Tsar Kaloyan reburied in Veliko Tarnovo

800 years after the death of tsar Kaloyan (1197-1207) the sarcophagus with the relics of the legendary Bulgarian ruler was buried in the yard of the St. 40 Martyrs temple in Veliko Tarnovo on April 19, 2007. The ceremony was performed with state funeral honours, in the presence of the Guard of Honour, with military and church ceremonial. The ritual started with bringing out the sarcophagus from the Regional Museum of History. It was carried by Guards and winded by the national flag, placed over a mount and dragged by Armored Personnel Carrier of the Military Forces, accompanied by the sound of drums. In the beginning of the procession a Guard carried a graphical portrait of tsar Kaloyan. The coffin was laid down in grave No 39 in the church St. 40 Martyrs. There the prominent Kaloyan ring was found. The idea is to rebury the relics of the rules Samuil and Mihail Shishman, which are also found. Thus a pantheon of the Bulgarian rulers will be established.
Tzar Kaloyan was the young brother of Assen and Petar, who restored the Bulgarian State. Kaloyan ascended to the throne in 1197 after both his brothers died in the same year. He immediately started active campaogn against Byzantine emperor and managed to conquer the Thracian fortress Konstancia (Simeonovgrad). Then he started to Varna, laid in under siege and on March 24, 1201 entered it. In the end of 1201 he began peace negotiations and the peace treaty was signed in 1202. Tsar Kaloyan received a letter from Pope Innocent III, who hoped to join Bulgaria to the Catholic church. The response of Kaloyan came threee years later insisting on receiving a king crown and independent church. On October 15 1204 Cardinal Leo, arrived in Bulgaria, he anointed the Archbishop Vasilij of Tărnovo as Primate of Bulgaria, and crowned Kaloyan as rex Bulgarorum et Blachorum. Immediately afterwards, in 1204, the Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople and created the Latin Empire, electing as emperor Baldwin I of Flanders. Although Kaloyan had offered the crusaders an alliance against the Byzantine Empire, his offer had been spurned, and the Latin Empire expressed the intention of conquering all the lands of the former Byzantine Empire, including the territories ruled by Kaloyan. The impending conflict was precipitated by the Byzantine aristocracy in Thrace, which rebelled against Latin rule in 1205 and called on Kaloyan for help, offering him its submission. On April 14, 1205, Kaloyan's Cumans managed to draw the pursuing heavy cavalry of the Latin Empire into an ambush in the marshes north of Adrianople, and Kaloyan inflicted a crushing defeat on the crusader army. Emperor Baldwin I was captured, Count Louis I of Blois was killed, and the Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo led the surviving portions of the crusader army into a hasty retreat back to Constantinople, during the course of which he died of exhaustion. Baldwin was imprisoned in the Bulgarian capital Tarnovo until he died or was executed later in 1205. In 1207 Kaloyan advanced on the city and besieged it with a large force, but was murdered by his own Cuman commander Manastar at the beginning of October 1207.

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