About the tomb of Vladislav III Yagelo known in Bulgaria as VLADISLAV VARNENCHIK

**PAGANE** · 11-02-2020, 11:29 AM

Battle of Varna in 1444

The Ottoman expansion in Europe was interrupted for a period after the catastrophic defeat at Ankara in 1402. Fearing that the Ottomans would advance deeper into Central and Western Europe, Pope Eugene IV called for a crusade to Varna. During Lent around Palm Sunday in 1443, Polish-Hungarian King Wladyslaw III Jagiello, then only 20, swore before the papal legate, Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, to lead a new expedition against the Ottomans in the summer. The Christian armies were led by King Vladislav, Jan Hunyadi, Duke of Transylvania, and the Duke of Burgundy, Philip II. After the successful battles and the conquest of Nis and Sofia, the Crusaders headed for Varna for a decisive battle. Christians devised a complex plan for the campaign in 1444, in violation of a truce that was considered non-binding by Christians because it was negotiated with an infidel. The Venetian and papal fleets were to cut off Ottoman reinforcements from Anatolia. The Venetians treacherously and insidiously transferred the Ottoman 50-60,000 army to Varna against 25,000 crusaders. Unfortunately, the naval blockade did not happen, and when the Christian army reached Varna, it faced a much larger Ottoman military force. On November 9, 1444, the large Ottoman army under the command of Murad II advanced on Varna and thus effectively captured the papal army, with a total strength of 20 to 30,000, between Lake Varna, the Black Sea and the steep slopes of the Frangia Plateau. Various accounts of the battle describe the volatile situation of cavalry and counterattacks, in which early Christian victories were reversed by flank attacks by Ottoman sipahas and Akindzhi cavalry. Jan Hunyadi gathered the scattered papal forces and captured a large area around the Ottoman center, where the sultan and his janissaries stood behind a protected line. The young king sees the experienced Hunyadi fight heroically and defeat the cavalry of the sipahi, and decides to directly attack the sultan, who is protected by his cavalry guard and fearsome janissary infantry, with his own Polish heavy cavalry company of 500 knights. But his attack crashed into a wall of hardened janissaries defending the sultan. The janissaries killed the king's horse and bodyguard, beheaded Vladislav and showed his head impaled. An almost won battle is lost because of youthful recklessness.
Neither the king's body nor his armor were ever found. But Vladislav III remains in history as Vladislav Varnenchik, in honor of the brave young man who dared to face the power of an Empire.
And he is not forgotten. A memorial complex with a mausoleum of the young Polish king, who died near Varna, was built on the site of the battle. The Vladislav Varnenchik Park-Museum in Varna was established in 1924 as a place of death of the fallen soldiers in the battle of Varna, which took place in 1444. About 30,000 citizens attended the grand opening of the park-mausoleum on August 4, 1935. , official military and civilian delegations from Poland and Hungary, prominent Bulgarian politicians and the Bulgarian Tsar Boris III with his family. In 1964, a monument was erected to Janos Hunyadi - Commander-in-Chief of King Vladislav's Army, Transylvanian Voivode, Regent of Hungary since 1446.

Reports of the king's death are almost entirely unanimous - he was killed, leading his elite detachment in an attack on the janissary corps guarding Sultan Murad II.
What happened to the king's body after his death? It is indisputable that Vladislav was beheaded and his head was presented as a gift to the sultan, who ordered it to be impaled and spread on the battlefield to edify the enemy. Then they dipped it in honey and took it to Edirne, and then to Bursa, where it was shown to the population. But what happened to the king's body?
The king's head was brought by a janissary called Kutra, cut off "post mortem" and given the king's setting and armor, this "operation" required about ten minutes. The head was recognized by the Polish captives, but the Polish researcher Mieczyslaw Bielski described how the sultan wanted convincing evidence of the king's death and it was immediately sought. The royal corpse was probably taken before the sultan, freed from the armor, and examined for legs that had six toes each - a ancestral anomaly in the Jagiellonians. Scorpio also wrote about this anomaly in his book from 1923. Only then was the royal head exposed, and this coincided with the return of Hunyadi from intelligence, who said: "We are here for the faith, not for the king!" The attacks that followed immediately in order to find and return the royal body did not work, as it was already behind a ditch four meters wide and two meters deep with an escarpment on the west coast, in front of the sultan's tent, in the middle of the janissary carriage. . At the beginning of the 20th century, the archaeologist Hermin Shkorpil undertook a study of the historical data about the battle of Varna and conducted a search for the tomb of Varnenchik.

