The Dress and Jewellery of the Medieval Bulgarians

Clothes:

The formal clothes for court women in Byzantium, as well as in Bulgaria at the time were made from cotton, linen and silk.  Young Princesses and Princes would generally be dressed quite simply, but on official occasions, they would wear clothes closely resembling the adult fashion, as could be seen from the miniatures of the Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander. 4

For every day wear, both men and women wore a dress/tunic, which for men reached the knees and for women reached the ankles.  Underneath the tunic, men wore narrower or wider trousers/pants, which were tied at the waist. On their feet, they wore leather boots.  Underneath the boots, they wore shoes made of cloth.  A semi-circular cloak was added over their clothes for warmth. 5 Traditionally, the tunics worn at the time for both men and women in Bulgaria were held by a belt, one end of which hung down prominently. 2 We see Princess Tamara on the folio from the London Gospels, wearing a similar tunic.

The belt would be made out of gold, silver or metal, covered by gold, produced in triangular, square or round elements, held together by delicate hinges, or by leather and decorated with large buckles.  Some of those could be decorated with relief figures of dragons, birds, etc. as the fashion of the time dictated. 1  Belts were often decorated with belt-buckles (called pafti), which were made by jewellers in several forms – round, oblong and in the shape of an Indian palmetto.  Made out of gold, silver and richly decorated with precious stones and pearls, they would be worn both by the royal family and in their more ordinary metal variant, by the general population of the time.  Their decorative elements would be encoded with ancient symbols, carried through the centuries. 10

In the Middle Ages, front opening of coats, in the style of “mi-parti”, was fashionable.  This fashion probably came from Byzantium in the 11 – 12th centuries.  Byzantine styles continued their powerful influence over their northern neighbour. 5 By the 13th century the use of buttons became widespread.  Buttons probably originated from the Moors (one can see those on a Moorish ceiling in the Alhambra (1354) and button-makers in Paris were one of the trades, listed in a document in 1292. 3

The geometrical or schematic style of ornamentation was dominant in the material, used for robes in Bulgaria, during the Middle Ages.  However, folk costumes, continued to carry forward the ancient traditions of decorating. 10

The tunic, worn by the ruling class women, was edged by an elaborately embroidered border of gold, silver and precious stones.  This design was replicated at the neck line.  Royal tunics could be in a plain colour, usually red for ceremonial occasions, where the jewelled and embroidered edging, belt and crown would create a more dramatic contrast.  Alternatively they could be made of expensive woven materials, including silk, incorporating bright embroidered elements.  For ceremonial duties, the royal women and their retinue wore capes – thicker in winter and thinner and glitterier in the summer.  The winter clothes would have been made from fine leather and wool, fur-lined and, lavishly embroidered. 1

The official attire for the King and the boyars usually consisted of ankle-long tunics (called sakos), which were wider at the bottom and were edged by an embroidered band decorated with precious stones.  Standing, a Bulgarian Tsar would have been an impressive sight.  His body would be defined by his long, usually red tunic.  But what would catch the eye would be the richly decorated edging that encircled his neck, then ran in a straight line down the centre of his body to join the edging around his ankles. This vertical element would be complimented by the ornate belt at the waist.

The cloak would be made of single colour, which in case of the Tsar, Tsaritza and the princess would be different shades of red.  We have a good depiction of those worn by the family of Ivan Alexander, his sons and his son-in-law in the Gospels, now kept in the British Library.  There, the king is standing on a pedestal, which is red, decorated with the dark double-headed eagles.  The same double headed eagles in white decorate the tunic of Despot Constantine, Tamara’s first husband, which is maroon or brown in colour. 4

Excavated under the church of St Nicolas near the village of Stanichene, in the Pirot area, archaeologists found the tomb of Caesar Constantine, a boyar, contemporary of Tsar Ivan Alexander, Governor the Nish-Pirot area.  He was dressed in a gold-woven tunic, extremely well preserved, and decorated with beautiful depictions of two-headed eagles, birds, dear, as well as a monogram with the text: Ivan Alexander, Tsar of Bulgarians and Greeks.  It appears that the Caesar was given this tunic from the Tsar himself andtreasured the gift so much, he wanted to be buried in it.  It gave us valuable insight of what Ivan Alexander was wearing. 5, 6

The two headed eagle was adopted by the emperors of the house of Paleologus in Byzantium as their emblem in around 1325.  This was later adopted by the Bulgarian, Serbian, Hungarian and the Russian royal families. 8, 9

The Tsaritza and the noble women wore crowns, reflecting their status, and a variety of forms of head coverings.  These could be either silk scarves or richly embroidered fine cotton ones.  They also wore headbands or head dresses, made of gold, silver and decorated with precious and semi-precious stones, which held their headdress/scarves and covered their hair.   These represent a continuation of the traditional Slavonic Maiden/Lady’s head decoration, considered to imply the tree of life.  Young princesses, like Tamara, Maria Keratza, Dessislava and others, would have also worn those – another belief was that the head dress would protect the owner from the “evil eye”. 10

Valuable information about clothes in the 13/14th centuries in Bulgaria was obtained from various mural paintings in churches, which depict monarchs, the nobility, as well as ordinary people.  Extremely useful in this respect are the murals from the Boyana Church, where we see how the Tsar Constantine Tikh Asen and Tsaritza Irena and a Despot couple – a relative of Constantine, called Despot Kaloyan and his beautiful wife – Dessislava, who were depicted, all formally dressed.

