Each of these three very different entities reacted to the events of 1204 in
different ways. For Bulgaria, the partitio Romaniae was a direct challenge,
since the frontier regions around Philippopolis and Adrianople were doled
out to Latins, despite the long-standing Bulgarian claims to them that are
enshrined in the treaty of 1202. Renier de Trit held Philippopolis from
autumn 1204 to June 1205, when Kalojan retook the town, on his way back
from an expedition against Thessaloniki;14 and in 1206 Venice granted
out Adrianople to the ‘collaborationist’ arch¯on Theodore Branas.15 This
blocked Bulgarian aspirations to dominate the Maritsa valley and gain
direct access to theAegean at last.16 The Bulgarianswere bound to be further
disquieted by the fact that the partitio of 1204 granted Venice, in addition
to the Albanian coastline, the province of Koloneia, between Kastoria and
Korc¸a: expansion towards the Adriatic was another long-standing Bulgarian
goal.17
Tsar Kalojan (1197–1207) managed to contain various separatist tendencies
within Bulgaria, and he was able to draw on considerable military
resources, especially among the peasantry of the Danube valley. Fully
aware of what was happening on the international scene, he hoped to take
advantage of Byzantium’s unexpected collapse and rejected the terms of
the partitio.18 His preliminary contacts with the crusaders, which appear to
predate the fall of Constantinople, came to nothing. Kalojan saw in Innocent
III (1198–1216) – himself unenthusiastic about the course the Fourth
Crusade was taking – a guarantor against the crusaders’ aggressive ambitions.
19 For the papacy this was an unhoped-for opportunity, a chance to
bring Bulgaria within the Roman confession. Neither the Bulgarians nor
the inhabitants of Serbia and Bosnia had raised a finger to help Zara, whose
enforced submission to Hungary during the crusade ensured that it would
remain a catholic city. Indeed, the Bosnians, who were allied with theHungarians,
even took the opportunity to reconcile themselves with Rome in
1203, pledging to deal with Bogomilism:20 Bosnia was regarded as a main
bastion of this dualist heresy.21 Kalojan obtained recognition of his claim to
the imperial title of tsar, and asked Innocent III to nominate a patriarch to
head the Bulgarian church. Such demands led negotiations to drag on, and
in the end Kalojan had to settle for the relatively modest titles of king for
himself and primate for his senior bishop. But the result was that at T’rnovo
on 7 November 1204 he received from a cardinal a royal crown, and thus in
principle at least came under the pope’s wing.22 In reality, of course, this was
a tactical move and Kalojan never gave up his orthodox faith or his imperial
ambitions.23 Up to the end of the second Bulgarian empire, the titles tsar
and patriarch remained in use. Thus, for example, at T’rnovo in 1211 the
usurper Boril (1207–18) adopted a synodikon which, without renouncing
Rome, reaffirmed Bulgarian orthodoxy as well as reasserting the traditional
struggle of the Bulgarian tsars against Bogomilism.24 This heresy had never
been eradicated from the Bulgarian lands, as events at Philippopolis in 1205
make clear: Villehardouin describes the quarter of the city inhabited by the
heretics, which the paltry army of Renier de Trit burnt down.25
Kalojan also benefited from offers of service coming from the Greekspeaking
archontes of Thrace, who were reacting against the intransigence of
the Latin emperor of Constantinople, Baldwin I (1204–5). These archontes,
despairing of reaching a modus vivendi with the Latins, were even prepared
to offer the imperial crown to the Bulgarian tsar at the beginning of 1205.
The intrigues of a Bulgaro-Vlach, ˇSiˇsman, caused uproar in Thessaloniki in
May and June, and Boniface of Montferrat, its lord, had to lift his siege of
Nauplion in a bid to rescue his wifeMaria of Hungary from imprisonment
in the acropolis of Thessaloniki.26
In the short term at least, Bulgarian policy produced results. On 14 April
1205 the Graeco-Bulgarian coalition, backed up by a formidable squadron
of Cuman horsemen,27 wiped out the Latin army at Adrianople, capturing
the Latin emperor himself.28 This disaster posed such a threat to Constantinople
that Theodore I Laskaris (1205–21) was left with a free hand to
build up his own power base in Asia Minor, the rump state of Nicaea (see
above, pp. 734–5, 737). All too quickly, Kalojan revealed his real ambitions
in Thrace; from 1205 to 1207 his armies lived off the land, while local manpower
and livestock were carried off to the Danube regions where men and
animals were in short supply.29 Indeed, he was already known as ‘killer of
Romans’ (i.e. of Greeks: R¯omaioktonos) because of his earlier treatment of
theGreeks, for whom he would always be ‘John theDog’ (Kynoi¯oann¯es).30 It
is no surprise that the Greeks hated the Bulgarians, all the more so once the
new Latin emperor Henry of Hainault (1206–16) abandoned his brother’s
brutal policy towards the Greek aristocracy. The provincial archontes readily
came to terms with the Latins, with whom some had already contracted
marriage alliances. A case in point is Theodore Branas, whose wife Agnes
was the sister of King Philip Augustus of France.
It is a moot point where Kalojan would have gone next if he had not been
killed suddenly in October 1207, under the walls of Thessaloniki.31 In any
event, his death brought a reprieve to the Latin empire which, underHenry,
managed to hold onto the extreme north-west of AsiaMinor. Bulgaria was
plunged into turmoil after Boril seized the throne from Kalojan’s son, Ivan
(later Ivan II Asen). Its neighbours fomented this: between the Vardar and
Strymon rivers to thewest, Alexios Slavos, governor ofMelnik, submitted to
the Latins, while the Serbian veliki ˇzupan Stefan recognised Boril’s brother,
Strez, as lord of the region around Prosek and Strumica.
World History
