Presentation of the book Ivan Aleksandar by Alberto Alberti, published by Firenze University Press

The volume aims at highlighting the great importance assumed by Ivan Aleksandar (1331-1371), the penultimate Bulgarian emperor before the Turkish conquest, in the definition of the cultural identity of modern Bulgaria: as a matter of fact, it is exactly in the fourteenth century, as well as during the first Bulgarian empire and in the period of Ivan Asen II, that the development of history and culture of this nation is rooted. At the meeting, this topic, that is to say the definition of a historical identity of Bulgaria and of the Balkans, will be a given large space.

ABSTRACT from the book:

The long reign of Ivan Aleksandăr (1331-1371), the penultimate Bulgarian emperor before the Turkish conquest, was characterized by a series of successful military campaigns against Serbia and Byzantium, but especially by a feverish cultural production, mostly desired and financed by the king himself. The central decades of the fourteenth century are crucially important for the next cultural development of Bulgaria and of the whole Slavia Orthodoxa, though still today there are no wide and exhaustive studies on the figure of Ivan Aleksandăr. Actually, the information we have is not limited, but rather, it is scattered among the literary sources, the colophons of the manuscripts, the epigraphic documentation as well as, of course, the official deeds promulgated by the emperor. Through the analysis of such documents, this volume tries to reconstruct the figure of the sovereign, the setting where he lived and acted, his greatness and faults, his parallel activity as a strategist and as an enlightened patron of arts. For the first time, the Italian reader may find gathered all the handwritten sources concerning the Bulgarian king. In order to be as complete as possible, in the appendix, the book quotes the original texts of the Slavonic-ecclesiastical tradition.