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John Assen II, Emperor of Bulgaria and Wallachia
Bulgarian IVAN ASEN
XIII Century
The greatest ruler of the Wallacho-Bulgarian (or Second Bulgarian) Empire,
John Assen II defeated Theodore Angelus Comnenus, Despot of Epirus, at the
Battle of Klokotnitsa in 1230, capturing the entire Epirote army. Rather
than
executing or mutilating his prisoners, he sent nearly all of them home, an
act
of mercy from the memory of which he greatly benefited during his later
undertakings
in Greece. Within five years of the victory, he ruled much of
southeastern Europe,
and the capital, Trnovo, developed into a true city.
In the earlier years of Assen's reign, Wallacho-Bulgaria was nominally
in
communion with
Rome, and his daughter was engaged to marry the Latin Emperor of the
East, Baldwin II.
When Pope Gregory IX pressured Baldwin into breaking off the engagement
and courting a
princess of more immediate interest to the papacy, Assen announced the
dissolution
of the Unia and the return of Orthodoxy. Gregory's response was to call
for a Crusade against
the Balkan heretics, but the projected war never went forward --- the
Mongols invaded Europe,
and all other quarrels temporarily faded into insignificance.
Norman Hugh Redington
1
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