the ‘inside’ other 105
and the Uighurs after 756 A.D. until the destruction of the khaganate
in 840 A.D.^70
No dynastic aliance is known between the Bulgars and the Byzan-
tines or other imperial sedentary civilization before the conversion to
Christianity in the 860s, so that attitudes towards women that came
from the outer world^71 are difficult to trace. As far as the Byzantine
Empire is concerned, there is quite an easy explanation. According
to the Byzantine doctrine clearly stated by the emperor Constantine
VII Porphyrogenetos,^72 from the times of Constantine the Great it was
forbidden for the Byzantines to get into marriage with people having
rites specific and foreign, and different from the Byzantine ones, and
especially with infidels and non-baptized; the only exception were the
Franks. This is a principled position of the Byzantine Empire at least
until the end of the tenth century and consequently Byzantine prin-
cesses from the ‘royal kin’ were never given as wives to ‘barbarians’.
Namely on this account Constantine Porphyrogenetos attacks with
such a spite the Lecapenes, who violated the usual order and allowed
the grand-daughter of Romanos Lekapenos (920–944), Maria-Eirene,
to be given as a wife to the Bulgarian tsar Peter (927–d.970) in 927 A.D.
Later on such a ‘break-through’ was repeated with the Rus’ians—in the
year 988 A.D. Vladimir (?–d.1015), who converted the Kievan Rus’,
married the emperor Basil II’s (976–1025) sister and thus Rus’ entered
Orthodox Christianity.
Bearing in mind the lack of evidence from the period, some typical
features of the Bulgarian supreme ruler’s wife position can only be
broadly stated. The frequently cited “Answers” of Pope Nicholas to
the Bulgarian knyaz Boris-Michael (mid-860s) and especially answer
No 42 present some useful information. It is explicitly pointed that
(^70) The Cambridge History of China 1979, 609, 677–678.
(^71) Giuzelev 1999 (Vol. 1), 105–106, has paid due attention to the promise received
by Tervel in 705 A.D., namely that Justianian II will give him as wife his daughter;
but later the emperor declined. Instead, Justinian II made another concession so as
to compensate the Bulgar side. It was G. Atanasov who lately has written the fol-
lowing: “On the other side, however, the ‘kaisar’ title and regalia of Tervel would
not be legitimate unless he was a member of the emperor’s family, i.e. if he failed
to marry... Justinian’s II daughter. Since his contemporaries in the Empire did not
question his ‘kaisar’ dignity, it seems that the marriage with the Byzantine princess
was real” (see, Atanasov 2004, 37). At the moment, this suggestion is still hypothetical
since it needs further and clear information in order to be fully substantiated.
(^72) Konstantin Bagrianorodnyi 1989, 59 (Ch. XIII).