Start of the Descriptio in the Leiden manuscript (c.1400)
The Descriptio Europae Orientalis ('Description of Eastern Europe') is an anonymous Latin geographical treatise written in France in the spring of 1308.[1] The author was a Catholic hostile to the Orthodox and to the Serbian Bogomils.[1] He was probably a Dominican.[1][2] According to one hypothesis, the author was Andreas Hungarus, a Hungarian priest who became the archbishop of Bar in Albania in 1307.[3]
The countries covered in the Descriptio are Albania, Bohemia, Bulgaria, Halych (Ruthenia), Hungary, Poland, Serbia (Rascia) and the Byzantine Empire. The geography, politics, culture and economy of these kingdoms are described.[1] It has been argued that his knowledge of Albania and Hungary was better than that of countries further east.[3] He mislocates Trebizond and Sinope. His written sources included texts like the Speculum historiale of Vincent of Beauvais, the Flor des estoires de la terre d'Orient of Hayton of Korykos.[1] Although the text gives a geographically accurate description of Eastern Europe, it is often based on myths or hearsay, and the author does not seem to have used local historical documents to write it.[6]
The treatise contains a very positive and detailed description of Hungary, as its author presumably wanted to persuade the French king that the best ally in the area was Charles I of Hungary.[6] Also, the chronicle describes the territories that the Hungarians could potentially conquer, so that the Hungarian kingdom could claim them:
"If Lord Charles were in possession of the Greek [Byzantine] empire, having made an alliance with the King of Hungary (...) he could easily seize and subjugate all the heretic and barbarian peoples who occupy so rich and beautiful a territory as wrongful possessors. Even if Charles himself could not acquire the whole of the so-called empire of the Greeks, he himself, on one side, and the above-mentioned king of Hungary, on the other, could conquer the said empire and the peoples in question."
The Descriptio is preserved in five manuscripts, the earliest from the 14th century.[1] The text has been translated into Hungarian, Romanian and Serbian.[1][7] There is an English translation of the section relating to Albania.[8]
Stefan Uroš IV Dušan, also known as Dušan the Mighty, was the King of Serbia from 8 September 1331 and Emperor of the Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians and Albanians from 16 April 1346 until his death in 1355. Dušan is considered one of the greatest medieval Balkan conquerors.
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The Chronicle of the Priest of Dioclea or Duklja is the usual name given to a medieval chronicle written in two versions between 1295 and 1301 by an ecclesiastic from Duklja, recently identified as Rudger, Archbishop of Bar. Its oldest preserved copy is in Latin from the 17th century, and modern historians have debated the text's date of composition and authenticity.
Ivan Asen I, also known as Asen I or John Asen I, was emperor or tsar of Bulgaria from 1187/1188 to 1196 as co-ruler with his elder brother, Peter II. Hailing from the Byzantine theme of Paristrion, his exact place and date of birth are unknown. Most contemporaneous chronicles describe Asen and his brothers, Theodor (Peter) and Kaloyan, as Vlachs but they were probably of mixed Bulgarian, Cuman and Vlach ancestry.
Stefan Uroš II Milutin, known as Saint King, was the King of Serbia between 1282–1321, a member of the Nemanjić dynasty. He was one of the most powerful rulers of Serbia in the Middle Ages and one of the most prominent European monarchs of his time. Milutin is credited with strongly resisting the efforts of Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos to impose Roman Catholicism on the Balkans after the Union of Lyons in 1274. During his reign, Serbian economic power grew rapidly, mostly due to the development of mining. He founded Novo Brdo, which became an internationally important silver mining site. As most of the Nemanjić monarchs, he was proclaimed a saint by the Serbian Orthodox Church with a feast day on October 30.
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Ivan Asen II, also known as John Asen II, was Emperor (Tsar) of Bulgaria from 1218 to 1241. He was still a child when his father Ivan Asen I – one of the founders of the Second Bulgarian Empire – was killed in 1196. His supporters tried to secure the throne for him after his uncle, Kaloyan, was murdered in 1207, but Kaloyan's other nephew, Boril, overcame them. Ivan Asen fled from Bulgaria and settled in the Rus' principalities.
The Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin, also known as the Hungarian conquest or the Hungarian land-taking, was a series of historical events ending with the settlement of the Hungarians in Central Europe in the late 9th and early 10th century. Before the arrival of the Hungarians, three early medieval powers, the First Bulgarian Empire, East Francia, and Moravia, had fought each other for control of the Carpathian Basin. They occasionally hired Hungarian horsemen as soldiers. Therefore, the Hungarians who dwelt on the Pontic-Caspian Steppe east of the Carpathian Mountains were familiar with what would become their homeland when their conquest started.
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