Kaloyan ( bg, Калоян;

Old Bulgarian Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic literary language. Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with standardizing the language and using it in translating the Bible and othe ...

: КАЛѠѢНЪ, ''Kalōjěnŭ'') and Desislava ( bg, Десислава;

: ДЕСИСЛАВА, ''Desislava'') were 13th-century

Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedo ...

n nobles, '' sebastocrators'' of Sredets (

Sofia Sofia ( ; bg, София, Sofiya, ) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and h ...

) and the surrounding region during the

Asen dynasty The Asen dynasty ( bg, Асеневци, ''Asenevtsi'') founded and ruled a medieval Bulgarian state, called in modern historiography the Second Bulgarian Empire, between 1185 and 1280. The Asen dynasty rose as the leaders of Bulgaria after a reb ...

of the Second Bulgarian Empire. They are credited as main donors and patrons of the

Boyana Church The Boyana Church ( bg, Боянска църква, ''Boyanska tsărkva'') is a medieval Bulgarian Orthodox church situated on the outskirts of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, in the Boyana quarter. In 1979, the building was added to the UNESCO W ...

. Their portraits, created in 1259 by the painters of Tarnovo Artistic School in Boyana Church are considered by many leading experts as the first

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...

images in European art

Life

Kaloyan may have been the grandson of

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

Ivan Asen I Ivan Asen I, also known as Asen I or John Asen I ( bg, Иван Асен I; died in 1196), was emperor or tsar of Bulgaria from 1187/1188 to 1196 as co-ruler with his elder brother, Peter II. Hailing from the Byzantine theme of Paristrion, his ...

(1189–1196) from his younger son sebastocrator Alexander, as he is mentioned as a cousin of Tsar Constantine Tih (1257–1277); however, his relation to the royal family may have been merely titular. Kaloyan was an opponent of Tsar Michael Asen I's (1246–1256) pro-

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 ...

policy and took part in the plot against him. Desislava is also noble of

. Kaloyan and Desislava are mainly known as the main donors of the

, a medieval

Eastern Orthodox church The Eastern Orthodox Church, also called the Orthodox Church, is the second-largest Christian church, with approximately 220 million baptized members. It operates as a communion of autocephalous churches, each governed by its bishops vi ...

Boyana Boyana ( bg, Бояна ) is a neighbourhood of the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, part of Vitosha municipality and situated 8 km south of the city centre, in the outskirts of Vitosha. Boyana is one of the most expensive parts of Sofia to l ...

, Sofia. An inscription from 1259 in the church describes Kaloyan's role in its construction; he is also referred to as a grandson of the Serbian king Saint Stephen. It has been theorized that Kaloyan reconstructed Roman Emperor

Constantine I Constantine I ( , ; la, Flavius Valerius Constantinus, ; ; 27 February 22 May 337), also known as Constantine the Great, was Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337, the first one to Constantine the Great and Christianity, convert to Christiani ...

's palace in Sofia and used it as his city residence. Two other small churches in Sofia, St Petka the Old and St Nicholas, have also been attributed to his donorship.

Boyana frescoes

The Boyana church is well known worldwide for the high artistic value of its frescos dated from 1259. Kaloyan and Desislava are donors to the painters of Tarnovo Artistic School, the creators of these frescoes. The murals form a second layer over the paintings from earlier centuries and are one of the most complete and well-preserved monuments of Bulgarian mediaeval art. The more than 240 human images and a total 89 scenes are with marked individuality, convincing psychological characteristics and vitality, which present the exceptional achievements of Bulgarian medieval culture. With their vital, humanistic realism they are a

phenomenon at its culmination phase in the context of the common-European art. The Boyana painters went beyond the limitations of the medieval thinking by presenting the man, the saints, the rulers and the entire world in a more modern light. They created a rich gallery of secular, spiritual and warriors portraits, where the skillfully depicted psychological characteristics were combined with individual physical beauty. According to many leading experts, the world-famous frescoes in the Boyana Church played an important role in the development of medieval European painting.

Significance

Desislava is one of the most popular medieval Bulgarian women and she became a muse of many writers, poets and artists later. Desislava is considered as the epitome of Bulgarian women in literature and art, portrayed as a beautiful, free and independent. According to the historian Georgi Konstantinov she is evidence for the special place of women in the Bulgarian Middle Ages.

Honours

Desislava Cove on

Nordenskjöld Coast The Nordenskjöld Coast (64° 30' S 60° 30' W) is located on the Antarctic Peninsula, more specifically Graham Land, which is the top region of the Peninsula. The Peninsula is a thin, long ice sheet with an Alpine-style mountain chain. The coast ...

Graham Land Graham Land is the portion of the Antarctic Peninsula that lies north of a line joining Cape Jeremy and Cape Agassiz. This description of Graham Land is consistent with the 1964 agreement between the British Antarctic Place-names Committee an ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

is named after Desislava.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kaloyan Medieval Bulgarian nobility History of Sofia 13th-century deaths 13th-century Bulgarian people Bulgarian princes Year of birth unknown Sebastokrators