Belite poleta v bălgarskata kulturna pamet:
Gespeichert in:
| 1. Verfasser: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Buch |
| Sprache: | Bulgarian |
| Veröffentlicht: |
Sofija
Voenno Izdat.
2010
|
| Ausgabe: | 1. izd. |
| Schlagworte: | |
| Online-Zugang: | Inhaltsverzeichnis Abstract |
| Beschreibung: | PST: The blank spaces in Bulgarian cultural memory. - In kyrill. Schr., bulg. - Zsfassung in engl. Sprache |
| Beschreibung: | 383 S. Ill. |
| ISBN: | 9789545094385 |
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Datensatz im Suchindex
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СЪДЪРЖАНИЕ
Дискомфоргьт на „книжната памет", или за мястото на това изследване
в проучването на българската и балканската история (Въведение)
.7
Част
L
ЗАБРАВЕНАТА СОФИЯ
.25
1.
Проблемът не е в самото забравяне, а в мащабите му
.25
„И сега какво, шопите ли ще ни управляват?
".25
Какво е изобразил Георги Чапкънов?
.27
2.
Сердикийският „поместен събор на западните църкви"
.31
Защо и как се задейства византийската „машина за памет"?
.31
„Западна" или „Източна" е Сердикийската църква?
.40
Защо
„
пръв български архиепископ
"
е Протоген, а не
Климент
или Андроник?
.48
3.
Едиктьт на Толерантността, Сердика,
30
април
311
г. сл. Хр
.55
Как Сердика става Никомидия, Нжомидия
-
Милано,
а Галериевият едикт се превръща в Константинов
.55
Галерии и Лициний в балканската културно-историческа памет
.63
4.
Serdica
mea
Roma est,
или как работи византийската
„машина за памет"
.86
5.
Сердика
-
градът на императорски майки и дъщери
.93
Vitae Helenae
в средновековните гръцки и латински извори
.94
Света Елена в българската средновековна книжнина
.98
Какво са чели изнаелиза се. Елена авторите от
XVII-XIX
в.?.
102
„Константиновият Рим" и
„
Константиновият град"
.105
6.
Юстиниановата София
.112
За
„
варваризацията" на властта и
„
славизацията
"
на провинциите
.115
Евристичните ресурси на „Житието на Юстиниан
" (Vita Justiniani)
от епископ-абат Богомил/Теофил/Домнио
.116
Култът към се. се. Сергии
и Вакх, или
„липсващото звено"
в балканската история през
VI
в.
.121
За какво побратимяване между Юстиниан и Теодорих става дума?
.138
Юстинианова София
-
между легендите и фактите
.142
„Къде?
"
или „Какво?
"
е
Юстиниана
Прима
.147
7.
Сардика в хоризонта на българската есхатология
и политическа
телеология
.161
8.
„Историята на конфронтацията" ражда „паметта
на (само)отчуждението"
.170
Част
II.
БЪЛГАРСКАТА ТЕМА В ПАМЕТТА
НА КОНСТАНТИНОПОЛСКИТЕ МОНУМЕНТИ
.193
1.
Българо-византийските отношения: изследователски подходи
и недоразумения
.194
2.
Приоритетни
теми и цели на
византийското забравяне
и
запомняне
.195
3.
За
хората и статуите.
199
Какво
и как „помнят"
статуите?
.■··· 199
Историографски
подходи в
изследването
на константинополските
монументи
.201
4.
Българските монументи в Константинопол
.206
4.1.
Първата „българска" статуя в Константинопол:
Българинът на Хлебния пазар
.208
4.2.
Пазителят в копитото
на „Пегас" и
граничните статуи пазители
.213
4.3.
Историческа адекватност на образа „Българите
-
създатели и пазители на границите"
.216
„
Изчезналите
"
и
„
новите
"
народи, или за властовия вакуум
в европейските провинции на Късната империя
.218
Българската представа за държавна граница
.223
4.4.
Споменът за кесар-кан Тервел
.228
Почетен ши действащ кесар е бил Тервел?
.237
4.5.
Константинополската Златна врата
-
любима сцена
за политико-религиозни демонстрации на българските владетели
.250
4.6.
Кан Крум
-
похитителят на статуи
.265
4.7.
Статуята на Симеон
.266
Характер на магическите статуи в Константинопол
.266
Обезглавяването на Симеоновата статуя ~ политически мит,
цензурирана новина или класически продукт на византийската
колективна памет
.269
Две статуи
с
еднаква съдба
-
съвпадение или закономерност?
