of emperor Constantin with Skopje s. Златарски, 1940, 474-475 (governer of the Skopje region); Nicol, 1957, 183 n. 2 (his father had been given a Principality, possibly Skopje, with the hand of one of Nemanja II daughters); Божилов, 1995, 6; Божилов, 1999, 509 (he originated probably from a noble Bulgarian family from Skopje); Dimitrov, B. – In: Popkonstantinov, K. Zograf Vasilie and the Boyana Church 750 years later. Sofia, 2009, 5 (f: Dimitrov, 2009) (governer of Skopje).12 For sources and previous secondary litterature s. Калић, Ј. Борбе и тековине великог жупана Стефана Немање. – В: Историја српског народа. I. Београд, 1981 (f: ИСН), 251-272, 258. Грамоти на манастирот Св. Георги, Ι, 185; II, 210.13 Demetrii Chomateni ponemata diaphora. rec. Prinzing, G. Berlin-New york, 2002, no. 10, 55-56 (f: Chomatenus). 14 Пурковић, 1956, 12-13; Polemis, D. the Doukai. A Contribution to the Byzantine Prosopography, London, 1968, no. 43, 90 (Polemis, 1968).

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Therefore, we can assume that Constantine, subsequent emperor of Bulgaria, may have been born of her first marriage. (Quite feeble it looks the possibility that he was born by a so far unknown daughter of Tihomir.) The celebration of Stefan Nemanya as Saint Simeon in the Church, contributed to the birth of a local tradition in Skopje which credits Saint Simeon Nemanya as one of the monastery‘s donors and contributors.

Nemanja (or Tihomir) ↕

n.n. ♀ ∞ tih ↕ Constantine

The ktetor’s inscription in the Boyana church is in fact the only surviving source which mentions sebastokrator Kaloyan. in king Milutin’s charter for the monastery of St. George near Skopje from 1299/1300 there is mention of a certain sebastokrator Kaloyan Sinadin15. however, it is impossible to deter-mine whether he had anything to do with ktetor of the Boyana church. Any attempts to learn more about him are limited to the information in the inscrip-tion. Before we begin to analyze it, we should consider the wider historical context which brought about Kaloyan‘s endowment project. Our colleague Hristo Matanov has stated his view of the first years of Constantine Asen‘s reign, and we would like to take a look back at the history of Sofia and the surrounding region in the decades preceding his reign.Little is in fact known about Sofia in the mid thirteenth century16. The city was not mentioned as one of the regions under the rule of ivan Asen ii listed in the charter for Dubrovnik produced shortly after the battle of Klokotnitsa in 1230. the question is why. According to a charter for the rila Monastery, issued by emperor Ivan Shishman in 1378, which mentions the emperors Asen and Kaliman, we can assume that Sofia had been under the rule of Ivan Asen ii and Kaliman, though other assumptions also may be valid17. The Boyana pomenik should not be taken for granted as a source for the history of Sofia in this period, but it could be taken to imply that the city’s rulers included ivan Asen ii, Kaliman and Michael Asen18. Sofia was definitely not among

15 Грамоти на манастирот Св. Георги, II. Грамота на крал Милутин, 205-238, 221. 16 the latest survey see in: Dantschéva-Vassiléva, A. Histoire politique-militaire de Sredetz (Sofia) depuis la fin du 12ème siècle jusque la fin du 14ème siècle. – Bulgarian Historical review, 1-2, 2008, 3-25, 12-16.17 Грамоти на българските царе, 44-46, l.85. 18 The pomenik (brebion, psychohartion, memorial list of rulers, benefactors and other persons) known as the Boyana pomenik, was certainly made on the basis of an older one, which may have originated from Dragalevtsi monastery, see the contribution of ivanka Gergova in this volume. A local origin of the older pomenik could be interpreted as an

the Bulgarian cities which gave themselves up to the Nicaean emperor John III Vatatzes after Kaliman‘s death in 1246. this we know from the writings of George Akropolites, a direct witness of Vatatzes‘s conquests in the West – Akropolites was in charge of composing the emperor‘s letters to inform the capital and the provinces about the conquest of each new town or region.19 Sofia was mentioned in a letter from emperor theodore II Laskaris written in the summer of 1256, which refers to the peace and the settling of borders after the war between Nicaea and Bulgaria in 1255-56. Although it is otherwise ambiguous, the information in the letter becomes clear when we take into ac-count that, according to Akropolites, the peace treaty stipulated a status quo ante for the borders. The city was not part of the Nicaean Empire before or after the war. In Skopje and Vranje „the pre-war state“, i.e. Nicaean rule – was „re-established“, and the Nicaeans still held the nearby town of Velbužd20. it should be pointed out that neither Akropolites nor any other source mentions that the Nicaean army came near Sofia during the war – the points of battle furthest to the Northwest were along the Veles – Serres line. The next infor-mation significant for the history of Sofia comes from the donor‘s inscription of 1258/9:„this immaculate temple of Christ‘s holy hierarch Nicholas and of the holy and illustrious martyr of Christ Panteleimon, was erected with expense, care and great love by Kaloyan, sebastokrator, bratučed of the emperor, grandson of Saint Stefan the Serbian king; painted in the time of the Bulgarian empire during the reign of the pious and devout emperor Constantine Asen, indiction 7, in the year 6767“21. We have focussed our attention on the following elements of the inscription: the first name and title of the donor; family lines; topographical and chrono-logical data. Name and titleThe name Kaloyan is derived from John (ivan), and therefore was not a name given at christening but rather an adjectival prefix was added to the name John to highlight a personal quality or ensure good fame for the bearer. Several

indication of the actual rule of the mentioned Bulgarian emperors over the region of Sofia, cf. Станчева, М., Станчев, Ст. Боянският поменик. С., 1963, 27. We can also see the name of Alexander in the list of emperors; this very interesting fact may lead to the uncorroborated hypothesis that he, as sebastokrator, had ruled over a separate region, including the city of Sofia. this was taken for granted by Dimitrov, 2009, 5. 19 Acropolites, I, 79,1-3; Macrides, 2007, 21. 20 Acropolites, I, 127,15-16; theodori Ducae Lascaris epistulae. Еd. N. Festa. Firenze, 1898, app. I, 279-282, 281.68-73. See Gjuzelev, V. Bulgarien und das Kaiserreich von Nikaia (1204-1261). – JÖB, 26, 1977, 143-154, 153; cf. also Macrides, 2007, 304-305. A. Ducellier reached the invalid conclusion that emperor Theodoros in the letter boasted of controlling Sofia, Philippopolis, Veles, Skopje and even Serbia, s. Ducellier, A. Balkan Powers: Albania, Serbia and Bulgaria (1200-1300). – In: the Cambridge History of the Byzantine empire, c. 500-1492. Еd. Shepard J. Cambridge, 2008, 779-802, 794.21 Надписите към Боянските стенописи, 24-25.

