Bulgars and Slavs among enemies and «friends» of the Byzantine Empire in the 7th–9th cc.

Abstract

The article considers role and dynamics of mutual images in the communication of Bulgars and Slavs with the Byzantine Empire and among themselves in connection with their migration across Danube, settlement in the Balkans, formation and enlargement of the Bulgarian state in the 7th–9th cc. The Byzantines’ phobias towards Bulgars and Slav incorporated both the reminiscences of the ancient fears of enemies and new eschatological fears. They were being overcome by real and symbolic interiorization of the outer enemies, which in political contacts were perceived as military opponents and trouble-making neighbors, untrustworthy allies, friends by status or insubordinate subjects. Their transfer from the world of images to the world of politics obviously did not make the Rhomeoi’s relationships with the «inner barbarians» free from the impact of traditional images and their remnants, which in the case of the Bulgars and integrated into their state Slavs kept on existing after their conversion to Christianity. In their turn, the relations between the Bulgars and Slavs, on the one side, and Byzantium on the other, were determined not only by political and militaly challenges, but with their acculturation into the symbolic space of the Christian Empire conjugated with their attitudes to the statuses and nominations offered by Constantinople. The Bulgar-Slav relations and their symbolic expressions were shaped during their cooperation, which had begun long before the arrival of Asparuch to the Balkans, and in the course of the competition of the Bulgarian state with Byzantium for Balkan Slavinias. Nevertheless, the reminiscences of the ancient ethnic phobias in the mediaeval Byzantine and Slavonic texts existed more as literary fashion than as reflections of the current social and political realities.