Village Life

In medieval Bulgaria, rural life depended chiefly on farming and livestock, but village routines and social arrangements changed over time and across regions. This article covers the First Bulgarian Empire, conventionally dated 681–1018, and the Second Bulgarian Empire, from 1185 to the late fourteenth-century Ottoman conquests. Their territories shifted across the Danube region and the Balkans, including areas of Thrace and Macedonia; they did not correspond to the borders of modern Bulgaria. Byzantine rule from 1018 to 1185 separated the two empires.

Most rural work followed the needs of crops and animals: fields had to be cultivated and harvested, food processed, and herds tended. The evidence also shows that village communities and the obligations placed on peasants were not the same in every period. Farming connected households to local resources and to the wider needs of the state.

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Farming through the year

Cultivation followed an annual cycle, from preparing fields and sowing to tending crops and bringing in the harvest. Grain was central in both empires, although the crops and conditions varied by region. In the First Bulgarian Empire, wheat, rye and millet were among the principal cereals. Later accounts describe wheat in Moesia, Zagore and Dobrudzha, while wheat, barley and millet were grown in Thrace and other areas.

Preparing a field required breaking and turning the soil before seed was scattered. Harvest brought another concentration of labour: ripe stalks were cut and gathered, then grain separated and cleaned. Oxen supplied draft power for cultivation and transport, while sickles and other tools had to be available when the crop was ready.

Poor harvests and environmental shocks threatened the food supply. Famine during the early 860s weakened Bulgaria during its conflict with Byzantium. At the household level, grain retained after a harvest had to support meals and seed for another crop, making storage a necessary part of managing the interval between seasons.

Production diversified in the Second Bulgarian Empire. From the beginning of the thirteenth century, vegetables, orchards and grapes became increasingly important. Grapes were grown in several areas, and wine production was associated with Thrace, the Black Sea coast, and the valleys of the Struma and Vardar rivers. These differences mattered to rural work: what people could grow depended partly on the soils, terrain and resources of their particular region.

Animals and local resources

Livestock was closely tied to cultivation and household needs. In the First Bulgarian Empire, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and horses were raised. Animals provided food and materials for clothing, while oxen and other stock were also important to farming and transport. Herding was especially suited to the pastures and forests of mountainous and semi-mountainous districts in the Second Empire, where livestock breeding remained a mainstay of the economy.

Rural production also drew on forests and other local resources. Forests supplied timber, although some wooded areas were protected from cutting. Beekeeping was well developed in the Second Empire, and honey and wax from Zagore were valued in Byzantine markets. Silk production was also established. These activities extended rural work beyond the grain fields, though their distribution and organization would have differed from place to place.

From harvest to food

Harvests had to be processed before they could be eaten or used in other ways. Accounts of the Second Bulgarian Empire identify bread, cheese, butter and wine among the products made from crops and livestock. Such processing transformed grain, milk and grapes into foods that formed part of the agricultural economy.

Archaeological finds show how supplies were kept close to domestic work. At Odartsi, a tenth-century house contained charred wheat in ceramic vessels. At Velino on the Pliska plain, storage pits lay within and beside a house fitted with a stone oven. Such arrangements placed stored crops near the equipment used to turn them into food.

Village communities and changing obligations

Villages combined cultivated land, domestic space and access to grazing or other resources. Families depended on neighbours and landholders as well as on their own work. During the First Empire’s Christian period, monasteries acquired estates and the households living on them became part of the institutions’ productive base.

Rural work also supported demands beyond the production of food for local use. Peasants had obligations that included building and maintaining infrastructure and defenses, as well as providing food and supplies for the army. These duties connected village labor to the practical requirements of governing and defending a large, changing territory.

Second Empire royal grants enumerate fields, vineyards, gardens, pastures, mills and dependent people. Restrictions on outside officials protected a landholder’s right to collect dues, while limits on transferring fields kept productive land within the estate. These provisions shaped the claims placed on a peasant household’s work and the produce remaining for its own use.