Ivan Asen II
Ivan Asen II, also known as John Asen II, was Emperor of Bulgaria from 1218 to 1241. He was still a child when his father Ivan Asen I one of the founders of the Second Bulgarian Empire was killed in 1196. His supporters tried to secure the throne for him after his uncle, Kaloyan, was murdered in 1207, but Kaloyan's other nephew, Boril, overcame them. Ivan Asen fled from Bulgaria and settled in the Rus' principalities.
Boril could never strengthen his rule which enabled Ivan Asen to muster an army and return to Bulgaria. He captured Tarnovo and blinded Boril in 1218. Initially, he supported the full communion of the Bulgarian Church with the Papacy and concluded alliances with the neighboring Catholic powers, Hungary and the Latin Empire of Constantinople. He tried to achieve the regency for the 11-year-old Latin Emperor, Baldwin II, after 1228, but the Latin aristocrats did not support Ivan Asen. He inflicted a crushing defeat on Theodore Komnenos Doukas of the Empire of Thessalonica, in the Battle of Klokotnitsa in 1230. Theodore's empire soon collapsed and Ivan Asen conquered large territories in Macedonia, Thessaly and Thrace.
The control of the trade on the Via Egnatia enabled Ivan Asen to implement an ambitious building program in Tarnovo and struck gold coins in his new mint in Ohrid. He started negotiations about the return of the Bulgarian Church to Orthodoxy after the barons of the Latin Empire had elected John of Brienne regent for Baldwin II in 1229. Ivan Asen and the Emperor of Nicaea, John III Vatatzes, concluded an alliance against the Latin Empire at their meeting in 1235. During the same conference, the rank of patriarch was granted to the head of the Bulgarian Church in token of its autocephaly. Ivan Asen and Vatatzes joined their forces in attacking Constantinople, but the former realized that Vatatzes could primarily take advantage of the fall of the Latin Empire and broke off his alliance with Nicaea in 1237. After the Mongols invaded the Pontic steppes, several Cuman groups fled to Bulgaria.
Early life
Ivan Asen's father, Ivan Asen I, was one of the two leaders of the 1185 uprising against the Byzantine Empire in 1185. The nomadic Cumans, who dwelled in the Pontic steppes, supported the rebels, aiding them in the foundation of the Second Bulgarian Empire. The nation initially encompassed the Balkan Mountains and the plains to the north of the mountains as far as the Lower Danube. Ivan Asen I was styled "basileus" of the Bulgarians from around 1187. His son and namesake was born between 1192 and 1196. The child's mother was called Elena, "the new and pious tsarina", in the Synodikon of Tzar Boril.A boyar, Ivanko, killed Ivan Asen I in 1196. The murdered emperor was succeeded by his younger brother, Kaloyan. He entered into correspondence with Pope Innocent III and offered to acknowledge the popes' primacy in order to secure the support of the Holy See. The Pope denied the request to elevate the head of the Bulgarian Church to the rank of patriarch, but he granted the inferior title of primate to the Bulgarian prelate. The Pope did not acknowledge Kaloyan's claim to the title of emperor, but a papal legate crowned Kaloyan king in Tarnovo on 8 November 1204. Kaloyan took advantage of the disintegration of the Byzantine Empire after the Fourth Crusade and expanded his authority over significant territories. He was murdered while besieging Thessaloniki in October 1207.
The teenager Ivan Asen had a strong claim to succeed his uncle, but Kaloyan's Cuman widow married Boril—the son of one of Kaloyan's sisters—who was proclaimed emperor. The exact circumstances of Boril's ascension to the throne are unknown. The 13th-century historian, George Akropolites, recorded that Ivan Asen soon fled from Bulgaria and settled in the "lands of the Russians". According to a later source, Ephrem the Monk, Ivan Asen and his brother, Alexander, were taken to the Cumans by their tutor before they moved to the Rus' principalities. Florin Curta and John V. A. Fine write that a group of boyars had tried to secure the throne to Ivan Asen after Kaloyan's death, but they were overcome by Boril's supporters, and Ivan Asen had to leave Bulgaria. Historian Alexandru Madgearu proposes that primarily boyars who opposed the Cumans' growing influence had supported Ivan Asen.
Boril's rule was always insecure. His own relatives, Strez and Alexius Slav, denied to obey to him and he had to face frequent uprisings. Ivan Asen stayed in Rus' "a considerable time", according to Akropolites, before he gathered about him "a certain of the Russian rabble" and returned to Bulgaria. Madgearu says, Ivan Asen could hire soldiers most probably because Boril's opponents had sent money to him. Historian István Vásáry associates Ivan Asen's "Russian rabble" with the semi-nomadic Brodnici. He defeated Boril and seized "not a little land".
Curta and Fine write that Ivan Asen returned to Bulgaria after Boril's ally, Andrew II of Hungary, had departed for the Fifth Crusade in 1217. Boril withdrew to Tarnovo after his defeat, but Ivan Asen laid siege to the town. Akropolites claimed that the siege lasted for seven years. Most modern historians agree that Akropolites confused months for years, but Genoveva Cankova-Petkova accepts Akropolites' chronology. She says that the three Cuman chieftains whom Andrew II's military commander, Joachim, Count of Hermannstadt, defeated near Vidin around 1210 had been hired by Ivan Asen, because he wanted to prevent Joachim from supporting Boril against the rebels who had seized the town. Vásáry states that her theory is "far-fetched", lacking any solid evidence. The townspeople of Tarnovo surrendered to Ivan Asen after the long siege. He captured and blinded Boril, and "gained control of all the territory of the Bulgarians", according to Acropolites.
