As soon as news of Manuel’s death reached Serbia, Stefan Nemanja
(c. 1165/8–96) declared independence. In the following years he annexed
Duklja and the southern Adriatic littoral, where there were many Latin
bishoprics. This placed ‘medieval Serbia on the crossroads of Byzantium
and the west’, but even as Stefan turned away from Constantinople his
faith was increasingly orthodox.105 He founded four monasteries, the last
being Studenica, built after 1183, which became a model for later richly
endowed royal foundations. Stefan’s youngest son, Rastko, drew Nemanjid
patronage to Mount Athos, where he fled c. 1191 and took the monastic
name Sava. As a monk at the Vatopedi monastery he was visited by his
dying father who brought lavish gifts including horses, mules, and buckets
of gold and silver.106
B´ela III, Manuel I’s prot´eg´e who had been king of Hungary since 1172,
also reacted to Manuel’s death with a land-grab, annexing Dalmatia and
Sirmium. Furthermore, when Andronikos I (1183–85) usurped the imperial
throne, B´ela established unopposed his control across the whole of the
Niˇs–Braniˇcevo region, from Belgrade as far as Sofia.107 That territory, but
not Sirmium and Dalmatia, was returned in 1185, when B´ela reached an
agreement with the new emperor, Isaac II Angelos (1185–95); Isaac agreed to
marry B´ela’s daughter Margaret, who took the name Maria, and to receive
as her dowry the region of Niˇs–Braniˇcevo.108
Before this, Andronikos had also to face an invasion by the Normans
of Sicily, who brought a character claiming to be the deposed Alexios II
(1180–3). This ploy, echoing Guiscard’s use in 1081 of the pseudo-Michael
Doukas, persuaded the h¯egemones of Dyrrachium to capitulate before the
mountain passes could be blocked or a naval force mustered.Norman forces
were able to advance by land and sea, and converged upon Thessaloniki,
where a brief but bloody struggle ensued. The city’s archbishop, Eustathios,
composed an account which devotes long passages to the deaths of citizens,
some by the sword, others trampled underfoot in vain attempts to seek
the security of the citadel or churches. The Normans’ threat to march on
Constantinople precipitated the murder of Andronikos I and accession of
Isaac Angelos, whose spirited counter-offensive drove the Sicilians from
both Thessaloniki and, later, Dyrrachium. Less successful was Isaac II’s
handling of the Vlachs and Bulgarians settled in and near the Haemus.
To pay for the festivities associated with his wedding toMargaret-Maria,
Isaac II Angelos determined to raise money from imperial estates.109 However,
demands were also made on those settled near estates in the region of
Anchialos, provoking complaints brought to the emperor by the brothers
Peter and Asen, who requested that Isaac grant them an imperial estate in
the vicinity of the Haemus ‘which would provide them with a little revenue’.
Their request was denied, and consequently ‘they spat out heated
words, hinting at rebellion and the destruction they would wreak on their
way home’.110 Inspired by the sack of Thessaloniki, the brothers announced
that St Demetrios had abandoned the Byzantines and claimed him as their
own. Support for their rebellion cohered around St Demetrios, and Vlachs
and Bulgarians launched assaults on Byzantine settlements, seizing captives
and cattle in abundance. Isaac launched a counter-offensive, and recovered
much ground. However, thereafter he entrusted the struggle to a series
of disloyal generals, each of whom launched a bid for the throne rather
than prosecuting the war. The Vlachs and Bulgarians were able to forge an
alliance with the Cumans and consolidated their control of all the lands
between the Haemus and lower Danube.111
In 1189 the situation deteriorated still further for Isaac II when Frederick
Barbarossa determined to lead the German contingent in the Third
Crusade across the Balkans. The passage was long and arduous, exacerbated
by mutual suspicion and violence. The Germans believed Isaac had
struck a deal with their enemy and target, Saladin. En route Barbarossa was
approached by the Serbian veliki ˇzupan, Stefan Nemanja, and his brothers,
who offered to support Frederick’s march and provide aid against the Byzantines,
and in return sought Frederick’s promise to act as guarantor of recent
Serbian conquests.112 Similarly, Peter and Asen sent envoys to the Germans,
and when Barbarossa had arrived at Adrianople, they offered 40,000
Vlach and Cuman archers for an assault on Constantinople.113 Barbarossa’s
ongoing negotiations with the Balkan peoples provoked Isaac’s unease. The
German emperor was regarded as an authority who might lend legitimacy
to the regimes of autonomous rulers who had until recently owed loyalty to
the Byzantine emperor, effectively recognising their permanent detachment
from the eastern empire.
