Occupation of Corinth by Onogur Bulgars

Mavi Boncuk |

The Bulgars in the Balkans and the Occupation of Corinth in the Seventh Century
by Kenneth M. Setton (Speculum, 25, 4, 1950, 502-543).


THE present paper will seek to present a synthesis of the sixth- and seventh-century activities of the Bulgars in the Balkans, and by bringing into apposition, in such a manner as has not been done before, certain historical and archaeological evidence, to suggest — for much historical discussion 'suggest' is a more fitting word than 'prove' — the extreme probability of the occupation of Corinth by the Onogur Bulgars in the middle of the seventh century. The fifteenth-century Greek ecclesiastic, Isidore, Metropolitan of Kiev (1437-1442), a prominent figure in the Councils of Ferrara and Florence, declares in a petition which he addressed about 1429 to the Patriarch of Constantinople, in behalf of the then Metropolitan of Monemvasia, that the Onogur Bulgars took Corinth without a struggle. This statement has never been taken seriously, but it seems to me that the weight of the evidence, which we shall examine as we proceed, is entirely in favor of the fundamental truth of Isidore's statement, although he has, to be sure, erred in both the time and circumstances of the Bulgaric occupation of Corinth. We shall find it worthwhile in the pages that follow to detail certain of the more important facts concerning the early Bulgars, together with some peoples related to them, both in their homeland and in the Balkans; to show from the learned studies of Professor Gyula Moravcsik of Budapest that the so-called Danube Bulgars were Onogurs; to outline the history of the first Hunnic (or rather Bulgaric), Slavic, and Avaric attacks upon the Balkan provinces of the Byzantine Empire and to depict the political circumstances under which they occurred; to deal with both the legends and facts in the career of the Bulgaric prince Kovrat, with the assistance of an instructive paper by Professor Gregoire; to consider, for what it may be worth, the pertinent evidence in the Chronicle of Monemvasia and in a well known Scholium of Arethas of Caesarea; to fit into the now known flow of events some important archaeological evidence from the seventh century at Corinth, erroneously interpreted by the archaeologists; and, finally, to show that our combined historical and archaeological evidence now points, it seems to me, to an Onoguric occupation of Corinth in the seventh century, to which fact, whatever his errors, Isidore of Kiev is obviously alluding. Isidore writes:

And now two sacks of Corinth were witnessed during the period of Roman domination over the Peloponnesus, one in the days of Justinian the Great, who on this account later fortified the Isthmus [and the other as a consequence of the Fourth Crusade], for in Justinian's time three Scythian tribes, called the Kutrigurs, Utigurs, and Onogurs [Korrfyapot, Ourr^apot mi Ovvlyapoi], having crossed the Danube, one of these tribes ravaged upper Moesia, Pannonia, and Dalmatia and the regions right up to the Ionian Sea in a single expedition, while the Utigurs ravaged all Thrace and the Hellespontine Chersonese and all the territories on this side of the Hebrus to the very walls of the city of Constantine, and these Belisarius checked, outwitting and crushing them, but the
Onogurs laying waste to Macedonia, Thessaly, Greece, and everything within Thermopylae, and pillaging even as far as Corinth, they straightway took the city without a single blow. [1]

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