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Bulgarian emperors were named John, and one important Bulgarian emperor was named Kaloyan, but on the whole this name is unusual for Bulgaria and for its royal family. On the other hand, the names John and Kaloyan were common in Grecophone communities in the Byzantine Empire. in Serbian communities there are no contemporary examples of the name, among the aristocracy or elsewhere, except for king Stefan radoslav who took the name John when he became a monk, and a certain Kaloyan whose name was re-corded in one pomenik22. it has already been pointed out in the literature that the name Kaloyan is a reflection of the undeniable influence of Byzantine tradition and customs, which suggests the family‘s proximity to a Byzantine environment23. It should be noted that the term „Byzantine environment“ in the first half of the thirteenth century is inconsistent, complex and occasion-ally linguistically heterogeneous. Contemporary legal theory and practice generally indicate that the title of se-bastokrator could have been awarded by the emperors of Nicaea or Tarnovo, while the emperors of Thessaloniki do not seem to have awarded court titles at all, after the fall of Theodore Angelos, subsequent to the battle of Klokotnitsa in 1230. the awarded titles were generally held for life and were non-hered-itary. The existing evidence indicates that the emperors of Tarnovo awarded this title to their brothers or influential close relations, both by blood and by marriage. it is evident that some holders of this distinguished title in Bulgaria were de facto if not de iure regional governors, sometimes even practically independent lords24.Family relationsimmediately after his title, the donor mentions his relation to an unnamed em-peror (bratučed) and the Serbian king Saint Stefan („grandson“). the aim of emphasising these family relations can be explained by the need to state and

22 Српски поменици XV-XVIII века. Еd. Новаковић, С. – Гласник Српског ученог друштва, XLII, 1875, 1-152, 30, 69; „Требник“ манастира св. Тројице код Пљеваља. Еd. Стојановић, Љ. – Споменик СКА, LVI, 1922, 22-30, 25.23 Божилов, 1995, 8, with detailed observations on the name Kaloyan. 24 See Ферјанчић, Б. Севастократори у Византији – ЗРВИ, 11 (1968), 141-192, 141-148, 169-170, 174-175 (f: Ферјанчић, 1968); Билярски, И. Институциите на средновековна България. С., 1998, 85-99. Dignity of sebastokrator was not neccesary connected with the function of a regional governer, s. the problem as explored by Билярски, 1998, 87-90. On the other hand, sebastokrator Strez obviously had a de facto autocratic status, achieved perhaps before the very obtaining of the title; for the case of sebastokrator Alexander we can only make assumptions if he was a regional governer or not, see note 17; sebastokrater Peter evidently had a region („land“) under his rule; sebastokrator Kaloyan is known only as ktetor of Boyana church (there is also an archaeological arthefact of a ring excavated in an aristocratic grave in Tarnovo and attributed to certain Kaloyan, s. cautious objections of Атанасов, Г. Инсигниите на средновековните български владатели. Плевен, 1999, 21 сл; and Тотев, К. Златни пръстени-печати от времето на Второто българско царство 1185-1396. Велико Търново, 2010, 113-114). therefore, it seems very hard to make firm conclusions on the possible administrative function of sebastokrator in Bulgaria. in a fresh contribution, Kaloyan is seen as governer of Sredets (Sofiya), s. Dimitrov, 2009, 5.

emphasise the social and legal status of the ktetor, his place in the genealogy, and, finally, by the need to immortalize all this as a part of the public memory. The most important relations are those which have legal consequences (a high or ruling position, title or service), while being related to a distinguished an-cestor in itself need not be reason enough for an inscribed record. in the spirit and beliefs of the time, being related to a saint must have been of particular importance, but all known cases are connected to Saint Simeon Nemanya and his descendants.it would seem that the inscription should be looked at from the angle of the argumentum ex silentio also. We can see that there is no mention of relation to the Asens, the Doukai or the Komnenoi, neither to any other person from the reigning dynasty of Serbia, except king Saint Stefan. Kaloyan did not refer to the Asens, whereas Constantine did, shortly after his marriage to Eirene Laskaris25. it is also rightfully noted that the terms for family relations – in this case bratučed and grandson – are conditional in nature. Let us cite a general remark by Professor Sima Ćirković, based on study of the Serbian diplomatic sources: „If a ruler honours a person by calling them „father“ or „mother“ or „brother“ or „sister“, this only means that the person is his cousin. We may perhaps infer the generation, since it is unlikely one would use „mother“ or „father“ to refer to someone of their own age or younger“26.„Bratučed of the emperor“ this is the first family relation mentioned in the inscription, and it is supposed to testify to the legitimacy of Kaloyan’s person and status. in Slavic linguistic heritage, the family term bratučed, bratučeda, etc. can be traced to the Serbo-Croat, Bulgarian and russian linguistic areas. This term is used in all the modern varieties of these languages, except for russian. The oldest example is from the eleventh century (the Codex Suprasliensis), meaning „son of one‘s brother“27. There are few examples of the word bratučed contemporary to the one in the Boyana inscription. Chronologically and territorially proximate examples are the one in king radoslav’s charter for Dubrovnik (1234) where bratučed denotes the relation between the male children of two brothers, as well as the other in king Vladislav`s charter for the monastery of Bogorodica on Lim (1234), with the same meaning28. Examples from russia indicate two

25 Божилов, 1995, 5. Since Kaloyan was not an Asen, that fact, taken together with some other, allows us to exclude emperor Boril, sebastokrator Strez and despot Alexius Slav as his possible ancestors, i.e. parents. Cf. ibidem, 7. 26 Божилов, 1995, 5; Ћирковић, С. Област кесара Војихне. – ЗРВИ, 34, 1995, 175-184, 177-178. 27 Супрасалская рукопись, ed. Северьянов, С. СПб., 1904, 281.6, 297.30; Slovník jazyka staroslověnského. 4, Praha, 1961, 143; Słownik prasłowiański. tom I, A-B. Wrocław, Warsyawa, Kraków, Gdańsk, 1974, 360-361. 28 Monumenta Serbica. ed. Miklosich, F. Београд, 20063 (reprinted 1858 version), XXIII, 19-20; cf. Рјечник из књижевних старина српских. I. ed. Даничић, Ђ. Биоград, 1863, 75; Ода-брани споменици српскога права од XII до краја XV века. пр. Соловјев, А. Београд, 1926,

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meanings – „son or daughter of one‘s brother“ (1280, 1251) and „son of one‘s uncle or aunt“29. Over time, derivatives of the term bratučed or bratučeda appeared – prvobratučed, drugobratučed (first and second bratučed, respec-tively), etc. According to the modern General Slavic Linguistic Atlas, this term was confirmed as meaning „son of one‘s maternal or fraternal uncle, daughter of one‘s fraternal uncle“30. in Bulgarian the term bratučed is still defined as the son of one’s brother or sister in relation to the children of the other brother or sister31. According to one interpretation, the etymology of this term is determined as „the children of [two] brothers“. However, there was no explanation for the etymology of the oldest example, with the meaning “son of one‘s brother“32.in Greek there is no identical term. its meaning is contained in the more gen-eral term ἐξάδελφος, or πρωτεξάδελφος, etc, which is also of long-standing, and still in wide usage in Modern Greek. its meaning refers to the children of two brothers, two sisters, or a brother and sister, but not to any more distant blood relations33. The etymology of the word – ἐξάδελφος: ἐκ (τόν) ἀδελφό – demonstrates that the older meaning was “son of one’s brother“, although the most frequent terms for such a relation are ἀδελφιδοῦς, ἀνεψιός, etc34. On the other hand, the handful of contemporary examples from the South Slavic area, from the country of the Serbian kings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, also indicate the use of the Greek term „anepsei“ as well as the term „sinov“ or „sinovac“ in its usual meaning „son of one’s brother“.35

the relationship between the Greek and Slavic meanings is significant as much for the question of interference of kinship terms in the multilingual Byzantine world as for the understanding of individual cases related to persons from eth-nically mixed marriages, who lived in different, “pure“ or “mixed“ linguistic

