Anna ( bg, Анна), subsequently known under the

religious name A religious name is a type of given name bestowed for a religious purposes, and which is generally used in such contexts. Christianity Catholic Church Baptismal name In baptism, Catholic Church, Catholics are given a Christian name, which should ...

Anisia (Анисия), was the first wife of

Tsar Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East Slavs, East and South Slavs, South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word ''Caesar (title), caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" i ...

Ivan Asen II of Bulgaria Ivan Asen II, also known as John Asen II ( bg, Иван Асен II, ; 1190s – May/June 1241), was Emperor (Tsar) 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 Empir ...

(r. 1218–1241) and empress consort of the

Second Bulgarian Empire The Second Bulgarian Empire (; ) was a medieval Bulgarians, Bulgarian state that existed between 1185 and 1396. A successor to the First Bulgarian Empire, it reached the peak of its power under Tsars Kaloyan of Bulgaria, Kaloyan and Ivan Asen II ...

from 1218 to 1221. She was exiled to a monastery in the beginning of Ivan Asen's reign, after he arranged his marriage to

Anna Maria of Hungary Anna Maria of Hungary (1204–1237) was an Empress consort of Bulgaria, daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary and Gertrude of Merania. She was sister of king Béla IV and Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. Her grandmother was Agnes of Antioch from House ...

. From his marriage to Anna, Ivan Asen had two children.

Biography

Ivan Asen's marriage to Anna dates to his exile in Rus', the period before his forceful accession to his ancestral throne of Bulgaria in 1218. In all likelihood, Anna was betrothed to Ivan Asen so that he could receive Rus' assistance in taking the throne. According to the account of

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

historian

George Akropolites George Akropolites ( Latinized as Acropolites or Acropolita; el, , ''Georgios Akropolites''; 1217 or 1220 – 1282) was a Byzantine Greek historian and statesman born at Constantinople. Life In his sixteenth year he was sent by his father, the ...

, Anna was a

concubine Concubinage is an interpersonal and sexual relationship between a man and a woman in which the couple does not want, or cannot enter into a full marriage. Concubinage and marriage are often regarded as similar but mutually exclusive. Concubi ...

rather than a legitimate wife of Ivan Asen. However, Bulgarian historian Ivan Bozhilov believes this to be a result of Akropolites' poor information. Anna's actual time as empress was rather short-lived. Not long after taking the throne in 1218, Ivan Asen arranged his politically motivated marriage to Hungarian princess Anna Maria, daughter of

King King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...

Andrew II (r. 1205–1235). Ivan Asen effectively demanded the marriage by prohibiting Andrew and his forces from passing through Bulgarian territory on their way back from the

Fifth Crusade The Fifth Crusade (1217–1221) was a campaign in a series of Crusades by Western Europeans to reacquire Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land by first conquering Egypt, ruled by the powerful Ayyubid sultanate, led by al-Adil, brother of Sala ...

. After the future marriage of Ivan Asen and Anna Maria was settled, his first wife Anna was retired to a monastery and became a nun under the name Anisia. In a later

Bulgarian Orthodox The Bulgarian Orthodox Church ( bg, Българска православна църква, translit=Balgarska pravoslavna tsarkva), legally the Patriarchate of Bulgaria ( bg, Българска патриаршия, links=no, translit=Balgarsk ...

text, she was praised as an Orthodox empress of Bulgaria. Ivan Asen married Anna Maria three years later, in 1221, because the marriage required the personal approval of the

Pope The pope ( la, papa, from el, πάππας, translit=pappas, 'father'), also known as supreme pontiff ( or ), Roman pontiff () or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome (or historically the patriarch of Rome), head of the worldwide Cathol ...

. As common with ex-consorts, Ivan Asen's first wife finished her life exiled to a monastery.

Family

By her marriage to Ivan Asen, Anna gave birth to two daughters. The eldest,

Maria Asanina Komnena Maria may refer to: People * Mary, mother of Jesus * Maria (given name), a popular given name in many languages Place names Extraterrestrial *170 Maria, a Main belt S-type asteroid discovered in 1877 *Lunar maria (plural of ''mare''), large, da ...

, was wife of

Manuel Komnenos Doukas Manuel Komnenos Doukas, Latinization of names, Latinized as Ducas ( el, Μανουήλ Κομνηνός Δούκας, ''Manouēl Komnēnos Doukas''; c. 1187 – c. 1241), commonly simply Manuel Doukas (Μανουήλ Δούκας) and rarely also ...

, ruler of

Thessalonica Thessaloniki (; el, Θεσσαλονίκη, , also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece, with over one million inhabitants in its metropolitan area, and the capital of the geographic region of ...

from 1230 to 1237.Божилов, pp. 100–101 Another daughter of Anna, tentatively known as Beloslava, was married to Serbian king Stephen Vladislav I (r. 1234–1243).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Anna 12th-century births 13th-century Bulgarian people 13th-century deaths Bulgarian consorts 13th-century Christian nuns 13th-century Bulgarian women 12th-century Bulgarian people 12th-century Bulgarian women