.270
Симеоновата статуя на Ксиролоф
.'.272
Симеоновата
стела и
Аркадиевата колона
.274
Симеон
=
Септимий Север
.276
Статуята на Симеон Българина
.278
Симеон
-
царят, който гледа на Запад
.283
Ш. ЗАГАДКАТА НА БЪЛГАРСКАТА ПАМЕТ (Вместо заключение)
.301
ИЗВОРИ
.317
ИСТОРИОГРАФИЯ
.331
РЕЗЮМЕ НА БЪЛГАРСКИ ЕЗИК
.365
РЕЗЮМЕ НА АНГЛИЙСКИ ЕЗИК
.375
CONTENTS
About the place this book occupies among the studies of the phenomenon
of Bulgarian historical and cultural memory
.7
I. FORGOTTEN SOFIA
.25
1.
The problem is not in forgetting itself but in its dimensions
.25
„So, what now, is it the Shopi that are going to rule over us?
".25
What has sculptured
Georgi
Chapkanov?
.27
2.
The „local council of the western churches" in Serdica
.31
What are the reasons why and the ways in which the Byzantine
„memory machine" came to operate?
.31
Was Serdica Church western or was it an eastern one?
.40
How did Protogenes come to be considered „the first Bulgarian archbishop"
and not St Clement of Rome or St Andronicus?
.48
3.
The Edict of Tolerance issued in Serdica, April
30* 311
AD
.55
How was Serdica replaced by
Nicomedia, Nicomedia
by Milan
and the Edict ofGalerius came to be the Edict of
Constantine
.55
Galerim
andLicinius in Balkan cultural ad historical memory
.63
4.
Serdica
mea
Roma est or
about how Byzantine memory
machine operated
.86
5.
Serdica
-
the city of mothers and daughters of emperors
.93
Vita Helenae in the medieval Greek and Roman sources
.94
Saint Helena in Bulgarian medieval literature
.98
What did the writers ofl 7th to 19th century read and know
about Saint Helena?
.102
Constantine's Rome and
Constantine
's
City
.105
6.
Sofia of Justinian
.112
On the problem ofbarbarization of the power
and the „slavinization" of the provinces
.115
The heuristic resources of the Life of Justinian by bishop-abbo
Bogomil/Theophilus/Domnio
.116
The cult of St. Sergius and St. Bacchus or
„
missing link"
in the History of the Balkans in the Vic. AD
.121
In what sense did Justinian I and Theodoric swore brotherhood?
.138
Justinian's Sofia between the legends and facts
.142
Where or what is
Prima
Justiniana?
.147
7.
Serdica in the horizons of Bulgarian eschatology
and political teleology
.161
8.
„The history of confrontations" breeds „the memory of (self)-alienation".
170
II. THE BULGARIAN THEME IN THE MEMORY
OF THE CONSTANTINOPLE'S MONUMENTS
.193
5
1.
Bulgarian-Byzantine relationships: scientific approaches
and misunderstandings
.194
2.
Byzantine „memory machine" and its use
.195
3.
About the people and statues
.199
What and how do statues „remember"?
.199
Historiographical approaches to the study of Constantinople monuments
.201
4.
The Bulgarian monuments in Constantinople
.206
4.1.
The first „Bulgarian statue" in Constantinople: the Bulgarian
in the Bread Market
.208
4.2.
The Guardian in Pegasus
'
hoof and the statues boundary guardians
.213
4.3.
Historical adequacy of the image of „the Bulgarians as creators
and guardians of the boundaries"
.216
The „extinct" and the „new" peoples or: on the matter of the ethnical constancy
and the power vacuum in the European provinces of the Late Empire
.218
The Bulgarian notion of state boundary
.223
4.5.
About the Golden-roofed Basilica or: the Byzantine memory
of Caesar-khan
Tervei
.228
Was Khan
Tervei
a honorary or active
caesar?
.237
4.6.
The Golden Gate of Constantinople
-
a favourite stage for
political and religious manifestations of the Bulgarian rulers
.250
4.7.
Khan Krum -the snatcher of statues
.265
4.8.
The statue of tsar Sim eon
.266
Characteristics of the magical statues in Constantinople
.266
The decapitation of the statue of tsar Simeon
-
apolitical myth,
censored news or classic product of the Byzantine collective memory
.269
Two statues of the same fate: was it a coincidence or regularity?
.270
The Statue of Simeon on Xerolophos
.272
The stele of Simeon and the column of
Arcádias
.274
Simeon
=
Septimius Severus
.276
The statue of Simeon the Bulgarian
.278
Simeon-the tsar who looked Westwards
.283
HI. THE MYSTERY OF THE BULGARIAN MEMORY
(IN PLACE OF CONCLUSION)
.301
SOURCES
.317
BIBLIOGRAPHY
.