бр. 19, 27-31, 30. radoslav`s reference on his „bratučeds” made after the reference on „uncles” must have referred to his brothers on his uncles` side, i.e. the sons of Vukan, perhaps also the grandsons of knez Miroslav. Vladislav made no mention of „uncles” but only of „bratučeds“.29 Материалы для словаря древне-русскаго язика. Том I. А-Κ. ed. Срезневский, И. И. СПб., 1893, 171; Словарь древнерусскаго языка (XI-XIV вв.). Том I. Москва, 1988, 310-311. 30 I was granted the opportunity to consult the oLA (GSL) material thanks to the kindness of academician Alexander Loma and Dr Marta Bjeletić. 31 Български етимологически речник. Том I, А-З. ed. Георгиев, В., Ив. Гълъбов, Й. Заимов, С. Илчев. С., 1971, 75. 32 Этимологический словарь славянских азыков. Праславянский лексический фонд. Вып. 3. ed. Трубачев, О. Москва, 1976, 8. 33 Some contemporary examples are: πρωτεξάδελφος, πρωτεξαδέλφη, cf. Acropolites, I, 91.14, 93.15, 13.24, 21.1, 36.19-22, 152.4; τρισεξάδελφος, cf. Chomatenus, 520. Cf. A Greek-english Lexicon. ed. Liddell, H.G., Scott, r. oxford, 1968, 581 (cousin-germain); Λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας, ed. Μπαμπινιώτης, Γ. Αθήνα, 1998, 628 (son of uncle or aunt). 34 Λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας, 628; for the older meaning see also Greek Lexicon of the roman and Byzantine Periods (From B.C. 146 to A.D. 1100). Vol. 1. ed. Sophocles, e., A. New york, 18873, 477; A Greek-english Lexicon, 20. 35 В. Стари српски записи и натписи. 1. ed. Стојановић, Љ. Београд, 1902 (=Београд 1982), no. 10, 5-6; Monumenta Serbica, XXXVIII, 31-32; LXXIV, 77-82, 81. Cf. Рјечник из књижевних старина српских, III, 264, I, 10; Доментијан, 60, 178, 126.

environments. The question arises what the contemporary Slavic equivalent to the term ἐξάδελφος would be, meaning the children of two sisters or a brother and sis-ter, or kinship in general? We know that in one particular case (c. 1343-1345) this kind of kinship was described by the term “brother“, and the kinship in question is between king Dušan and Jovan Dragušin, whose mothers were sisters36. in another case (1348), the nobleman Vojihna, a subsequent caesar, was listed as a relative of the empire and bratučed, but it cannot be determined whether this was kinship on the father’s or the mother’s side37. Compared to Dušan‘s kinship to Dragušin and the terms used, the kinship to Vojihna seems more distant. Translations of legal codes are of great value for the an-swer to this question. The Serbian translator and the writer of the Nomocanon, St. Sava, translated the term ἐξάδελφος as bratučed (as testified by the 1261 transcript)38. This suggests that the interpretation of this term in the ktetor‘s inscription should begin with its widest meaning, which corresponds to the Greek ἐξάδελφος, meaning blood relation. We have established, then, that the term bratučed was used very broadly, that its broadest sense was “blood relation“, that its precise meaning was most commonly “cousin“ (son of one’s uncle or aunt), and that there are some rare and solitary examples of it being used to mean „son of one‘s brother“, or „nephew”39. The dilemma can be narrowed down to the question of whether Kaloyan and the unnamed emperor belonged to the same generation or not, and whether they were closely related or not. As for the case of Kaloyan‘s relation to the unnamed emperor, a long-standing theory is that the emperor is in fact Michael Asen, i.e. that Kaloyan was the supposed second son of sebastokrator Alexander and, therefore, the bratučed of emperor Michael Asen. however, this theory has been rightfully dismissed, since it was determined that Kaloyan was not a member of Asen’s family. The widely accepted opinion today is that this kinship to the emperor refers to Constantine Asen, largely because he is mentioned at the end of the inscrip-

36 Грозданов, Ц., Чорнаков, Д. Историјски портрети у Полошком. I. – Зограф, 14, 1983, 60-66.37 Одабрани споменици српског права (од XII до краја XV века). ed. Соловјев, А. Београд, 1926, 132-135; cf. Ћирковић, idem, 177-178, н. 10.38 Законоправило светога Саве, 1, ed. et transl. Петровић, М. М., Штављанин–Ђорђевић, Љ. Београд, 2005, 451 (can. 54); A Patristic Greek Lexicon. Fasc. 2. ed. Lampe, G. W. H. oxford, 1962, 490, (Ctrull. can.54); cf. an example from a russian translation (Рјазањска крмчија, 1284) where ἐξάδελφος (ἐξαδέλφη) is translated as bratučed (bratučeda), s. Словарь древнерусскаго языка (XI-XIV вв.), 310-311.39 In the serbo-croatian linguistic area at the end of the 19th century the term bratučed was in use, and synonymous to sinovac, a fact that the modern lexicographer complained of as a misuse, s. rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika. I. ed. Daničić, Đ. Zagreb, 1881, 609. it should be noted that the same phenomenon is recently observed in the vicinity of Pirot, s. Бјелетић, М. Родбинска терминологија у српскохрватском језику, магистарски рад. Београд, 74, п. 97.

