International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

 
STUDYING AND COMMUNICATING BYZANTIUM – PART 2
Chairs: 
Karsten Fledelius, Anna Linden Weller
Mitko B. Panov, 
The Making of Medieval Identity: 
Imagining the Samuel’s State in Balkan Narratives (Mid-19
th
to Beginning of the 20
th
Century)
Anna Tsypkina, 
A History of the Russian Expedition in Trebizond in 1916-1917
Francesco Lovino
, 
How to Publish a Scholarly Byzantine Journal in 1920s and 1930s: 
The Case of 
Seminarium Kondakovianum
Valerii Pirogov
, 
Organizational Aspects of the Reconstruction of the Documentary Heritage of the Russian 
Monastery of Holy Great Martyr and Healer Panteleimon on Mount Athos of the Byzantine Period
Dmitry Zubov
, 
Methods of Reconstructing of the Monastery Charters Collection 
(St Panteleimon Monastery on Mt Athos)
Rona Razon
, 
Bridging Dispersed Archival Collections: Fonds de Thomas Whittemore

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529
Mitko B. Panov
University “Ss. Cyril and Methodius”, Institute of National History, 
Skopje, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; 
[e-mail] 
The Making of Medieval Identity: 
Imagining the Samuel’s State in Balkan Narratives 
(Mid-19
th
to Beginning of the 20
th
Century)
The paper addresses the issue of how the Samuel’s State was rediscovered and imagined in 
the Balkan narratives from the mid-19
th
to the beginning of 20
th
century. The analysis of the works 
of Balkan revivalist written in the first half of the 19
th
century shows persistence in the trend to 
ignore the historical motives arising from the epoch of the struggle between Samuel and Basil II 
that was a result of the negative association and imagination they incited. Greek nationalists until 
the mid-19
th
century perceived Basil II through the anti-Byzantine prism. Bulgarian nationalists up 
to 1870’s treated Samuel as the main culprit for the downfall of the state, portraying him as a God’s 
sinner, patricide and even ethnically alien ugly Armenian. During the same period Serbian and 
Croatian intellectuals mainly perceived the reign of Samuel indirectly via the Pan-Slavic concept 
of the popular romantic story about Kosara and Vladimir. The world view of the first generation 
of Macedonian revivalists was, much like in the case of the Bulgarian revivalists, formed under the 
strong influence of Russia, which reflected in sharing of the Russian understanding of the medieval 
past that included the Samuel’s state. 
It was Russia that was responsible for the re-actualization of Samuel’s State in the Balkan 
narratives in the mid-19
th
century. The Russian historian Alexander Hilferding was the first to 
notice the absence of a written tradition on Samuel in Slavic manuscripts, compensating it with his 
own interpretation that reinforced the negative image of the medieval emperor, who was portrayed 
as a ruthless patricide. Not surprisingly, in his view the rise of Samuel’s State was the direct result 
of Slavic brotherhood, with medieval Bulgaria as the power able to accomplish the mission of 
uniting the Slavs against their mutual enemy – the “Greeks,” i.e. Byzantines. This projected historical 
reference, found expression in the Russian direct involvement in the creation of the Bulgarian state 
following its victory over the Ottomans in 1878. 
These new circumstances led to the change of the negative perception of the emperor Samuel 
among the Bulgarian nationalists. Subsequently in 1870’s Samuel was absolved from his previous 
sins and was resurrected as a national hero in Bulgaria. This was followed with the opposite claim 
from Serbia for the historical right on “their” Samuel. Thus Samuel became an indispensable 
synonym for Macedonia which was directly related to the contested territorial claims following the 
revision of the San Stefano Treaty in 1878. This aspirations resulted in competitive assertions of the 
Balkan’s nationalists over the historical legacy of the Samuel’s State and thus for the rights on the 
Macedonian territory.
As the Ottoman Empire was coming to an end, the scholarly debate over Samuel’s State 
acquired even greater significance. Greek historians explored the legend of Basil II the Bulgar-Slayer, 

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530
the Serbian scholars pushed the concept of the “Slavonic state in Macedonia” or the “Macedonian 
Slavic State”, while Bulgarians continued to promote the idea of a “Western Bulgarian Empire” 
as a mere continuation of the Bulgarian Empire. Samuel’s State was exploited in ethnographic 
studies, the specific purpose of which was to deal with the ethnogenesis and the identity of the 
inhabitants of Macedonia. The new situation inevitably caused a corresponding reaction among the 
Macedonian revolutionaries and intelligentsia, who in the beginning of the 20
th
century responded 
with resurrecting an authentic “Macedonian” Samuel belonging to the Macedonians, by which the 
innate historical right on the territory of Macedonia was demonstrated.