Ivan Stefan

Ivan Stephan ( Bulgarian Иван Стефан; † probably 1373 in Naples ) was Tsar of the Bulgarians from 1330 to 1331. He was the son of Tsar Michael III. Schischman Asen and Anna Neda of Serbia, daughter of King Stefan Uroš II Milutin . After his father's accession to the throne in 1323, Ivan Stephan was appointed co-emperor.

When Michael III. separated from Anna Neda to marry Theodora Palaiologina (1324), the daughter of the Byzantine emperor Michael IX. , Ivan Stephan went into exile in Serbia with his mother and brothers. After Michael Asen's death in 1330 in the battle of Welbaschd (today Kjustendil ), King Stefan Uroš III. Dečanski of Serbia as an opportunity to try to conquer Bulgaria. When he met determined resistance, he only insisted that his nephew Ivan Stephan be recognized as tsar.

Although Ivan Stephan was no longer a minor at that time, he was under the influence of his mother. The new government faced an immediate crisis, not so much from the defeat of Michael III. resulted, but rather from the change in relations with Byzantium. Emperor Andronikos III. Palaiologos invaded Bulgaria when his sister Theodora Palaiologina and her sons were driven out of Veliko Tarnovo and had no trouble occupying the towns in the Bulgarian Thrace in 1331. Ivan Stephan's inability to defend himself against these losses led to a coup which now forced him, his mother and his brothers to flee. The new tsar became his cousin Ivan Alexander .

Ivan Stephan and Anna Neda fled to Serbia, but also had to give way there when Serbia and Ivan Alexander formed an alliance in 1332 and went to Dubrovnik . Anna Neda attempted to bring her son back to the throne throughout the 1330s, but her revolt collapsed in 1337.

Ivan Stephan went with his mother to southern Italy, where he married (under the name Ludoviucs) an illegitimate daughter of Prince Philip I of Taranto ; the marriage remained childless. In 1342 he accompanied Johannes Kantakuzenos on his escape from Constantinople . Twenty years later, in 1363, he is in captivity in Siena . Presumably he died in Naples in 1373.

literature

• John VA Fine, Jr., The Late Medieval Balkans, A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest , Ann Arbor (1987)
• Dimitrina Aslanian Histoire de la Bulgarie, de l'antiquité à nos jours Trimontium, 2004 ISBN 2-9519946-1-3 .
• Detlev Schwennicke, European Family Tables Volume II (1984) Plate 172

Footnotes

1. ↑ The same source (Schwennicke, Volume III.1 (1984) Plate 56) reports that he was killed in 1373 near Slobitza

predecessor	Office	successor
Michael III Schischman	Tsar of Bulgaria 1330–1331	Ivan Alexander