Guided by the data in Beheim's poem that the king was buried in an "ancient Greek church") (For the West at that time, all Orthodox were Greeks), he studied all the temples in Varna, but came to the conclusion that the oldest preserved church in the city is "St. Our Lady of Panagia ”, built in 1602. Scorpio also researches the legends associated with this church, but finds no confirmation that the king is buried in it. The scientist conducted research on the places near the battle - mounds, tekets, etc., which are mentioned in legends, legends and other sources, but the king's body was not found near Varna. The union between the two churches was concluded in Florence in 1439, but it was seen as a private agreement between the pope and the emperor of Constantinople, and enmity among the people and the clergy was smoldering. The Orthodox remain "schismatics" and the Catholics - "azemites" (unleavened bread). So the "Greeks" would hardly agree for a Catholic to be buried in an Orthodox chapel, although from a Christian point of view they probably provided some help. Besides, hardly any mortal at that time could have imagined a king being buried in the middle of the field!
The efforts of Shkorpil, as can be seen, did not yield results, but it is logical for us that the royal funeral was not opened near Varna. It is absurd for the king to be buried in the Varna fortress, because at that time it was surrounded by 40,000 Ottoman troops, and the Christians were in a hurry to retreat to the Danube. In addition, the fortress of 50 years. is an Ottoman possession and, as Evliya леelebi, a Turkish traveler and chronicler, says, "there is only one mosque in the fortress." Nowhere does anyone mention the presence of a chapel in the Varna fortress. And the fortress itself, according to Prof. Al. Kuzev, in the Middle Ages it was not great. Prof. Kuzev quotes the Ottoman chronicler Mustafa Selaniki, who visited Varna in the 16th century and notes this visit in his chronicles. The villagers call Varna a castello, a castle, not a "fortress". Another source that Kuzev refers to is the same poem by Beheim that we mentioned above. In the poem Varna is called sloss warnan, ie "Varna Castle". These and other data give grounds for Prof. Kuzev to conclude that Varna in the Middle Ages was insignificant. And another - in one of the legends told by the inhabitants of the village of Kestrich (now Vinitsa - a district of Varna), it is categorically said that the king and the Turkish pasha, who fell in battle, were buried outside the walls of the Varna fortress.
If we summarize what has been said so far, the tomb of Vladislav Yagelo should certainly be sought outside Varna in a Greek chapel. Burial in a chapel, church or any other consecrated land did not suit the victors either - then the tomb would become an object of worship, which they would not like at all. It is no coincidence that in ancient Rome there was the ritual "Damnatio memorae" - "Curse of Memory" and material evidence of the existence of state criminals, usurpers, tainted emperors was erased. It is no coincidence that the bodies of the Russian imperial family were burned and secretly buried. In the Bulgarian lands, if this could not be avoided, another method was resorted to - the great Christian sanctuaries were declared Muslim shrines only for the purpose of gathering many Christians and many Muslims, as the holy places often became centers of riot. Such holy places are Kaliakra, Demir baba teke, Karaaach tekesi near Varna and… Obrochishte. Probably similar was the reason why the remains of the king were not buried in the area later called "Karaaach tekesi" - Teketo with elms. It has not ceased to be a holy place from the first days after the adoption of Christianity in the 9th century to the present day, and the name "Shashkana" shows that not long ago there lived a hermit. The Turks probably began to worship him in the 19th century. We already see that the burial of the royal body from a humanitarian issue grows into a religious one, to become a political one, which can only be decided by the sultan. In the village of Obrochishte, 20 km. north of Varna, is the tekke Ak Yazali Baba. The data for this tekke show that it was built in the Middle Ages on the site of the Greek monastery "St. Athanasius", and long before that it was a Thracian sanctuary. It is characteristic that at the moment it is a two-ritual home. In it, Muslims honor the memory of Ak Yazal Baba, and Christians - of St. Athanasius. The history of tekke is very interesting, but here we will note only what is significant for our case. several legends. In one of them it is said that St. Athanasius, buried here, fell in love with a Turkish girl and as punishment the Turks captured him, cut off his head and sent her to the Sultan in Istanbul. This legend almost literally repeats the story of Vladislav Varnenchik's head. After the beheading of King Murad II, he sent his head to the capital Edirne, and then to Bursa.
A second legend tells that when the rulers and the rich began to harass the population a lot, St. Athanasius got angry, climbed the hill of Guza and there with a great shout he brandished his huge sword, which reached his chin, threw it and he crashed into Karatepe. We believe that this sword is associated with the two-handed sword of the knights of that time.
A third legend says that the tomb was built by three brothers in just one night with the help of an ax. It is possible that this legend has to do with the fact that when the retreating knights buried the king, there was already an Ottoman army in the area pursuing them, so they hurried to bury the king and retreat to safe lands.
Here are a few more facts that deserve serious attention.
