THE late Bulgarian prophet Vanga (called by many the Bulgarian Pythia) often used to say that Bulgaria will flourish when this Christian nation restores three of its greatest religious treasures - the Grand Basilica in Pliska, the Round Basilica in Preslav and the Forty Holy Martyrs Church in Veliko Turnovo.
If we leave the words of Vanga to those who believed in her noble prophecy, the three relics certainly represent some of the most illustrious moments in the history of this 1300-year-old state. Preslav and Pliska were the capitals of the First Bulgarian Kingdom (681-1018), while Veliko Turnovo (Turnovgrad) was the capital of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom (1187-1393). And since UNESCO has long ago started to take care of the Forty Holy Martyrs church, it is the two basilicas that are in the hands of Bulgarians themselves.
The news on May 27 that about 3.5 million leva will be set aside in next year’s state budget for next year for the conservation and restoration of the Grand Basilica in Pliska and the Round (or Golden as Bulgarians call it) Basilica in Preslav, was met with enthusiasm. Although the money will hardly be enough to bring the glory of the two monuments, it could at least turn them into sites more convenient for tourists to visit them and feel the spirit of the ancient state.
The remnants of the first Bulgarian capital are easy to find, two km away from the present-day town of Pliska. These ruins that still keep the breath of the founder of Bulgaria Khan Asparuh, lie on a large undulating plain locked between the hills of Shumen and Madara. Mighty fortresses there defended the approaches to the capital on the plain because, as a people of the steppes, the Proto-Bulgarians preferred to live on plains. Pliska was a product of a large-scale construction effort with three successive defence fortifications and solid stone walls that reached up to 12 meters.
The second Bulgarian capital, Preslav, lies a couple of kilometres south of a modern town by the same name. An inscription on an ancient column testifies that it was founded under Khan Omurtag in 821. It was a royal city from 893 to 972 and the reign of Tsar Simeon the Great was the heyday of its glory.
And here it is - the undisputed representative (and at any rate grandiose, according to European standards) monument of the First Bulgarian Kingdom - that of Pliska - a huge “royal” triple-nave basilica with dimensions of 99 by 29.5 meters. It was certainly the first of the “seven splendid cathedrals” built by Boris - and later described by Theophylactus of Ohrid by the phrase “as if he [had] lit a seven-candle chandelier”.
It was constructed in a very specific architectural style, of Eastern-Byzantine synthesis - with a massive, severe, and extremely monotonous build-up of carefully worked stone - sometime during the rule of Boris-Mihail or of his son, Simeon, in the second half of the Ninth Century, when the Bulgarians underwent conversion to Christianity.
The construction of this basilica, with its three apses, a central nave that was much wider than the collateral naves, and its alternation of columns and pillars, was contemporaneous with the mass evangelisation of the Northeastern Balkans. It is known that following some 10th Century work of restoration, the monument reproduced an ancient architectural type already out of fashion in Byzantium.
Little is known today about the appearance of the Grand Basilica in Pliska. There is a reason to believe, however, that it was richly adorned as were the neighbouring palaces. It is known that these were smartened up, at the request of Boris-Mihail, with Byzantine-like frescoes.
The same period, around the year 900 and during the first years of the 10th Century (during the rule of Simeon the Great), witnessed the construction of the second representative monument of the age, the so-called “round” or “gilded” church, in the new capital Preslav that was linked to the Christian and Slavic stage of old Bulgarian culture. It was a sumptuous and singular edifice, representative of the age during which the First Bulgarian Kingdom reached the peak of its power.
Simeon had grown up in Constantinople. He had been the protector of the Byzantine missionaries, Clement and Naum, and would be later crowned as a basileus (king), near the Wall of Byzantium, by the Patriarch himself. The Preslav circular church was very probably the princely chapel of the Bulgarian capital. At the beginning of the 10th Century, the First Bulgarian Kingdom felt a need to take up once again certain Roman-Byzantine traditions of church architecture that were filled with meaning. It was quite far from Constantinople’s “classicism” of that time but very close to the sensibility and aesthetic sense of the so-called Slavo-Bulgarians.
The marble of the columns and of the covering of the inner faces, the painted ceramic intarsia, the glass and the coloured stone which had evolved into mosaics at a certain point, and the sculptured details offer strong reasons to believe that this basilica and the entire town of Preslav was spendidly built by Simeon the Great.
The Bulgarian scholar, Ioan Exarch, noted in his Shestodnev (Six Days), at the beginning of the 10th Century, the greatness of the outer city edifices, adorned as they were with “paintings and sculpted wood”. Primarily, as in the hyperbolic manner typical of medieval chroniclers, he evolved the feeling of a traveller, who, having come from very far, had reached the inner precincts of the residence on the river Ticha and, astonished by the beauty he had encountered there, had associated it with the greatness of the new faith, which had spread throughout Bulgaria.
When entering the inner city and seeing high palaces and churches adorned with stone, wood, and paintings on the outside, as well as with marble, brass, silver and gold on the inside, he does not know what to compare them with, for he had never seen such things in his country. One is thus able to perceive with the mind’s eye the pomp of this principal creation of a Bulgarian ruler under whose reign the Slav state in the Northeastern Balkans reached the peak of its development.
It was only natural for each of these two monuments in Pliska and Preslav to have, as was the case of the most important places in a recently established feudal state, a set of well-defined and eminent roles. Indeed, this function was their third common feature. The roles in question, included serving as places for coronations, where the founding sovereigns and their successors were charismatically “anointed”; as burial places for the members of a newly created “dynasty”, and sometimes, as premises belonging to the highest hierarch in the country and implicitly to the institution he represented.
