Table of contents /summary/

About the place this book occupies among the studies of the phenomenon of Bulgarian historical and cultural memory

I. Forgotten Sofia

1. The problem is not in forgetting itself but in its dimensions

2. The „local council of the western churches“ in Serdica

What are the reasons why and the ways in which the Byzantine “memory machine” came to operate?

Was Serdica Church western or was it an eastern one?

How did Protogenes come to be considered “the first Bulgarian archbishop” and not St Clement of Rome or St Andronicus?

3. The Edict of Tolerance issued in Serdica, April 30th 311 AD.

How was Serdica replaced by Nicomedia, Nicomedia by Milan and the Edict of Galerius came to be the Edict of Constantine

Galerius and Licinius in Bulgarian cultural aнd historical memory

4. Serdica mea Roma est or about how Byzantine memory machine operated

5. Serdica — the city of mothers and daughters of emperors

Vita Helenae in the Medieval Greek and Roman sources

Saint Helena in Bulgarian medieval literature

What did the writers of 17th to 19th century read and know about Saint Helena?

Constantine’s Rome and Constantine’s City

6. Sofia of Justinian

On the problem of barbarization of the power and the “slavinization” of the provinces

The heuristic resources of the Life of Justinian by bishop-abbot Bogomil/Theophilus/Domnio 

In what sense did Justinian I and Theodoric swore brotherhood?

Justinian’s Sofia between the legends and facts

Where or what is Prima Justiniana?

7. Serdica-Sredetz-Sofia in the horizons of Bulgarian eschatology and political teleology

8. “The history of confrontations” breeds “the memory of (self)-alienation”

II. The Bulgarian theme in the memory of the Constantinople’s monuments

1. Bulgarian-Byzantine relationships: scientific approaches and misunderstandings

2. Byzantine “memory machine” and its use

3. About the people and statues

What and how do statues “remember”?

Historiographical approaches to the study of Constantinople monuments

4. The Bulgarian monuments in Constantinople

4.1 The first “Bulgarian statue” in Constantinople: the Bulgarian in the Bread Market

4.2. The Guardian in Pegasus’ hoof and the boundary guardians

4.3. Historical adequacy of the image of “the Bulgarians as creators and guardians of the boundaries”

The “extinct” and the “new” peoples or: on the matter of the ethnical constancy and the power vacuum in the European provinces of the Late Empire

The Bulgarian notion of state boundary

4.5 About the Golden-roofed Basilica or: the Byzantine memory of Caesar-khan Tervel

Was Khan Tervel a honorary or active caesar?

4.6. The Golden Gates of Constantinople — a favourite stage for political and religious manifestations of the Bulgarian rulers

4.7. Khan Krum — the snatcher of statues

4.8. The statue of tsar Simeon

Characteristics of the magical statues in Constantinople

The decapitation of the statue of tsar Simeon — a political myth, censored news or classic product of the Byzantine collective memory

Two statues of the same fate: was it a coincidence or regularity?

The stele of Simeon and the column of Arcadias

Simeon = Septimius Severus

The statue of Simeon the Bulgarian

Simeon — the tsar who looked Westwards

III. The mystery of the Bulgarian memory (in place of conclusion)

Summary

Appendices

Белите полета в българската културна памет

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