The Germans did not sack Constantinople, and Barbarossa died before
reaching the Holy Land. In the aftermath of the crusade, in autumn 1190,
Isaac II returned to the Haemus, whence the Vlachs with their Cuman
allies launched unremitting assaults on imperial lands. Isaac was unable to
engage them in pitched battle, and as he withdrew led his army into an
ambush in a narrow defile, where many of his troops were crushed by rocks
thrown down upon them. The emperor barely escaped and rumours of his
death circulated widely as the Vlachs and Bulgarians made unprecedented
advances.114 Whereas previously their assaults had been concentrated on
villages and fields, now they advanced against ‘lofty-towered cities. They
sacked Anchialos, took Varna by force, and advanced on . . . Sofia, where
they razed the greater part of the city.’115
In the following year the Byzantines recouped some territory, notably
Varna and Anchialos. Isaac himself led a campaign against the Vlachs and
Cumans from Philippopolis, and from there continued on to confront StefanNemanja.
After an indecisive battle, Isaac concluded a peace treaty with
the veliki ˇzupan, allowing him to keep much land that he had captured.
A contemporary reference to this can be found in an oration of George
Tornikios, alluding to a marriage between Eudocia, Isaac’s niece, and
Stefan, the eldest son of Stefan Nemanja.116 Then, late in 1192, a dispute
broke out between Peter and Asen. The former had chosen to reside in
Preslav, the imperial capital of his chosen namesake, Tsar Peter of Bulgaria,
while Asen was based in T’rnovo.117 It is likely that Isaac had persuaded Peter
to enter into an arrangement, facilitating an imperial campaign against Asen
in spring 1193. The emperor did not take the field himself, but preferred to
remain in Constantinople where ‘he delighted in ribaldries and lewd songs
and consorted with laughter-stirring dwarves’.118 The campaigns against
Asen were entrusted to the emperor’s young cousin, Constantine Angelos
who, like so many before, sought to seize the throne.119 He failed, was
blinded, and the Vlacho-Bulgarians set out with their Cuman allies against
Philippopolis, Sofia, and even Adrianople, laying waste the lands en route.
Once again the Byzantines had lost the initiative because of the independent
ambitions of a general. The imperial campaign of 1194 was equally
unsuccessful, and Isaac raised conscript and mercenary forces for a grand
campaign to crush the Vlacho-Bulgarians in 1195. However, before this
could happen Isaac was blinded and replaced by his brother Alexios III
Angelos (1195–1203).
The period 1190–95 was one of lost or scorned opportunities for the
Byzantines. Isaac II Angelos seems to have acted rationally in the aftermath
of the Third Crusade, accepting that the empire had, for a time at least,
to abandon claims to lands beyond the Velika Morava. His alliance with
B´ela III, and consequent negotiations with Stefan Nemanja, allowed Isaac
to concentrate his limited resources on combatting the Vlachs and Bulgarians.
In 1193, by winning over Peter, Isaac isolated Asen and weakened
considerably his ability to launch raids south of the mountains. However,
Isaac’s commanders scorned the initiative, placing personal ambition above
the good of the empire.More threatening still was the fact that, after Isaac’s
death, the nature of Vlacho-Bulgarian raids changed. Whereas before 1195
they were content to plunder lands south of the Haemus and around the
Black Sea ports, which remained in Byzantine hands, from 1196 the Vlacho-
Bulgarians began to contemplate permanent possession of both kastra and
cities. Moreover, for the first time the new rulers began to strike their own
coins. These so-called ‘Bulgarian imitative’ coins have been found in considerable
numbers north of the Haemus in hoards buried between 1195 and
1204.120
After 1196 Byzantine forces were no longer willing to march through
the Haemus passes. The empire’s frontiers now ran roughly across the
Haemus as far as the river Vardar, or in places the Strymon, and the Velika
Morava, which together marked the effective western limit of Byzantine
authority. And beyond that limit, in Serbia and Bulgaria, the emperor was
regarded increasingly with contempt. This is nowhere better illustrated than
in the case of Eudocia. By 1198 Eudocia’s father, Alexios, was emperor and
her husband Stefan had replaced his father as veliki ˇzupan. Yet so far had
Serbian sentiment shifted that Stefan ‘stripped [his wife of] her woman’s
robe, leaving her only with her undergarment, which was cut around so
that it barely covered her private parts, and dismissed her thus to go forth
as if she were a harlot’.121 With her, Stefan rejected Byzantine suzerainty.
The Byzantine emperor was held in similar disdain north of the Haemus,
where Kalojan, who succeeded his brothers Peter and Asen in 1197, sought
recognition for his realm from Rome. In a series of letters exchanged with
Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) from 1197 to 1204, Kalojan was willing to
accept the title ‘king (rex) of the Bulgarians and Vlachs’ and an archbishop’s
pallium for his chief cleric, Basil of T’rnovo. Thus he rejected an approach
from Constantinople offering both imperial and patriarchal titles, having
determined that it was better to be a king by papal authority than an
emperor by Byzantine (see below, pp. 782–3).
World History