If we leave the words of Vanga to those who believed in her noble prophecy, the three relics certainly represent some of the most illustrious moments in the history of this 1300-year-old state. Preslav and Pliska were the capitals of the First Bulgarian Kingdom (681-1018), while Veliko Turnovo (Turnovgrad) was the capital of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom (1187-1393). And since UNESCO has long ago started to take care of the Forty Holy Martyrs church, it is the two basilicas that are in the hands of Bulgarians themselves.
The news on May 27 that about 3.5 million leva will be set aside in next year’s state budget for next year for the conservation and restoration of the Grand Basilica in Pliska and the Round (or Golden as Bulgarians call it) Basilica in Preslav, was met with enthusiasm. Although the money will hardly be enough to bring the glory of the two monuments, it could at least turn them into sites more convenient for tourists to visit them and feel the spirit of the ancient state.
The remnants of the first Bulgarian capital are easy to find, two km away from the present-day town of Pliska. These ruins that still keep the breath of the founder of Bulgaria Khan Asparuh, lie on a large undulating plain locked between the hills of Shumen and Madara. Mighty fortresses there defended the approaches to the capital on the plain because, as a people of the steppes, the Proto-Bulgarians preferred to live on plains. Pliska was a product of a large-scale construction effort with three successive defence fortifications and solid stone walls that reached up to 12 meters.
The second Bulgarian capital, Preslav, lies a couple of kilometres south of a modern town by the same name. An inscription on an ancient column testifies that it was founded under Khan Omurtag in 821. It was a royal city from 893 to 972 and the reign of Tsar Simeon the Great was the heyday of its glory.
And here it is - the undisputed representative (and at any rate grandiose, according to European standards) monument of the First Bulgarian Kingdom - that of Pliska - a huge “royal” triple-nave basilica with dimensions of 99 by 29.5 meters. It was certainly the first of the “seven splendid cathedrals” built by Boris - and later described by Theophylactus of Ohrid by the phrase “as if he [had] lit a seven-candle chandelier”.
It was constructed in a very specific architectural style, of Eastern-Byzantine synthesis - with a massive, severe, and extremely monotonous build-up of carefully worked stone - sometime during the rule of Boris-Mihail or of his son, Simeon, in the second half of the Ninth Century, when the Bulgarians underwent conversion to Christianity.
The construction of this basilica, with its three apses, a central nave that was much wider than the collateral naves, and its alternation of columns and pillars, was contemporaneous with the mass evangelisation of the Northeastern Balkans. It is known that following some 10th Century work of restoration, the monument reproduced an ancient architectural type already out of fashion in Byzantium.
Little is known today about the appearance of the Grand Basilica in Pliska. There is a reason to believe, however, that it was richly adorned as were the neighbouring palaces. It is known that these were smartened up, at the request of Boris-Mihail, with Byzantine-like frescoes.
The same period, around the year 900 and during the first years of the 10th Century (during the rule of Simeon the Great), witnessed the construction of the second representative monument of the age, the so-called “round” or “gilded” church, in the new capital Preslav that was linked to the Christian and Slavic stage of old Bulgarian culture. It was a sumptuous and singular edifice, representative of the age during which the First Bulgarian Kingdom reached the peak of its power.
Simeon had grown up in Constantinople. He had been the protector of the Byzantine missionaries, Clement and Naum, and would be later crowned as a basileus (king), near the Wall of Byzantium, by the Patriarch himself. The Preslav circular church was very probably the princely chapel of the Bulgarian capital. At the beginning of the 10th Century, the First Bulgarian Kingdom felt a need to take up once again certain Roman-Byzantine traditions of church architecture that were filled with meaning. It was quite far from Constantinople’s “classicism” of that time but very close to the sensibility and aesthetic sense of the so-called Slavo-Bulgarians.
The marble of the columns and of the covering of the inner faces, the painted ceramic intarsia, the glass and the coloured stone which had evolved into mosaics at a certain point, and the sculptured details offer strong reasons to believe that this basilica and the entire town of Preslav was spendidly built by Simeon the Great.
The Bulgarian scholar, Ioan Exarch, noted in his Shestodnev (Six Days), at the beginning of the 10th Century, the greatness of the outer city edifices, adorned as they were with “paintings and sculpted wood”. Primarily, as in the hyperbolic manner typical of medieval chroniclers, he evolved the feeling of a traveller, who, having come from very far, had reached the inner precincts of the residence on the river Ticha and, astonished by the beauty he had encountered there, had associated it with the greatness of the new faith, which had spread throughout Bulgaria.
When entering the inner city and seeing high palaces and churches adorned with stone, wood, and paintings on the outside, as well as with marble, brass, silver and gold on the inside, he does not know what to compare them with, for he had never seen such things in his country. One is thus able to perceive with the mind’s eye the pomp of this principal creation of a Bulgarian ruler under whose reign the Slav state in the Northeastern Balkans reached the peak of its development.
It was only natural for each of these two monuments in Pliska and Preslav to have, as was the case of the most important places in a recently established feudal state, a set of well-defined and eminent roles. Indeed, this function was their third common feature. The roles in question, included serving as places for coronations, where the founding sovereigns and their successors were charismatically “anointed”; as burial places for the members of a newly created “dynasty”, and sometimes, as premises belonging to the highest hierarch in the country and implicitly to the institution he represented.