33I
SUMMARY IN BULGARIAN
.365
SUMMARY IN ENGLISH
. 375
THE BLANK SPACES IN BULGARIAN CULTURAL
MEMORY
(Summary)
The book The Blank Spaces in Bulgarian Cultural Memory consists of two
seemingly independent parts
-
that is, a research into the past of Sofia and a study
of several Constantinople monuments connected with the history of Bulgaria. Yet,
that's what things appear to be at very first sight. Certainly, the study of both the
past of Sofia and the „Bulgarian" monuments in Constantinople is but an occasion
to penetrate into the extremely complicated and hitherto unexplored matter of
Bulgarian
-
and in a broader sense the so called „South-eastern European"
-
cul¬
tural memory.
The two themes under discussion are not only an occasion, but also an instru¬
ment for entering the field of the „forgotten" past and „unread" history of the Bul¬
garians, more specifically, and that of the Balkan region in general. This particular
choice of „instrument" is far from being arbitrary; because these two concrete
cases refer to the two most pronounced manifestations of the typical Byzantine
manner of writing, rewriting and overwriting history. Parallel to the reconstruction
of the Bulgarian past the book gives answers to the question reasonably arising
of what Byzantine historiography had to do with Bulgarian cultural memory. In a
nutshell, the answers run as follows, It is not that history was recorded incorrectly
by the Byzantine chroniclers, rather it has been read superficially by the modern
scholars; and the problem does not lie in forgetfulness itself but rather in its tre¬
mendous proportions coupled with a refusal to remember. There are, therefore,
two solutions to the problem, namely, a will to remember and a new unbiased
look at the texts and signs from the past. As a result, there emerges before us the
contrasting picture of a past which is.
.
let us put it simply, „a view of the history
of the Bulgarians in Europe which is rather different from the stereotypified one."
It is in the Byzantine sources that this picture, which is not only monumental but,
indeed, extremely intriguing, was carefully hidden and at the same time lastingly
preserved.
In a general outline, this past has preserved the memory of Serdica-Sredetz-
Triaditza-Sofia as one of the most sacred
topoi
of Medieval Europe
-
it was the
place where crucial events happened which had fatal consequences for the Roman
and Christian world. Parallel to this notion, its origin dating back as early as the 5th
century AD, runs the description of the
Bulgars
as decisive factor not only for the
war defense of the New Rome (Constantinople) but also for the safe and harmoni¬
ous existence of the numerous peoples inhabiting the Balkan peninsula, the then
heart of the European Christian world. To be able first to discern the contours,
then the nuances and details, and finally grasp the global meaning of this other
history it is necessary that one decidedly change both one's perspective and the
objects of observation. Concerning the former one should bear in mind that the
Byzantine writers had but radically different priorities from those of the contem¬
porary Bulgarian historians. Therefore one should try and see the things the way
375
the Byzantines saw them back in their historical environment. Only afterwards
could one make an attempt to appreciate what motivated them to describe a given
event in one way or another so that it could be remembered in a particular way.
As far as the change of the objects of observation is concerned, the book
suggests a shift of emphasis from predominantly laid on the written sources and
archeological finds to such on a specific kind of sources, namely, the so called
ekphraseis, the descriptions of objects of art, which are in our particular case the
monuments in Constantinople. This choice of approach was caused by the realiza¬
tion of some facts completely unknown so far to both the general public and the
specialists in the field: there existed in the Byzantine capital at least three statues
of Bulgarians, two of which represented Bulgarian rulers; besides, most of the ex¬
isting descriptions of magical actions involving the use of statues invariably refer
to the Bulgarians and the lands they inhabited. Curious as this finding might be
in itself, it wouldn't have been of such importance if it weren't for the fact that in
Constantinople there were no statues of other foreign rulers, or at least no memory
has been kept of such, nor were there monuments bearing whatsoever connection
with other peoples (the monuments known as „Gothic" and/or
„Arian"
were con¬
sidered, for reasons discussed to different extents in the book, by the Rhomaioi
as integral part of their own history). Another argument in favour of choosing the
said object of study is the specific function the monuments had in organizing the
Byzantine cultural memory.
When pursuing the above stated goals the book provides, in its two parts,
analyses grounded: first, on a changed viewpoint of the researcher and second, on
a changed object of research.