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tion. it is also generally accepted that Kaloyan received his high dignity from emperor Constantine40. Any possibility of kinship to Michael Asen has been excluded41. Nevertheless, we will see that Kaloyan‘s close relation to emperor Constantine, though possible, is a rather complicated hypothesis, and that, on the other hand, kinship to emperor Michael Asen cannot be completely dis-missed, even though it is not explicitly stated in the inscription.“Grandson of Saint Stefan the Serbian king“It is generally accepted that this refers to the first-crowned Serbian king, Stefan. Certainly any notion that the king in question is Stefan Nemanya should be dismissed entirely42.Kinship between sebastokrator Kaloyan and the unnamed emperorConstantine Asen. if we interpret the inscription in the way that Kaloyan was a relative of emperor Constantine, the question is how we should interpret the information about Kaloyan’s kinship to emperor Constantine and king Stefan in light of the aforementioned assumption about his kinship to Constantine and Stefan Nemanya. Could Kaloyan have been related to Constantine as bratučed through Nemanya’s family? if yes, were they closely related? But first, how should we interpret the term bratučed? Jireček expressed his di-lemma about this long ago43. if we interpret the term bratučed in its tradi-tional and most widespread meaning, then we have an insoluble genealogical problem: Kaloyan and Constantine would be brothers, and their grandfathers (king Stefan and Stefan Nemanya) would be son and father. however, if we interpret the term in its more general sense as blood relation, or marking a distant nephew, then the family relations from the donor’s inscription and the Virgino Charter are not contradictory. On the other hand, they may not be related through Nemanya’s family alone. in that case they may have been closely related. The main question regards the origin of Kaloyan’s title. if he owed it to emperor Constantine in the first instance, then it is certain that they must have been closely related. Michael Asen. Kaloyan could have referred to a relation with the emperor Michael Asen if he was the son of a brother or sister of the emperor`s moth-er Eirine Komnene (daughter of Theodore Angelos Komnenos, emperor of Thessaloniki). Kaloyan could be considered Michael’s relative on the female side, which could have been expressed through the term bratučed (ἐξάδελφος). it is worth noting that this corresponds to the information from Byzantine his-torians, which indicates that he was not a male Asen.

40 Божилов, 1995, 8; Dimitrov, 2009, 5. 41 For more details see Божилов, 1995, 5. 42 See Божилов, 1995, 5. 43 Jireček considered in 1911 Kaloyan as „Constantine`s nephew or cousin (bratučed)“, s. Јиречек, К. Историја Срба. I. Београд, 19522, 180 н.202 (f: Јиречек, 1952).

Kinship between sebastokrator Kaloyan and the Serbian king, Saint StefanAs we said, the Saint Stefan mentioned here is the first-crowned Serbian king, who died as a monk Simon in great (angelikon) schema on September 24, probably in the year 122744. it is particularly interesting that he is called a saint. the earliest record of his cult dates back to 1628/9, although he was revealed as a saint a few decades earlier45. Saint Sava performed an elevatio on the anniversary of his brother’s death, and then performed a translatio of his relics from Studenica to Žiča. Describing the funeral of monk Simon in Studenica, the ecclesiastical writer Domentian mentions his “holy relics“46. he also testifies that in his time Simon‘s “inviolable body“ lay at Žiča. A younger ecclesiastical writer, Theodosius, writes in his description of the elevatio that, “his holy relics were whole and indestructible“. After the depositio, his body held a prominent place in the sacral context of Žiča, the royal church and the seat of Serbian archbishops47. his son uroš mentions him in two his charters48 as the “holy“ king Stefan, in order to demonstrate that he is descended from a line of saints and to invoke the idea of ancestry from Jesse49. in the court and ecclesiastical literature of the subsequent decades he is mentioned as the first-crowned king, but not as a saint, while archbishop Danilo II‘s biography of king Milutin contains the following general formula: “my holy ancestor the first-crowned king Stefan“. It should be taken as an expression of the ideol-ogy of a holy dynasty, which at the time was being reshaped in the archbish-op‘s circle50. (this included visual representations of the first-crowned king in vertical genealogies of the Nemanyich family, painted in the fourteenth century, which is not of immediate importance for this topic.) in an epitaph at Studenica from the beginning of uroš’s rule he is mentioned as a saint (the epitaph refers to a person named “Stefan, the son of king uroš, grandson of saint Simon the monk, grand-grandson of saint Simeon“). Another contempo-

44 there are two solutions given in the works of modern historians, 1227 and 1228; good reasons for 1227 were offered recently by Марковић, М. Прво путовање светог Саве у Палестину. Београд, 2009, 14-19. 45 Павловић, Л. Култови лица код Срба и Македонаца. Смедерево, 1965, 51-56, Јовановић, Т. Књижевно дело патријарха Пајсеја. Београд, 2001, 67–82; Марковић, М. op. cit., 15 n. 30. 46 Живот светога Симеуна и светога Саве од Доментиана. ed. Даничић, Ђ. Биоград, 1867, 168 (f: Доментијан); Живот светога Саве написао Доментијан. ( = Теодосије) ed. Даничић, Ђ. Биоград, 1860) (f: Теодосије) 175. 47 the king`s relics were put together with the most revered universal christian relics, s. Поповић, Д. SACrAe reLIQuIAe Спасове цркве у Жичи. – In: Под окриљем светости. Култ светих владара и реликвија у средњовековној Србији. Београд, 2006, 207-232, 349-350. Cf. Марјановић–Душанић, С. Свети краљ. Београд, 2007, 103 (f: Марјановић–Душанић, 2007).48 Законски споменици српског права. ed. Новаковић, С. Београд, 1912, 593, 600. 49 Марјановић–Душанић, С. Мотив Лозе Јесејеве у доба Уроша. Ι. – Зборник Филозофског факултета, 18 A, 1994, 119-126; idem, Владарска идеологија Немањића. Београд, 1997, 111-117, 116, са изворима. 50 Архиепископ Данило и други. Животи краљева и архиепископа српских. ed. Даничић, Ђ. Загреб, 1866, 152. See Марјановић–Душанић, 2007, 99.

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rary inscription in Bogdašić near Kotor, on the periphery of the state, mentions him as the first-crowned king: “in the days... of king Stefan uroš, son of the first-crowned king Stefan, grandson of saint Simeon Nemanya“51. For in Stefan‘s sainthood, in comparison to the celebratory customs in eastern Christianity, the stages in the revelation and the shaping of the his cult, and, especially, the religious celebration of his father Saint Simeon, we can see that there is no “confirmation“ (ἀναγνώρισης) of his sainthood, neither through any characteristic saintly epithet or religious service, there was no “proclama-tion“ (ἀνακήρυξις) by the Synod, i.e. he was not officially “inscribed into the order of saints“52. rather, the mention of king Stefan as a saint is part of the idea of a holy dynasty, established during the reign of king uroš when Stefan was added to the established cults of Simeon and Sava – the “holy duo“– for the sake of “the trifold symbolism of the Nemanyich seed“, from which the reigning king was descended53. in this sense, the mention of king Stefan in the Boyana inscription from 1258/9 is an important early example of the horizon-tal dissemination of the idea of a holy Serbian dynasty. All of this leads to the conclusion that king Stefan – monk Simon – though without an established religious cult, was considered a holy king within a cer-tain limited region, and certainly within the court and his family. This may be of great significance for the question of Kaloyan‘s origin. Assuming that kinship with a saint is of crucial importance and that it is com-pletely understandable why that kind of information would be mentioned in a ktetor‘s inscription, it is therefore of secondary importance how close and direct the kinship is. however, bearing in mind what we have said about the sainthood of king Stefan, we should assume that his kinship with Kaloyan was direct. it is unlikely that Kaloyan would refer to any indirect kinship with Stefan as a saint, since, by all accounts, his cult had not gained much prominence outside the court. (There are contemporary examples of indirect kinship with saints being referred to, but they all refer to Stefan Nemanya – Saint Simeon, whose celebration as a saint in the middle of the thirteenth century was established in all the key elements and widely spread in the re-gions under the jurisdiction of Žiča and Peć and beyond). It seems, therefore, that Kaloyan was the son of one of Stefan’s children. Stefan was succeeded on the throne by each of his sons successively, first by the eldest, radoslav, then by Vladislav, and finally by uroš, the youngest. (Predislav, who became an archbishop, must be ruled out.) We also know that the first Serbian king also

