Roman Attitudes Towards Bulgaria and the Bulgarians (463-1018).
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2023-05-15
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en
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This thesis traces the cultural attitudes of Eastern Roman authors towards Bulgaria between the first appearance of the Bulgars in Roman sources in the 5th century and the conquest of the First Bulgarian Empire by emperor Basil II in the early 11th century. These authors' way of writing about the Bulgars is used to determine how the Eastern Romans viewed the relationship between ethnicity and religion and how they related others to their own identity. Detecting the cultural biases of Eastern Roman authors is done by tracing the degree to which they employed classicizing modes of writing ethnography and by comparing their narratives to other evidence. As the negative portrayal of Bulgaria in Eastern Roman writing did not change after its Christianization, this thesis supports the stance that the Eastern Romans did not see themselves primarily as being a part of an Orthodox Christian community together with other ethnicities.
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Faculteit der Letteren