I. The Forgotten Sofia
The first part of the study considers several major problem spheres which
touch the question of the „blank spaces" in Bulgarian cultural memory. The em¬
phasis is laid on the conditions and the time of appearance of these „blank spaces"
as well as the reasons for their impressive resistance against any attempt at „filling
in the blanks". First, the attention is drawn to the tendency of superficial, anach-
ronous, inconsistent and distanced perception of their history no the part of the
Bulgarians, and the Bulgarian historians, in particular. It is not our purpose to find
faults with the work of the scholars, or else with the way Bulgarian cultural mem¬
ory functions as a whole. We seek to identify the possible reasons which have
triggered, established and constantly generated the mentioned distancing of the
Bulgarians from some parts of their own historical past which have been thought
of, studied and interpreted as „foreign".
In this respect, the most appropriate focus of attention is the history of Sofia
the „Golden ages" of which coincide with the „Dark ages" in the early history of
the
Bulgars
in Europe. Admitted is that the said attitude towards one's own history
which has distorted the historical vision and, in the course of time, has increas¬
ingly deformed the actual historical memory of the Bulgarians could be blamed,
to a certain extent, on the Ottoman rule and the lack of will for adequate scientific
376
searches in the atmosphere dominated by the pathos of the national renaissance
and
westera
enlightenment ideas of the epoch which followed. Attention is drawn,
however, to the fact that the „defects" in question, which actually reflect serious
„blank spaces" in the Bulgarian cultural memory, showed long before the
1
4th-
1
5th
century AD and are to be related to spacious „blanks" in the cultural memory of
the modern Western world in general
-
that is, in the memory of the inheritors of
the European Christian civilization. What is more, the „blank spaces" in Bulgarian
cultural memory prove to be the clearest of clearings, the most impenetrable zones
of forgetfulness; they were the epicenter wherefrom the forgetfulness spread and
give rise to some of the most significant „blank spaces" in the European cultural
memory. Because the appearance and spread of such „zones of forgetfulness" in
the history of Christian State and Church was necessitated by the need for margin-
alization of several fundamental events which happened in Serdica in the 4th and
5th centuries AD, and which were crucial for the whole European civilization.
Hence logically follows the second circle of problems treated in the book.
It includes the three central events it was necessary to forget for a number of
reasons, some of which really „cogent" (from the viewpoint of that time which
sought monolithic ideas and unambiguous images-emblems); these were the is¬
suing of the Edict of Tolerance in Serdica, on April 30th
311
AD; the convention
of the Second Ecumenical Council in Serdica in
343
AD; the establishment of
Serdica as one of the most important imperial residences of the Christian Roman
Empire starting from the time of Diocletian and Galerius, and especially under
Constantine
the Great. The latter not only called Serdica „my Rome", but made
all effort to complete the grandiose monuments, typical for a capital city, which
were under construction at his time in the town now already established as a bish¬
op's center. In the light of these facts the policy of emperor Justinian the Great in
the 6th century who sought to set up the Justiniana
Prima as a
new (sixth) western
archbishopric and, probably, establish Serdica as a new center of the western im¬
perial power- the analogy of Serdica'
s
St. Sofia church with the famous temple
of the same name in Constantinople was apparent to everyone to as late as
1
9th
century
-
seems to have been a restoration rather than an innovation.
When exploring the mechanisms, approaches and concrete agents that led
to the undoubtedly extremely effective oblivion of the events referred to above,
introduced was the term Byzantine memory machine
".
Modus
operandi
of this
„memory machine" determining, as it were, to this day the way of thinking of the
western man
-
so far as fundamental binary oppositions such as West-East, civi¬
lization-barbarism, secular-sacred etc. are concerned
-
could be described in the
following terms: it did not aim at brutal obliteration of figures and events through
„condemnation to forgetfulness" (damnatio memoriae), at least because in the
period between 4th and 6th centuries AD, when the oblivion in question took place,
the memory was only too fresh and the civil political spirit of the Antiquity only
too vivacious to permit any „forcible" make forget. Its operation was much more
complicated and precise: the events and the historical personages were deper¬
sonalized by being carefully deprived of their distinctive features, the facts being
then regrouped and the features being transferred to other events, personages and
377
places,
even to other epochs. An impressive example in this respect is the way in
which the memory, as well as the whole historical contents of the Edict of Toler¬
ance of Galerius, was disintegrated, regrouped and transferred first to
Constantine
and Licinius, then to
Constantine
only; moved from the year
311
AD to the year
313
AD, and from Serdica to
Nicomedia
and Milan first, and then to Milan only.