51 text of the inscription in Поповић, Д. Српски владарски гроб у средњем веку. Београд, 1992, 45-46; Томовић, Г. Морфологија ћириличких натписа на Балкану. Београд, 1974, no. 21, 44. 52 For the case of Saint Symeon s. Поповић, Д. О настанку култа светог Симеона. – In: Поповић, 2006, 53.53 Марјановић–Душанић, 2007, 119.

had a daughter, Komnene.King Stefan Radoslav (1228-1233). Stefan radoslav, or Stefan Doukas, as he often signed documents, was married to Anna, the daughter of the ruler of Epirus, despot, subsequent emperor of Thessaloniki, Theodore Angelos Komnenos. it is believed today that they were married in late 1219 or early 122054. We know that Stefan radoslav and Anna had issue, a son and a daugh-ter it seems, whose names and ages are unknown55. Kaloyan could be the son of king radoslav and, as such, the grandson of king Stefan and bratučed of the Bulgarian emperor Michael Asen (their mothers, Anna and Eirene Komnene, were sisters).

tihomir ↔ Nemanja ↕ ↕ n.n./Tih Stefan Theodore Angelos Doukas Komnenos ↕ ↕ ↕ ↕ Constantine radoslav ∞ Anna eirene ∞ John II Asan ↕ ↕ n.n. ♂ (Kaloyan?) Michael Asan

See full genealogical tables of Asens and Komneno-Doukai in: Божилов, 1985; Macrides, 2007

here another question may be posed, could he also regard himself the bratučed of Constantine Tih`s, as a distant relative along the male lines of Nemanya’s relatives and descendants? if Kaloyan was born to this marriage, he would have to have been born in the 1220s. the child („dete”) that the exiled king Stefan Doukas mentions in the charter for Dubrovnik in 1234 is understood to be an underage son, less than 14 years old. This chronology is in accordance with Kaloyan‘s presumed age in 1258/9 based on the Boyana portrait. The relative physical resemblance between radoslav and Kaloyan, that is to say of their contemporary portraits from Mileševa, Studenica and Boyana, is also worth noting (see illustrations). After king radoslav „left“ the country he stayed briefly in Dubrovnik. He al-legedly fled to Dyrrachion, where he separated from queen Anna since she had an affair with a local Latin governer. King radoslav is known to have returned

54 Кисас, С. О времену склапања брака Стефана Радослава и Ане Комнине. – ЗРВИ, 18, 1978, 131-179; Максимовић, Љ. „Византинизми“ краља Стефана Радослава. – ЗРВИ, 46, 2009, 139-147. 55 in a pomenik included in the ritual book which belonged to the monastery of the holy trinity near Plevlja, after the names of radoslav and Anna are mentioned also „their childrens”, s. Споменик СКА, LVI, 1922, 22-30, 25. A „child” mentioned in the charter of king radoslav issued for the city of Dubrovnik must have been a male child, s. Monumenta Serbica, XIII, 19-20.

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to Serbia, where he was ordained to the priesthood by archbishop Sava and took the name John. it is believed that Anna had been ordained a monk too. There is no further information about his children56. We can only assume that as the nephew of the empress mother Eirene, Kaloyan could have been awarded the title of sebastokrator in Bulgaria under Micheal Assen, sometime after 1253, which is when the sources mention for the first and last time sebastokrator Peter, the emperor‘s son-in-law, and his “land“ – obviously a separate region within the Bulgarian Empire – the exact location of which is unknown57. (On the other hand, if Kaloyan was Anna‘s son, he was also a close relation of the rulers and emperors of Thessaloniki, but it appears that after 1230 – between 1234-35 and 1241, when Manuel Angelos and John Angelos ruled as self-proclaimed but uncrowned emperors – there were no promotions to court titles, so Kaloyan could not have been awarded his title in Thessaloniki58.) This would make Kaloyan, like Peter, indirectly related to the Asens, by alliance rather than by blood. The question is – if this is correct, why would Kaloyan not mention his father in the inscription when he mentioned his grandfather, and why would he not mention his relation to the Angeloi of Epirus, i.e. the Doukai and Komnenoi, i.e. Theodore Angelos, his presumed maternal grandfather? King Stefan radoslav was banished from the country, and on his return he immediately had to give up his royal insignia and become a monk. it is quite possible that during the painting of the Boyana church he was still alive. radoslav later remained in inglorious memory as having fallen under his wife’s influence and suffering from mental illness (making him un-

56 Monumenta Serbica, XXIII, 19-20; Теодосије, 177; sources cited in the n.22. the Dyrrachion affair of Anna is not accepted as a fact in modern works, since it is not corroborated with any other source. it is also in contradiction with the source data where Anna is mentioned as a monk, s. Ласкарис М. Византијске принцезе у средњовековној Србији, Београд 1926, 48-52. the fresco portrait of radoslav and Anna in Studenica without his royal insignia is recently dated in 1234, i.e. just after his ordination, s. Миљковић, Б. Житија светог Саве као извор за историју средњевековне уметности, Београд 2008, 132 n.436. Polemis made a wrong identification of Anna Doukas with Anna Dandolo, considering that she died in Serbia in 1258. s. Polemis, 1968, no. 47, 93 n.11. there is no reference to any „nephew” in the charter of king Vladislav from 1234, see n. 28. 57 See the treaty of Dubrovnik with Michael Asen in Monumenta Serbica, XLI, 35-40; Божилов, И. България и Дубровник. Договорът от 1253 г. С., 2010; Божилов, 1985, n.21, 112-113. In a recent contribution the region belonged to sebastokrator Peter is identified as the north-east of then Bulgaria, later Dobruja, s. Nikolov, G. Appearance and initial Development of Appanages in the Bulgarian Tsardom (late 12th to mid 13th century). – In: Byzantium, New Peoples, New Powers: the Byzantino-Slav Contact Zone, from the Ninth to the Fifteenth Century. ed. Kaimakamova, M., M. Salamon, Smorąg różicka, Cracow, 2007, 259-265, 263. there is also another assumption whеrе the „land“ of sebastokrator Peter is identified as the later dominion of Shishman, lord of Vidin in today north-west Bulgaria and probably the son-in-law of Peter, s. Божилов 2010, 98-99. 58 For more details see Ферјанчић, Б. Солунски цар Манојло Анђео (1230-1237). – Зборник Филозофског факултета, XIV-1, Београд, 1979, 93-101; Nicol, 1957, 128-140; Ферјанчић, Б. Деспоти у византији и јужнословенским земљама. Београд, 1960, 62-63. We have no mention of sebastokrators in the Empire of Thessaloniki, except one who was active prior to 1230. cf. Ферјанчић, 1998, 175; Chomatenus, no. 76, 257-258.