In 1652 Evliya леelebi visited Teke and wrote that it was built by Arslan Bey, son of Gazi Michal, adding that this happened during the reign of Sultan Murad II / 1421-1451 / The following fact is also important - the village of Teke, / today a village Obrochishte / did not exist before the construction of the tekke. It has been proven that the area was inhabited after the appearance of the tomb and in our opinion the reason for the settlement is precisely the construction of the royal tomb.
In a fairy tale published in the Bulletin of the Varna Archaeological Society from the beginning of the XX century with the title “Vladislava's march through Bulgaria in 1444. and the battle of Varna - reports H. K. Shkorpil ”on pages 64 and 65 below the line we read“ During the Russian occupation DT Stamboliev in the village of Teke was an eyewitness when the tomb in Teke was opened.
He went down to the grave and at the bottom, on five pine boards, he saw a human skeleton without a head and with folded hands on his chest. Legs laid to the east side. The tomb is about 2 meters long, about 1.5 meters wide and about 2 meters deep. Its sides are built of hewn stones and the roof of marble slabs. Outside, the tomb is 4.5 meters long and 2.10 meters wide.
It is important to note that shortly after 1908. the famous Polish orientalist Jan Grzegorzewski visited Bulgaria with the intention of discovering the king's tomb. He discovered a tomb, but later it turned out to be the tomb of Karadja Pasha - Beylerbey of Anatolia, who died in the battle of Varna in 1444. This fact indicates that other researchers have searched for the king's tomb in a tomb. And didn't Grzegorzewski actually look for the tomb in Obrochishte?
In 1575, the Polish chronicler Matej Stryjkowski undertook a trip around Bulgaria to seek information about the battles and death of King Wladyslaw Varnenczyk. He mentions that the local population has preserved songs and legends about the battles and the death of the king.
In one of the legends it is said: “... if a great man / king or chief / caught up with him, it is not known what he was like, near Balchik, about an hour later, he was killed and buried there. His grave was turned into a teke and they named it Ak Yazali Boba. s. Kranevo /, “that on this road a great battle took place between the Turks and the Christians and that a king was killed and buried in the nearby village of Teke. His head was taken to Istanbul by the sultan and he sent it to the city of Bursa. A Turkish pasha also fell in the battle, who was buried like the king outside the Varna fortress.
And not only this. Scorpio himself says in one of his tales that the French scientist Ami Bue, who traveled through Bulgaria in 1837, mentioned that in the tekke of the village of Teke, i.e. Vladislav Varnenchik was buried in the consecrated place. Scorpio quotes Bue, but he himself has never undertaken a study of the tekke to look for the king's body.
The second version is related to one of the finds in the mound, in which the mausoleum is now built. During the Crimean War in Varna came units from the so-called "Cossack Alai", a regiment mainly of Polish volunteers - Uhlans in the Turkish army, commanded by Mehmed Sadak Pasha, the converted Pole Michal Tchaikovsky. With the parts of the alaya come the counts Zamoyski and Ostrorog, who dig up the mound and find human bones without a skull, tiara, sword and cross, decorated with seven green gems. The fate of these findings after that is unknown. In their book, Shkorpil also quotes the Turkish traveler Evliya леelebi, according to whom the Hungarian king Lajos II, who died at Mohács in 1526, was buried solemnly and Sultan Suleiman I himself placed a golden wreath on his forehead. This gives reason to believe that the king also had a decent burial on the battlefield. It is known that the sultan did not enter the Varna fortress, another fact that speaks against the assumption that the royal body found peace in one of the fortress churches, as far as they existed. There is another fact that suggests that the royal funeral took place in one of the mounds on the battlefield. In the area "Tekfur Koru", Bulgarian name "Oaks". "Tekfur" or "tekur" - that's what the Turks called the Emperor of Constantinople. This name derives from the medieval title of the Armenian king "t'agavor", the first Christian ruler faced by the Seljuk Turks. It is known that at least in the 15th century no other Christian ruler appeared near Varna, except King Vladislav, and the name "The Emperor's Forest, the King" may refer to him. Undoubtedly it is an oak forest, and such according to the Shkorpil brothers existed until the eighties of the XIX century near the old road from Varna to Provadia, in the area of the mounds in today's Park-Museum of "Vladislav III Yagelo Varnenchik" Another interesting fact is that in many of the Turkish cemeteries around Varna oaks have been planted, rising strangely in the middle of the field. Perhaps this is a custom unknown to us, but left over the centuries to mark places associated with the dead.
There is another supposed place where the king could be buried with his brave knights. During the siege of Varna in 1828, the command post of Count Vorontsov rose on the mound on which is the Monument of Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship. When Varna surrendered on September 29, 1828, the Russian Emperor Nicholas I said: "Vladislav is avenged!" Everything said so far is again largely in the realm of assumptions and assumptions, but the search for the royal tomb near Varna must be renewed. Modern technology allows the bones in the tekke to be examined. And since the brother and father of Wladyslaw III Jagiello are buried in Wawel Castle in the Republic of Poland, it is quite possible to make a comparative analysis to determine whether the body buried in the tekke belongs to King Wladyslaw Varnenczyk.

Vladislav Varnenchik Park-Museum near Varna

Teke "Ak Yazla Baba" - the most famous Muslim and Christian shrine in the Bulgarian lands in the past near the village of Obrochishte where there is a hypothesis that the body of Vladislav Yagelo may have been buried