This last circle of problems is connected with the question of the extent to
which the Medieval Bulgarians had really forgotten when who did what in Ser¬
dica. From the evidence contained in the extant sources it could be concluded that
the exact Church and political events of the period between 4th and 6th centuries
AD were forgotten to a great extent. It, however, was not the case with the idea
of Serdica, which functioned as a powerful legitimating factor and symbol for
the ideal spiritual unity of the Bulgarians. This symbol is to be found coded in
the very name of the town which derives from the root *srdz- meaning „center",
„heart", that is, Serdica-Sredetz-Sofia was conceived of as the vital kernel of the
Bulgarian lands, the center and the meaning of the Universe. The same function
is observable in the role of the name of the greatest of Serdica'
s
saints, namely,
saint
Johan
of
Rila,
whose name bore many a Bulgarian rulers starting with
Johan
Vladislav, the son of the Serdica's ruler Aaron.
The fact of forgetting the exceptional significance of Serdica (remembered,
as it were, up to as late as the 16th century), and especially the reasons for for¬
getting it, could be used as a code to help us see through the most impenetrable
and forbidding „blank spaces" in Bulgarian cultural and historical memory. The
loss of the historical identity of Serdica-Sofia, however
-
whose only „heyday",
if there was such at all, it is admitted to have been the period of the late Roman
Empire
-
was due to neither the distance in time nor the „Byzantine memory
machine", nor the Ottoman rule. This „forgetfulness" is a modern phenome¬
non and is to blame on our contemporary historical science with its two central
myths:
1)
the myth of the late settlement of the Bulgarians in Europe (kindred to
the myth of their far-off Asian land of origin)
-
a perspective turning the urban
civilizations of Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia, which had flourished for four
millennia without interruption, into „foreign" to the „real" Bulgarian civiliza¬
tion implanted into these very lands as late as the last quarter of the 7th century
AD;
2)
the myth of the retarded conversion to Christianity enforced by political
reasons. This myth is coupled with the ideas of either the „healthy paganism of
the Bulgarians which never got completely eradicated" or their „innate propen¬
sity" for heresy, neither of which allowed for recognizing events such as the
Edict of Tolerance, the Ecumenical Council in Serdica or else the rise of the so
called Sofia Holy Mountain at the foot of „The Mountain of the Saints" (Vitosha
mountain) as belonging to our history. That is to say, the „blank spaces" in Bul¬
garian cultural memory have appeared as a result of a modern marginal ization of
the Bulgarian Christian and European culture. That the forgetfulness in question
is blamed on some deliberate or malicious destruction of once rich Bulgarian
libraries is quite another thing. Such libraries might have existed or have been
destroyed or even the manuscripts kept in them might still be cautiously hid¬
den from everyone, but this has nothing to do with the problem discussed here.
378
On the one hand, Sofia had not been forgotten up to as late as the turn of the
18th century when Father Paisii and senior monk Spiridon wrote their histories
without complaining about any lack of sources. On the other hand, neither the
Bulgarians nor the Byzantines were inclined to rely on the written history only
to keep the memory of the really significant events and personages of the past.
Therefore, the second part of the book is devoted to this specific characteristic
feature of the mechanisms for remembering and forgetting.
II. The Bulgarian theme in the memory
of Constantinople monuments
It is the purpose of this part to „fill in" some of the important „blanks"
in Bulgarian cultural and historical memory by extracting the rich information
about the Bulgarians and Bulgaria contained in the memory of Constantinople
monuments. To achieve this purpose three steps should be taken:
1)
The stat¬
ues in Constantinople shall be interpreted not as „collections"
-
that is, as arti¬
facts
-
and not even as „miracles" (theama) which still had the form of artifacts,
but as a sort of alternative historical descriptions keeping the most significant
images (at times traumatic) in Byzantine cultural memory;
2)
The contents and
the functions of the monuments shall be explored in the context of a particular
story line
-
that of the Bulgarian theme in the memory of Constantinople monu¬
ments. This perspective will enable us to see the statues as parts of
a sui
generis
narrative, which, like the paintings in the descriptions of the art critics, have a
language of their own with specific rules, archaisms and neologisms. Thus we
could step away from what is a classical position in such studies seeing the rela¬
tion between statues and people as being one between objects and viewers and
try to experience, so far as it is possible, the authentic effect of the statues and
realize the authentic role the monuments had in constructing the cultural and
historical identity, as well as the spatial and time orientation, of the inhabitants
of Constantinople. In this connection, one shall not forget that in the study of
a great part of Medieval history, including almost everything concerning the
history of the so called Danube Bulgaria, one cannot but rely on what the Byz¬
antines writers have written and they shared and transferred the images and
messages of this very cultural identity;
3)
reconstructed graphically
-
where it
is possible and to the extent it is possible following the evidence in the extant
sources
-
shall be the supposed original shape of some monuments. To be sure,
each reconstruction entails the risk of rendering an imprecise or even seriously
distorted image of the lost original. But the opportunity it gives us to dispose of
three-dimensional images
-
in the literal and metaphorical sense of the word -of
the artifacts in question (hence of the whole historical reality which made pos¬
sible their creation) is well worth the risk. This is the only way in which the
present day reader could get best notion of the impression the monuments had in
their original environment. No doubt, such enterprise requires not only knowl¬
edge and interpretation of the medieval sources, but also talent to draw what the
narratives describe. This challenge was taken on by Mrs.
