Medieval Bulgarian royal charters

The medieval Bulgarian royal charters are some of the few surviving secular documents of the Second Bulgarian Empire, and were issued by five tsars roughly between 1230 and 1380. The charters are written in Middle Bulgarian using the Early Cyrillic alphabet.

The two earliest Bulgarian royal charters, the Vatopedi Charter given to the Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos, and the Dubrovnik Charter which permitted Ragusan merchants to trade all over the Bulgarian lands, were issued by Tsar Ivan Asen II of Bulgaria after 1230, and are both undated. The Vatopedi Charter was discovered on Mount Athos in 1929 and the Dubrovnik Charter was found in the archives of Dubrovnik in 1817.

The Virgino Charter, also from the 13th century, was awarded by Tsar Constantine Tikh of Bulgaria to the Monastery of Saint George near Skopje between 1257 and 1777, and was discovered in the Hilandar Monastery. Some researchers consider it a forged document from the late 14th or early 15th century based on the Serbian 14th century Milutin Charter, while others regard it as an original work and believe that it was actually the base for the Milutin Charter.

The royal chancellery of Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria awarded two known charters. These are the Zograf Charter of March 1342, confirming the Zograf Monastery's rights over the village of Hantak, and the Oryahov Charter of 1 December 1348 intended for the Saint Nicholas Monastery in Oryahov near Radomir. The Zograf Charter was found in the Zograf Monastery and the Oryahov Charter, written by the clerk Dobromir, is in the Hilandar Monastery.

...
Wikipedia