fit to rule)59. records show no mention of him as a saint, or any traces of his cult. (The only exception is his place in the later visual representations, espe-cially in the holy genealogy of Saint Simeon Nemanya.) Theodore Angelos, blind, deposed and stripped of his imperial insignia, had already died as a Nicaean prisoner when the Boyana church was being painted. These reasons may be enough to explain Kaloyan‘s genealogical choice. Neither radoslav nor theodoros were of significance for the legitimacy of Kaloyan`s social status in 1258/9. however, following this line of argument we cannot but notice that, as the son of the exiled king, Kaloyan would have had a claim to the Serbian throne, un-less he had, for some reason, renounced it. This begs the question of Kaloyan’s place in the little known relations between Serbia and Bulgaria in the years leading up to the completion of the Boyana church frescoes. At it’s own re-quest, on June 15, 1253, Dubrovnik signed a treaty with Michael Asen, the aims of which included the banishment of uroš and his entire family from the kingdom of Serbia (the text of the treaty makes it clear that the letter refers most of all to uroš’s brother Vladislav). The treaty generally allows for the Bulgarian emperor to rule the Serbian lands, or appoint a regent to rule in his name. Is this just a formula, or was this already aimed at a particular figure, perhaps even someone with legal pretensions? The sources contain few traces of the outcome of these events, which leaves space for various assumptions and speculations. indeed the army of Bulgarian emperor invaded into Serbia in the summer of 1254, ravaged the monastery of St. Apostles at the river of Lim, and retreated to Bulgaria60. That is actually all we know on these impor-tant events. Whatever were the plans, king uroš remained on the throne. One could also see Kaloyan as a his noble, who appeared in the Sofia region after the war of 1254, or after 1256, during the turbulent circumstances in Bulgaria, which occurred subsequently to the peace agreement of region, after Michael Asen had lost the war with Theodore Laskaris. Kaloyan’s allusions to his kinship with the Serbian king can also be consid-ered as a reflection of good relations between Bulgaria and Serbia, which had improved since 1253-54, a few years before the inscription appeared. Finally, the following note should be added: if Kaloyan became sebastokrator under Michael Asen (which we should consider as a hypothesis), for securing of his position after the changes on the Bulgarian throne (apart from his potential role in the rise of Constantine Tih`s), his kinship to the new emperor must also have been of some importance.

59 Теодосије, 177. Уп. Ферјанчић, Б. Одбрана Немањиног наслеђа – Србија постаје краљевина. – В: ИСН, I, 310 n. 46. 60 See the text of the treaty in Monumenta Serbica, XLI, 35-40; a new edition: Божилов, 2010. there are no source data to explain sufficiently the wider context and the outcome of these events, see Ћирковић, С. Српске и поморске земље краља Уроша Ι. – В: ИСН, Ι, 341-356, 348; Божилов, 1999, 505; s. also Божилов, 2010, 86.

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King Stefan Vladislav (1233-1243). On a strictly hypothetical level, we should reconsider the possibility that Kaloyan was the son of king Vladislav and a daughter of ivan Asen ii (whose name is not known with certainty), i.e. the grandson of king Stefan and bratučed of emperor Michael Asen, as the son of his sister. Scholars have already presented arguments against this possibility: he would have to be a completely unknown son of the king; even if he had grown up in Serbia, as a descendant of the Asens he would have been entitled to the throne after the assassination of Michael Asen; and he would certainly have mentioned in the inscription that he was a member of the ruling family of Bulgaria61. Further search among the male descendants of king Stefan is pointless, be-cause it is clear that Kaloyan could not be a son of king uroš. Should we look for his connection to king Stefan in the female line?Komnene. It is known that Stefan had a daughter named Komnene (Κομνηνή), who was married twice – both times to Albanian aristocrats – panhyperse-bastos Demetrios Progonos and pansebastos sebastos Gregorios Kamonas (they married some time before 1217)62. From one of these marriages she had a daughter, whom Akropolites mentions as the niece of Empress Eirene Laskaris, the wife of John III (he calls Komnene the daughter of eirene‘s first cousin)63. Could a son of Komnene and one of these Albanian aristocrats also be the bratučed of one of the Bulgarian emperors? Michael Asen is out of the question. Tih’s son Constantine was Komnina’s cousin (they were both Nemanya’s grandchildren), but in that case the connection between Kaloyan and Constantine is too weak. (As Komnina’s son, Kaloyan would have been the bratučed of emperor Theodore ii Laskaris, but by all accounts the histori-cal context does not allow the possibility, even hypothetically, that he could have been awarded the title of sebastokrator or the government of the Sofia region by the Nicaean emperors.) The unknown daughter of king Stefan. The possibility that a so far unknown daughter of king Stefan (from his second marriage to Anna Dandolo) was Kaloyan’s mother has already been considered64. however, she may also have been the daughter of his first wife, eudokia Angelina. Who, in that case, might have been her husband?

61 See the convincing arguments in Божилов, 1995, 7. King Vladislav is considered as parent of three children, s. Јиречек, 1952, 176; according to some unpublished research efforts he actually had two, one of them was a son by name Desa, Маловић–Ђукић, М. Поклад жупана Десе. – In: Краљ Владислав и Србија. ed. Живковић, Т. Београд, 2003, 31-39, 32, n. 3.62 Chomatenus, no.1, 19-26. Пурковић, 1956, 20-21. 63 Acropolites, I, 91.11-14 (αὐτανεψιὰν πρωτεξαδέλφης αὐτῆς θυγατέρα). 64 this in an old idea of Ljubomir Kovačević, s. Kovačević, L. Жене и деца Стефана Првовенчаног. – Глас СКА, LX, 1901, 1-64, 31-64; accepted later by Пурковић, 1956, 21-22.

We started with the fact that he could not have been an Asen. We have al-ready seen that Kaloyan‘s relation to Constantine through Nemanya‘s family must, by all accounts, have been distant. however, if this presumed daughter of king Stefan was married to the uncle of the future emperor Constantine, then Kaloyan could be his bratučed and the grandson of king Stefan, and Constantine could be Nemanya’s grandson. Their relation would then be close, through some unknown aristocratic family whose son married the daughter of king Stefan and whose daughter married the father of the future emperor Constantine. hypothetically, it is possible that their other son (Tih) married Constantine’s mother – she would be Nemanya’s daughter or niece, although we doubt that his connection to Nemanya went along the female line65. Kaloyan‘s mother and Constantine‘s father would be in the fifth degree of affinal kinship. In order to marry, they would have needed a dispensation from the Church66. The option excluded is that their daughter married any of king Stefan‘s sons.

tihomir ↔ Nemanja ↕ Stefan ↕ ♂tih ∞ n.n. ♀ ↔ n.n. ♂ ∞ ♀ n.n. ↕ ↕ Constatine Kaloyan

tihomir ↔ Nemanja or Stefan ↕ ↕ n.n. ♀ ∞ tih ↔ n.n. ♂ ∞ ♀ n.n. ↕ ↕ Constantine Kaloyan

Another, though not very likely possibility, is that they were closely related through Nemanya’s family. if Tih was the son (or son-in-law) of Tihomir, and Stefan’s presumed daughter was married to the brother of the future Bulgarian emperor Constantine, that would make Kaloyan the emperor’s bratučed, but only in the rare meaning of “nephew“. Kaloyan’s mother and Constantine’s brother would be in the sixth degree of blood kinship (Zavida would be their

65 Cf. hypothesis of Ковачевић, 1901, 48-49. 66 the Canon 54 of trullo has no objections to a marriage in this degree of kinship. the marriage would have been forbidden if tried after the prohibition act issued by patriarch Sissinius in 998, but it had usually been dispensed before and after the 10th and 11th centuries. i am thankful to Prof. Zoran Devrnja, who kindly advised me on the matters of Canon Law.