Tekla Aleksieva
whose
379
graphie reconstructions
of Constantinople
monuments
are based on both written
sources and existing similar artifacts (Byzantine, antique, and post-Byzantine).
As a rule, the existing studies treat the problem of the attitude of Constanti¬
nople citizens towards the monuments as connected exclusively with the question
of the legitimacy of Constantinople as „Roman" capital city. Approached from
this aspect the problem is reduced to the realization that the rapid development of
imperial identity required massive transfer into the capital city of masterpieces
-
symbols of power and markers of civilization
-
from all over the Empire. Thus
Constantinople gradually adopted the Roman past
-
and partly that of Hellas (the
adoption of the Thracian history through Byzant has been mentioned only by G.
Dagron)
-
through the appropriation of its artifacts, that is, the signs of its origin,
history and sublime moments. And as the development of identity is a cumulative
process marked by adoption of foreign cultural signs most actively at its earlier
stages, in the 7th century the Byzantines definitely began losing interest in seeking
legitimacy and propaganda through statues, and the statues gradually disappeared
from the city landscape.
However, a closer and more careful reading of the sources reveals quite a
different picture. In the 10th century Bishop Liutprand of Cremona admired the
exquisite mechanical statues in the palace of the Emperor, while in the 13th cen¬
tury Robert
de
Clary asserted that the statues in the Hippodrome also used to move
in the past. In other words, the attention of two rather different western writers,
separated by
250
years time distance, was drawn not by Hellenic nor Roman stat¬
ues, but by typical Byzantine artifacts the style characteristic of the „Theophilus's
epoch". In the 14th century already, the Russian pilgrims in Tzarigrad would not
have heard a word about the antique masterpieces brought to the city by
Con¬
stantine,
but would have learnt pretty well the city legends about the miraculous
statues the creation of which was attributed by the rumors to the „magical king",
Leo VI the Wise. In other words, Constantinople had not in the least bit lost its
statues, nor had it lost interest in them, rather it had gradually substituted its own
statues for the foreign antique ones.
Not only did Constantinople gradually replace the foreign artifacts with its
own, but these new statues (which were not necessarily newly created) were con¬
nected with new stories, new memory, and new messages concerning the past,
present and future of the City. A good, and perhaps even the best, example in this
connection are, let's call them, the „Bulgarian" statues in Constantinople.
A close examination of the picture impressed on the „monumental memory"
of Constantinople shows, in a new and unexpected light, the Byzantine self-iden¬
tification, which appears to be strongly influenced by the Bulgarian-Byzantine
relations in the period between the 5th and the 13th century where the „Bulgarian
trace" is easily discernible in the fate of the Constantinople monuments. The name
Bulgarians" was constantly present in the names of a number of Constantinople
monuments attached to them on different occasions
-
that is, it was part of the
sacred topography of the city. The study of these Bulgarian" monuments
-
not
as isolated or piquant curiosities but as components of a coherent narrative which
at times gives a different shade, at times completes substantially, and often leads
380
one to seriously reconsider the information found in the written sources
-
pro¬
vides strong evidence pointing to the fact that Byzantine cultural memory was
far from being organized around written history. Written history through which
the „Byzantine memory machine" described in the first part of the book largely
operated had, so to say, short-term and medium-term purposes and perspectives. It
was intended for the next two or three generations, and what's more, for the liter¬
ate members of society, and the reading ones (for being literate is one thing and
reading books is quite another), and for those who had access to the manuscripts
at that, because some of the manuscripts, such as the writing of
Constantine Por-
phyrogenitus overly used by modern historical science, seem to have been written
for sort of „private usage" and existed in one copy only. „Byzantine memory ma¬
chine" was generally directed against the foreign historiographies, which system¬
atically supplemented the history created by the ideologists of the New Rome on
the Bosporus. For the residents of the New Rome, however, the historical memory
was carried by the monuments which unambiguously and daily reminded them of
the great or dramatic moments the Rhomaioi had experienced.