Reign
Consolidation
The first decade of Ivan Asen's rule is poorly documented. Andrew II of Hungary reached Bulgaria during his return from the Fifth Crusade in late 1218. Ivan Asen did not allow the king to cross the country until Andrew promised to give his daughter, Maria, in marriage to him. Maria's dowry included the region of Belgrade and Braničevo, the possession of which had been disputed by the Hungarian and Bulgarian rulers for decades.When Robert of Courtenay, the newly elected Latin Emperor, was marching from France towards Constantinople in 1221, Ivan Asen accompanied him across Bulgaria. He also supplied the emperor's retinue with food and fodder. The relationship between Bulgaria and the Latin Empire remained peaceful during the reign of Robert. Ivan Asen also made peace with the ruler of Epirus, Theodore Komnenos Doukas, who was one of the principal enemies of the Latin Empire. Theodore's brother, Manuel Doukas, married Ivan Asen's illegitimate daughter, Mary, in 1225. Theodore who regarded himself the lawful successor of the Byzantine emperors was crowned emperor around 1226.
The Latin Emperor Robert was succeeded by his 11-year-old brother, Baldwin II, in January 1228. Ivan Asen proposed to marry off his daughter, Helen, to the young emperor, because he wanted to lay claim to the regency. He also promised to unite his troops with the Latins to reconquer the territories that they had lost to Theodore Komnenos Doukas. Although the Latin lords did not want to accept his offer, they started negotiations about it, because they tried to avoid a military conflict with him. Simultaneously, they offered the regency to the former king of Jerusalem, John of Brienne, who agreed to leave Italy for Constantinople, but they kept their agreement in secret for years. Only Venetian authors who compiled their chronicles decades after the eventsMarino Sanudo, Andrea Dandolo and Lorenzo de Monacisrecorded Ivan Asen's offer to the Latins, but the reliability of their report is widely accepted by modern historians.
Relationship between Bulgaria and Hungary deteriorated in the late 1220s. Shortly after the Mongols inflicted a serious defeat on the united armies of the Rus' princes and Cuman chieftains in the Battle of the Kalka River in 1223, a leader of a western Cuman tribe, Boricius, converted to Catholicism in the presence of Andrew II's heir and co-ruler, Béla IV. Pope Gregory IX stated in a letter that those who had attacked the converted Cumans were also the enemies of the Roman Catholic Church, possibly in reference to a previous attack by Ivan Asen, according to Madgearu. Hungarian troops may have tried to capture Vidin already in 1228, but the dating of the siege is uncertain, and it may have occurred only in 1232.
Expansion
Theodore Komnenos Doukas unexpectedly invaded Bulgaria along the river Maritsa in early 1230. The Epirote and Bulgarian armies clashed at Klokotnitsa in March or April. Ivan Asen personally commanded the reserve troops, including 1,000 Cuman mounted archers. He held a copy of his peace treaty with Theodore high in the air while marching into battle as a reference to his opponents' betrayal. Their sudden attack against the Epirotes secured his victory. The Bulgarians captured Theodore and his principal officials and seized much booty, but Ivan Asen released the common soldiers. After Theodore tried to hatch a plot against Ivan Asen, he had the captured emperor blinded. A Spanish rabbi, Jacob Arophe, was informed that Ivan Asen first ordered two Jews to blind Theodore because he knew that the emperor had persecuted the Jews in his empire, but they refused, for which they were thrown from a cliff.Bulgaria became the dominant power of Southeastern Europe after the Battle of Klokotnitsa. His troops swept into Theodore's lands and conquered dozens of Epirote towns. They captured Ohrid, Prilep and Serres in Macedonia, Adrianople, Demotika and Plovdiv in Thrace and also occupied Great Vlachia in Thessaly. Alexius Slav's realm in the Rhodope Mountains was also annexed. Ivan Asen placed Bulgarian garrisons in the important fortresses and appointed his own men to command them and to collect the taxes, but local officials continued to administer other places in the conquered territories. He replaced the Greek bishops with Bulgarian prelates in Macedonia. He made generous grants to the monasteries on Mount Athos during his visit there in 1230, but he could not persuade the monks to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the primate of the Bulgarian Church. His son-in-law, Manuel Doukas, took control of the Empire of Thessaloniki. The Bulgarian troops also made a plundering raid against Serbia, because Stefan Radoslav, King of Serbia, had supported his father-in-law, Theodore, against Bulgaria.
Ivan Asen's conquests secured the Bulgarian control of the Via Egnatia. He established a mint in Ohrid which began to strike gold coins. His growing revenues enabled him to accomplish an ambitious building program in Tarnovo. The Church of the Holy Forty Martyrs, with its facade decorated with ceramic tiles and murals, commemorated his victory at Klokotnitsa. The imperial palace on the Tsaravets Hill was enlarged. A memorial inscription on one of the columns of the Church of the Holy Forty Martyrs recorded Ivan Asen's conquests. It referred to him as the "tsar of the Bulgarians, Greeks and other countries", implying that he was planning to revive the Byzantine Empire under his rule. He also styled himself emperor in his letter of grant to the Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos and in his diploma about the privileges of the Ragusan merchants. Imitating the Byzantine emperors, he sealed his charters with gold bulls. One of his seals portrayed him wearing imperial insignia, also revealing his imperial ambitions.