Comparing Frontier Empires: Bulgaria and Its Neighbours
A comparative essay asks why three medieval states on the same frontier - Bulgaria, the Byzantine Empire, and the Latin West - developed different relationships between ruler, church, and written law. The student has: a Bulgarian ruler's inscriptions in Greek; Byzantine legal compilations; Latin canon-law collections; and chronicles from all three. The student wants to argue that Bulgaria 'copied' Byzantium. A reviewer objects that copying is not an explanation and asks for a mechanism that accounts for both similarity and difference.
1. Propose a mechanism that explains similarity and difference at once.
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A workable mechanism is selective legitimation under frontier conditions. A new ruler needs recognized forms of authority - a Christian title, a law code, a church hierarchy - and the nearest supplier is Byzantium. But adopting those forms also imports claims of Byzantine superiority, so the ruler adapts them: using Greek for display while sponsoring a vernacular liturgy, taking imperial titles that Byzantium disputed, and founding an independent church. Similarity arises because the legitimating vocabulary is shared; difference arises because the borrower must mark autonomy to avoid becoming a subordinate. The student should test this against the inscriptions (which show Greek as a prestige language), church organization (autocephaly claims), and law (reception with local modification). The comparison with the Latin West then becomes instructive: there the supplier was Rome, and the same logic produced different compromises. 'Copying' becomes a strategy with costs, not an explanation.
2. What evidence would falsify the proposed mechanism?
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The mechanism predicts that borrowings cluster where legitimacy is contested and that adaptations increase where subordination is implied. It would be weakened if Bulgarian rulers adopted Byzantine forms wholesale even when no autonomy claim was at stake, or if they rejected shared forms precisely where legitimation was most needed. It would also be weakened if the vernacular and independent-church features appeared before any conflict with Byzantium, since that would remove the need for the mechanism. The student should therefore date the inscriptions, church foundations, and legal reception against known political conflicts, and check whether the adaptations follow the conflicts or precede them. A further test is comparison: if the Latin West shows the same pattern of selective adoption toward Rome, the mechanism gains support; if it shows wholesale reception without autonomy markers, the mechanism is too general and must be refined.