Vasil Zlatarski

archaeologist, and epigraphist.^[1][2]

St. Petersburg. Studied History at the University of St. Petersburg in 1891 and as a post-graduate in Berlin in 1893–1895. Then he returned to Bulgaria and became a secondary school teacher in Sofia and Lecturer in the Higher School (now the Sofia University). He was promoted to the rank of full professor in 1906. Between 1926 and his death Zlatarski was vice-president of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.^[3]

positivist school. He contributed significantly to the development of Bulgarian historical science by becoming the first professor of history at the Sofia University who conducted original research and by creating the field of Bulgarian medieval history proper, within the parameters in which it still exists today. Between his first appointment at the university in 1893 and his death in 1935 he worked on his monumental History of the Bulgarian State in the Middle ages - a comprehensive study of the political history of the medieval Bulgarian state with long discussions of cultural and religious problems and meticulous analysis of broad source evidence. Zlatarski popularised historical research in the country and established contacts with major Russian and Western medievalists and Byzantinists such as A. A. Vasiliev or Henri Grégoire.^[4] He was the chairman of the Fourth International Congress of Byzantine Studies in Sofia, 1934.^[5]