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great-grandfather). in order to marry, they would have needed a dispensation from the Church. Due to the canonical impediment, the marriage would not have been possible if Nemanya were Constantine’s direct grandfather.

Zavida ↕tihomir ↔ Nemanja ↕ ↕ tih (or n.n.♀) Stefan ↕ ↕ Constatine↔n.n. ♂∞ ♀ n.n. ↕ Kaloyan

The idea that Kaloyan and Constantine were related through an unknown aristocratic family leads us back to the question of Constantine‘s lineage and his family‘s presumed connection with Skopje. The historical context for the chronology of the marriage between Stefan‘s daughter and an unknown aris-tocrat from Skopje is given by Constantine‘s Virgino Charter and Milutin‘s charter for the same monastery, from which we may assume that Skopje be-longed to king Stefan for some time. he could have captured Skopje as early as after Kaloyan‘s death (†1207), or as late as after the death of Strez (†1214), and some time after 1217, as king, he produced his charter for the monastery of St. George. his rule must have been ended before 1219 at the latest, when the city was already under the rule of despot Theodore Angelos of Epirus67. So, according to her sexual maturity and the regulations of ecclesiastical law, this presumed daughter of the future Serbian king would have married some-time at the end of the first or during the second decade of the thirteenth century to an aristocrat from Skopje, who must have been old and distinguished, from a family to which the future Bulgarian emperor Constantine had probably already been born. This chronology of the marriage of Kaloyan‘s parents is in accordance with his presumed age based on the portrait. We should also pre-sume that information on the special posthumous status of her father as a saint

67 the charter of king Stefan is mentioned in the charter of king Milutin for the same monastery: Грамоти на манастирот Св. Георги. II, 205-238, 211; emperor Constantine mentioned in his own charter „the charters of former kings”, Грамоти на манастирот Св. Георги. I, 183, 184, 185. on the installation of Strez, s. Радић, Р. Обласни господари у Византији крајем XII и у првим деценијама XIII века. – ЗРВИ, 24-25, 1986, 151-289, 223-234, 225 n. 9 (with sources); the city of Skoplje is considered as belonging to the realm of Strez, s. ibidem, 230 n. 40; on the problem of the year of the death of Strez s. ibidem, 234 (1214), Божилов, 1985, n. 12, 98-100; Skoplje is mentioned as ruled by theodoros in a letter of metropolitan John Apokaukos dated in 1219, cf. Aus dem Nachlasse von N. A. Bees. – Byzantinisch-neuegriechische Jahrbücher, 21, 1971-1974, 55-243, no. 54, 110-111, 203; Kravari, V. Villes et villages de Macédoine occidentale. Paris, 1989, 161.

king in the higher circles of Serbia somehow became known and respected in her new surroundings. Desislava. in this regard, we believe that Kaloyan could not have been refer-ring to kinship with king Stefan through his wife, sebastokratorissa Desislava, which excludes the possibility that she was the daughter of king Stefan Vladislav or any other Serbian king68. it seems to us that marriage, even if one took one‘s spouse‘s family name for dynastic reasons or prestige, could not mean that one would refer to kinship with the ancestors of one‘s spouse – in short, affinal kinship did not extend to the past in that way69. All that can be said about Desislava‘s lineage and the chronology of this marriage is a mere supposition. her name, variants of which were found during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the regions of today‘s Western Balkans, suggests Serbian origin, but there is nothing to prove this70. in the mid fourteenth cen-tury the daughter of emperor ivan Alexander Asen was also named Desislava, perhaps after Kaloyan‘s wife. Topography and chronologythe formulation „in the time of the Bulgarian empire” is unusual, and puts us in a quandary. it seems to suggest a change of government, perhaps only the supreme government, in the Sofia region after 1256. on the other hand, all the existing data indicates continuous Bulgarian rule in the Sofia region through-out the previous period. it has long been noted that the indiction and the year do not match, and the reading of the year as 6767 since the creation of the world – i.e. 1258/9 AD – has been widely accepted71. The inscription data about the construction and painting of the church can be understood in two ways. Firstly, it could be understood as seemingly, or actu-ally, referring to two separate time periods – the construction and the painting. regardless of how the inscription is interpreted, certain stylistic differences between the paintings in the naos and the narthex, and the unusual re-com-position and re-decoration of certain parts in the entrance from the narthex to the naos, have led to the conclusion that several years passed between the painting of the naos and the narthex72. however, the two stages of painting may have directly succeeded each other. Anyway, the unusual re-composition

68 Божилов, 1995, 8. 69 I am especially grateful to Prof. ruth Macrides who kindly shared her opinion on the problem, who also red the whole text gladly and helped me to improve it. 70 Божилов, 1995, 8. 71 Божилов, 1995, 5. 72 Койнова–Арнаудова, Л. История на изписването и реставраторските намеси в Боянската църква. – Проблеми на изкуството, 1, 1995, 42-44. regarding the different phases of fresco-paintings in the narthex of the church see cautious remarks given by Пенкова, Б. В. Цветков. Старији слојеви зидног сликарства у Бојани. – Саопштења, XL, 2008, 43-59, 44-46.