No doubt, this preference of plastic to narrative means of expression and
of durable (stone, metal, wood, clay) to perishable (parchment, papyrus, textile,
paper) materials could be put down to the Roman tradition of building and acting
sub speciae aeternitatis, as well as to the Christian tradition with its constant re¬
minders of how ephemera, fragile and transitory everything on the earth is. At any
rate, we are confronted with a phenomenon which has constantly been neglected
in the Byzantine studies, while the Byzantine monuments are anything but purely
an object of study for art critics. Lacking in knowledge of the functions of the
Byzantine monuments the modern scholar is not simply lacking in the pleasure of
sensing the atmosphere of the Byzantine town which lived with the city legends,
but he is reading, let's use this metaphor, only the popular (and manifestly propa¬
ganda) version of the „body text" of the Byzantine history, taking no notice of
the extensive „footnotes" where one could often find the „body text" questioned
authoritatively and at times fairly explicitly.
Here is a catalogue of the „Bulgarian" monuments in question the history of
which, and whose reception in Byzantine environment, are studied in the second
part of the book.
1 ·
The Statue of the Bulgarian in the Bread Market (end of 5th century AD);
2.
The place of Khan-caesar
Tervei
at the Golden-roofed Basilica (this
topos
was established in the first quarter of the 8th century following the discovery of a
statue of Caesar
Tervei
next to the Basilica);
3.
The „Decapitated" Three-headed statue of Emperor Theophilos and Patri¬
arch
Johan
the Grammarian (second quarter of 9th century), which was almost cer¬
tainly connected with the Bulgarian-Byzantine relationships at the time of Khan
Malamir, Khan Presian and Khavhan Isbul, rather ambiguously related in both
Bulgarian and Byzantine sources.
4.
The statues „seized" by Khan Krum during his attack of St Mamas mon¬
astery
(812
AD). Significant is also the desire of the Bulgarian ruler to „stick his
spear into the Golden Gates". This „plot" introduced in the Bulgarian-Byzantine
381
relationships by Khan Kardam (end of 8th century) attests to a close knowledge of
the sacred topography of Constantinople on the part of the Bulgarian rulers and
could but through inertia be compared with the story of the shield of
Oleg
hung on
the Byzantine city wall or the Magyar warier
Botond
who slashed with his ax the
metal gates of Constantinople.
5.
The „Decapitated" statue of Tsar Simeon (May
26*-7Λ
927
AD);
6.
„The Guardian"
-
a copper statuette of a Bulgarian embedded in the hoof
of Joshua Navin/ Bellerophon (the two artifacts were destroyed in
1204
by the
knights of the 4th Crusade);
7.
The silver statues-guardians along the boundary in Thrace (talismans
against „the Huns, Sarmatians, and Goth", mentioned by Photius, as well as the
statue of Herodian mentioned in the „Brief Historical Chronicles");
Added to this list could be the fact that the last known example of officially
propagated magical use of statues (a Byzantine practice called by Ducellier „white
magic"), namely, the transfer of the Constantinople's statues of the Rhomaia and
the Magyar under the emperor Manuel Comnenus is connected (whether by ac¬
cident or not) with his visit to Serdica.
All 'Bulgarian' monuments being placed at significant sites in the sacred
topography of Constantinople connected with its most important religious and
political rituals, the name and the image of the
Bulgars
got deeply rooted not only
in the written (historical) memory of the Rhomaioi but also in their ceremonial
memory, i.e., in that kind of memory which in ancient times (and, to a certain ex¬
tent, even today) created and constantly renewed the sense of identity, solidarity
and cultural significance of the community.
The here suggested new reading of some of the central events in the Bul¬
garian history (which coincided, as it were, with not less significant moments in
the Byzantine past) through the prism of the memory of these events reflected in
the Constantinople monuments often runs contrary not only to the main opinions
in historiography, but also to almost all extant written Byzantine sources. The
problem becomes the more complicated because of this „almost", since this read¬
ing of mine is necessarily based, almost exclusively, on narratives dating back to
that epoch (most Byzantine monuments are only known from their descriptions
and legends connected with them). What is different, therefore, is not the choice
of sources but rather the refusal to give priority to some Byzantine stories at the
expense of others, which are either totally ignored or mentioned as curiosities.
The approach established in modem medieval studies which regards as more au¬
thentic the so called „official" documents, such as letters, laws, and historical
writings, has its scientific justification. However, it identifies, anachronistically
and inadequately, the forms and mechanisms of medieval Byzantine memory with
the modern ideas of how history is recorded and remembered. The Byzantines,
on the others hand, very much like the medieval Bulgarians, considered erecting
a monument and/or singing praises in a hymn, and not writing down the story of
382
what happened in a chronicle, the best way to commemorate an event or a person.