Another example is provided by the portraits of the donors from the Church in Kalotino near Sofia, the Bachkovski Monastery and others. 7 The murals depicting Despot Deyan (father of the Dragash brothers) and his wife Doya (Eudokia) from the church in Zemen is also extremely useful.  One could not fail to notice the fact that Doya was depicted with a head-covering arrangement, reminiscent of the present day scarves, worn in villages in the Sofia area. 5

In the 14th century the short, semi-circular cloak was replaced by a long overcoat with either open (cut) sleeves or proper wide sleeves, which was often lined by a second layer of material or leather and decorated lavishly with fur.  Both men and women wore those.  The embroidered material around the neck reduced the use of necklaces and pendants, but brought buttons to the fore as decorative elements in clothes.  Those were often made of gold, silver and ornamented exquisitely.  Leather was used much more as it provided warmth, but also had aesthetic qualities, which enriched Bulgarian medieval costume. 5

Jewellery:

Most ladies appear to have worn intricate jewellery, including ear-rings, which were sometimes positioned over the ear.  50% of the jewellery, found in the Dobrudja Despotate from the 14th the century were earrings and over the ear-rings.  The circles, which those ear-rings comprised from, which during the 12th – 13th century were quite small, were now increasing in size.  Beads and spheres, comprising precious and semi-precious stones were threaded on those circles.  Those were popular amongst all women in all parts of the Bulgarianlands. 11

Common women wore copper or silver decorated spheres.  Most ear-rings, worn by women from the aristocracy were made out of pearl, precious and semi-precious stones, gold, silver and mother-of-pearl.  Ear-rings, which hung from holes in the ear-lobes, were also very popular and would be of different length, with two small decorative elements on the sides of a circle and one larger one in the middle – those could be stones.  Sometimes, ear-rings were in-laid with filigree or precious and semi-precious stones, 1, 11

Rings for ladies were sometimes made, open at the back – to fit any finger and usually decorated with a stone. 1   Princesses would have worn both ear-rings and rings and would have been able to choose the best, offered to the ladies in the palace.

Royalty, aristocracy, and few of the more important palace administrators, as well as some of the richer and more important traders and boyars wore signet rings, used for stamping wax seals on personal correspondence as well as to authorize orders and decrees.  Those were usually round and large with the personal heraldic sign of the owner – a panther, lion, bear, and type of bird or a tree, etc.  Archaeologists have found many of those. 5, 11    

Bracelets followed the traditions, inherited from centuries’ old designs – Bulgar, Slav, Thracian and Byzantine.  They were either solid gold or silver or gold – or silver-plated and with what we now call “modernistic” effects.  Sometimes each half of the bracelet was with a different pattern, on other occasions the form became thicker towards the back of the bracelet, where both ends met.  Buckles were used more often in order to make bracelets safer. 10

After the 10th century in Byzantium the filigree technique overtook the old way of creating jewellery – by variegating the old surface of the jewellery article. 6 Jewellery, featuring filigree work, combined with granulation became more and more popular at this time in Bulgaria as well.  This style of producing filigree jewellery from both gold and silver exists in modern Bulgaria and in the whole Mediterranean to this day. 1

While in the 12th – 13th century, they appeared thinner, in the 14th century, bracelets grew in size.  A large number of similar silver bracelets, found in the area are exhibited in the Varna Museum. 11

The Tsar and the Tsaritza wore crowns, while Despots and their wives, the other nobles and boyars wore diadems, with intricate decorations made of pearls and precious stones. 9   Many of those would have hanging decorations, with threaded pearls, and semi- precious and precious stones. 11

Ordinary people wore jewellery from copper and bronze, sometimes gold- and silver-plated.

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Sources

  1. БАН, История на България, (Втора Българска Държава), 3:220–400
  2. Станилов, Славяните в Първото Българско Царство, 11-114
  3. Jirousek,  Ottoman Influences in Western Dress in https://char.txa.cornell.edu/influences.html
  4. Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander, 39627, f.3
  5. Подбрани извори (Selected Sources), 2,Кн14: 317-352
  6. Byzantium – 330 -1453, Edited by Cormack and Vassilaki, 164-356
  7. Кисьов,Бачковки Манастир, 43-56
  8. Croweley, Constantinople, 31-36
  9. Dimitrova, The Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander, 14–96
  10. Bulgaria Tradition and Beauty, edited by Kwaznik, 43–47
  11. Атанасов, Добруджанското Деспотство,264–270

 

 

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