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of the frescoes of Christ and Saint Nicholas on the eastern wall of the narthex may have been for some ideological reason, connected with the mentioned portraits of emperors and ktetors on the southern and northern walls of the narthex. But another explanation is also possible. it should certainly be taken into account that Kaloyan built the entire narthex, and that some time probably had to pass between the construction and the painting to allow for the natural subsidence of the building73. All this allows us to consider the possibility that Kaloyan had begun the con-struction of his endowment several years before the painting was finished, which takes us back to the time before the reign of Constantine Asen. Of course, this only works if we take the year 1258/9 as the accepted year of completion of the reconstruction of the Boyana church. ConclusionAny attempt to say something new or corroborate what has already been said about the origin of the historical figures portrayed on the walls of the narthex of the Church of St. Nicholas at Boyana is simultaneously a contribution of sorts to the body of Boyana legends, as prof. Ivan Božilov noted recently. Circumstances have made the origin of the church’s ktetor a mystery, un-solved even after numerous attempts. This allows some other, perhaps more important, stories and messages with soteriology meanings, standing on the walls of the Boyana church complex, to be emphasized. In order to fulfil our academic obligation and the scientific purpose of this research, we will give our contribution to the body of observations, dilemmas, assumptions, conclu-sions and legends about the origin of the donor of the Boyana church.We cannot say with certainty which Bulgarian emperor made Kaloyan sebas-tokrator, Michael Asen or Constantine (Tih`s) Asen. it is impossible to draw with certainty a diagram of the genealogical connection between Kaloyan and the unnamed emperor, if the emperor in question was the then-reigning Constantine Asen, nor is it possible to determine whether they were close or distant relatives. We can claim with more certainty that Kaloyan was a direct descendant of the Serbian king Stefan the First-Crowned. he was perhaps the son of king radoslav, therefore connected to Serbia and close to the court circles which adopted the roots of the cult of the holy king Stefan. A possible explication sees him as the bratučed of Michael Asen and the descendant of sebastokrator Peter. Another one sees him regarding himself the bratučed of Constantine Tih`s Asen in the general sense of distant blood relation. The complicated speculation about Kaloyan as the son of an unknown daugh-ter of king Stefan is also an attractive one. She should have been married to

73 See for example Ђорђевић, И. Зидно сликарство српске властеле. Београд, 1994, 131.

an unknown aristocrat from the family of the future emperor Constantine, the family which must have been de facto master of Skopje and have somehow been acquainted with the worship of Symeon Nemanja as a saint, and with the posthumous reputation of king Stefan as an unofficial saint in court circles in Serbia. A crucial question is whether Kaloyan began the construction of the church before or after Constantine’s arrival on the throne. We cannot completely ex-clude the possibility that he had become sebastokrator during the reign of Michael Asen, or that he had become master of the region in some other way prior to the accession of Constantine Tih`s (after the summer of 1254, or sum-mer of 1256) and had been made sebastokrator by the new emperor. the unu-sual re-composition of the frescoes on the Eastern wall of the narthex may have been the consequence of political changes connected to the rise of em-peror Constantine, but it may also have been caused by some banal reason. Maybe the reference to, „the time of the Bulgarian empire” had some inter-connection with the mentioned re-composition and political changes. At the very end, we would like to reiterate a past remark made in a similar situ-ation: regardless of the insufficient prosopographic details about sebastokrator Kaloyan and emperor Constantine Asen, these descendants of the Nemanya family, together with the titles they acquired in the Bulgarian Empire, are a striking indicator of the horizontal and vertical mobility of noblemen within the area of Byzantine civilization, or the Byzantine commonwealth as this phenomenon has been named by Sir Dimitri Obolensky.

Портретите в Боянската църква. Принос към просопография-та на севастократор КалоянСърджан Пириватрич, Белград

Всеки опит да се каже нещо ново или да се повтори вече казаното за произхода на исто-рическите личности, изобразени върху стените на притвора на църквата на св. Никола в Бояна, представлява същевременно и своеобразен принос към корпуса на боянските легенди, както отбеляза неотдавна и проф. Иван Божилов. Стечението на обстоятелствата е направило така, че произходът на ктитора на църквата да остане загадка, която не са успели да разрешат многобройните опити, изречени като хипотези или твърдения. По този начин образите от стените на боянската църква се излъчват някои други, бихме ка-зали по-важни послания със сотирологично значение. В изпълнение на своя академичен дълг и на научната цел на настоящото изследване, ще дадем своя принос към корпуса с наблюденията, дилемите, предположенията, заключенията или легендите за произхода на ктитора на Боянската църква. Въпросът за произхода на севастократор Калоян е тясно свързан с въпроса за произхода на цар Константин Асен. Трябва да подчертаем несигурността на пътя, по който се сти-гало до предположенията за техния произход. В случая с цар Константин, „Тиховия син”,

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не е известно неговата връзка със св. Симеон Неманя, когото е наричал свой „дядо”, да е била по женска линия, както е прието да се мисли. Това не може да се изключи, род-ството обаче е било по-скоро по-индиректно по мъжка линия, може би чрез потомък на брата на Неманя Тихомир, който по едно време, някъде между 1166 и 1168 г. вероятно е пребивавал в Скопие. В ктиторския надпис Калоян се нарича „братовчед царев” и внук на „св. Стефан крал сръбски”. Най-проблематична е роднинската връзка „братовчед”. Тя се отнася главно към синовете на двама братя. Но „братовчед” може да се отнася и до синовете на две сестри, въобще кръвни роднини, даже и за братов син, т.е. племеник. Затова и кръгът от възможни предположения за произхода и роднинските отношения на въпросните личности е много широк. Не може със сигурност да се каже кой български цар е издигнал Калоян за севастокра-тор. Не може да се установи със сигурност схемата на роднинската връзка на Калоян със споменатия цар, нито, ако и да е този цар Константин, да се установи дали родството им е близко или далечно. С малко по-голяма сигурност можем да смятаме, че Калоян е пряк потомък на сръбския крал Стефан Първовенчани. Калоян може да е бил син на крал Радослав и от тук да е свързан със сръбски среди, близки до сръбския двор, къде-то се формира култът към св. Стефан Неманич. Едно възможно обяснение е Калоян да е братовчед на Михаил Асен (т.е. техните майки са сестри), друго – да е братовчед на Константин Асен (като негов далечен кръвен роднина). Обстоятелствата, при което е мо-гъл да завладее софия и околностите, не са в достатъчна степен известни. Това може да е станало след българо-сръбската война от 1254 г., след българо-византийската от 1255-1256 г. или в непосредствена връзка с възкачването на българския престол на Тиховия син Константин през 1257 г. Привлекателно е и малко сложното предположение, според което Калоян е син на непозната дъщеря на крал Стефан, омъжена за непознат представи-тел на фамилията, от която произхожда по-късният цар, фамилия, която е владее Скопие и на която е познат и важен светителският ореол на Симеон Неманя и посмъртната репу-тация в светските и църковните среди на сръбската държава на неговия син крал Стефан. От ключово значение е въпросът дали Калоян е започнал градежа на църквата преди или след идването на власт на Константин. Необичайното разместване на фреските върху източната стена на притвора би могло да бъде последица от политически промени, свър-зани пряко с идването на Константин на власт, както и от съвсем банална причина. Може би е във връзка с разместването на стенописите и политическите причини и изразът „по време на българското царство”. Накрая, повтаряме едно свое мнение, изразено по друг повод: независимо от недоста-тъчните просопографски детайли за севастократор Калоян, както и за цар Константин Асен, тези потомци и роднини на Неманичите, заедно с най-високото си положение в Българското царство, са впечатляващо свидетелство за движението на велможите както хоризонтално, така и вертикално, вътре в най-общо казано византийската цивилизация, и по-точно във византийския комонвелт.

Portrait of radoslav in the katholikon of the Mileševa monastery, Serbia (before 1227); Portrait of radoslav in the katholikon of the Studenica monastery, Serbia (1234);Portrait of sebastokrator Kaloyan in the church of St. Nicholas in Boyana, Bulgaria (1258/9)