Kaloyan (;

Old Bulgarian Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic ( ) is the first Slavic literary language and the oldest extant written Slavonic language attested in literary sources. It belongs to the South Slavic subgroup of the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European ...

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

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

Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...

n nobles, ''

sebastocrator ''Sebastokrator'' (, ; ; ), was a senior court title in the late Byzantine Empire. It was also used by other rulers whose states bordered the Empire or were within its sphere of influence (Bulgarian Empire, Serbian Empire). The word is a compound ...

s'' of Sredets (

Sofia Sofia is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Bulgaria, largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain, in the western part of the country. The city is built west of the Is ...

) and the surrounding region during the

Asen dynasty The House of Asen, also Asen dynasty or the Asenids (, romanized: ''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 le ...

of the

Second Bulgarian Empire The Second Bulgarian Empire (; ) was a medieval Bulgarians, Bulgarian state that existed between 1185 and 1422. A successor to the First Bulgarian Empire, it reached the peak of its power under Tsars Kaloyan of Bulgaria, Kaloyan and Ivan Asen II ...

. They are credited as main donors and patrons of the

Boyana Church The Boyana Church () 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 World Heritage List. The east wing of the two-story ...

. 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 ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

images in European art Many art historians defined these frescoes as one of the most remarkable works of the

Palaeologan Renaissance The Palaeologan Renaissance or Palaiologan Renaissance is the final period in the development of Byzantine art. Coinciding with the reign of the Palaiologoi, the last dynasty to rule the Byzantine Empire (1261–1453), it was an attempt to restor ...

Life

Kaloyan may have been the grandson of

Tsar Tsar (; also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar''; ; ; sr-Cyrl-Latn, цар, car) is a title historically used by Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word '' caesar'', which was intended to mean ''emperor'' in the Euro ...

Ivan Asen I Ivan Asen I, also known as Asen I or John Asen 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 exact place and date o ...

(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 known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

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, officially the Orthodox Catholic Church, and also called the Greek Orthodox Church or simply the Orthodox Church, is List of Christian denominations by number of members, one of the three major doctrinal and ...

Boyana Boyana ( ) 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 live in. The res ...

, 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 Serbian may refer to: * Pertaining to Serbia in Southeast Europe; in particular **Serbs, a South Slavic ethnic group native to the Balkans ** Serbian language ** Serbian culture **Demographics of Serbia, includes other ethnic groups within the co ...

king Saint Stephen. It has been theorized that Kaloyan reconstructed Roman Emperor

Constantine I Constantine I (27 February 27222 May 337), also known as Constantine the Great, was a Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337 and the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He played a Constantine the Great and Christianity, pivotal ro ...

'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 ...

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

is named after Desislava.

References

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