So, in the presence of such sources of information about given historical episode
which reflect the official, or even the officious, position of the epoch, the main
comments should be based on analyses of their data first, and then on any other
historical evidence. As a result history will look different. It will be more nuanced,
richer and even more logical, reflecting the whole many-folded process of depict¬
ing and understanding the events from the moment they happened up to the time
they came to seem topical enough to be recalled, discussed and at times retold in
a manner having little to do with the actual historical story line.
383 |
| any_adam_object | 1 |
| author | Vačkova, Veselina 1966- |
| author_GND | (DE-588)138113823 |
| author_facet | Vačkova, Veselina 1966- |
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| building | Verbundindex |
| bvnumber | BV036729608 |
| ctrlnum | (OCoLC)705915437 (DE-599)BVBBV036729608 |
| edition | 1. izd. |
| format | Book |
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| id | DE-604.BV036729608 |
| illustrated | Illustrated |
| indexdate | 2025-01-03T09:00:16Z |
| institution | BVB |
| isbn | 9789545094385 |
| language | Bulgarian |
| oai_aleph_id | oai:aleph.bib-bvb.de:BVB01-020647313 |
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| owner | DE-12 |
| owner_facet | DE-12 |
| physical | 383 S. Ill. |
| publishDate | 2010 |
| publishDateSearch | 2010 |
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| publisher | Voenno Izdat. |
| record_format | marc |
| spelling | Vačkova, Veselina 1966- Verfasser (DE-588)138113823 aut Belite poleta v bălgarskata kulturna pamet Veselina Vačkova 1. izd. Sofija Voenno Izdat. 2010 383 S. Ill. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier PST: The blank spaces in Bulgarian cultural memory. - In kyrill. Schr., bulg. - Zsfassung in engl. Sprache Geschichtsdenken (DE-588)4071770-7 gnd rswk-swf Kollektives Gedächtnis (DE-588)4200793-8 gnd rswk-swf Kulturbeziehungen (DE-588)4033552-5 gnd rswk-swf Kulturdenkmal (DE-588)4165967-3 gnd rswk-swf Byzantinisches Reich (DE-588)4009256-2 gnd rswk-swf Bulgarien (DE-588)4008866-2 gnd rswk-swf Bulgarien (DE-588)4008866-2 g Kollektives Gedächtnis (DE-588)4200793-8 s Geschichtsdenken (DE-588)4071770-7 s Kulturbeziehungen (DE-588)4033552-5 s Kulturdenkmal (DE-588)4165967-3 s Byzantinisches Reich (DE-588)4009256-2 g DE-604 Digitalisierung BSB Muenchen application/pdf http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=020647313&sequence=000002&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA Inhaltsverzeichnis Digitalisierung BSB Muenchen application/pdf http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=020647313&sequence=000004&line_number=0002&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA Abstract |
| spellingShingle | Vačkova, Veselina 1966- Belite poleta v bălgarskata kulturna pamet Geschichtsdenken (DE-588)4071770-7 gnd Kollektives Gedächtnis (DE-588)4200793-8 gnd Kulturbeziehungen (DE-588)4033552-5 gnd Kulturdenkmal (DE-588)4165967-3 gnd |
| subject_GND | (DE-588)4071770-7 (DE-588)4200793-8 (DE-588)4033552-5 (DE-588)4165967-3 (DE-588)4009256-2 (DE-588)4008866-2 |
| title | Belite poleta v bălgarskata kulturna pamet |
| title_auth | Belite poleta v bălgarskata kulturna pamet |
| title_exact_search | Belite poleta v bălgarskata kulturna pamet |
| title_full | Belite poleta v bălgarskata kulturna pamet Veselina Vačkova |
| title_fullStr | Belite poleta v bălgarskata kulturna pamet Veselina Vačkova |
| title_full_unstemmed | Belite poleta v bălgarskata kulturna pamet Veselina Vačkova |
| title_short | Belite poleta v bălgarskata kulturna pamet |
| title_sort | belite poleta v balgarskata kulturna pamet |
| topic | Geschichtsdenken (DE-588)4071770-7 gnd Kollektives Gedächtnis (DE-588)4200793-8 gnd Kulturbeziehungen (DE-588)4033552-5 gnd Kulturdenkmal (DE-588)4165967-3 gnd |
| topic_facet | Geschichtsdenken Kollektives Gedächtnis Kulturbeziehungen Kulturdenkmal Byzantinisches Reich Bulgarien |
| url | http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=020647313&sequence=000002&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=020647313&sequence=000004&line_number=0002&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT vackovaveselina belitepoletavbalgarskatakulturnapamet |