Ivan Sratsimir of Bulgaria
[5] The conflict climaxed in 1355–1356 when the undisputed heir to the throne, Michael Asen IV, perished in battle against the Ottomans.
When the Bulgarian ruler refused, Louis I marched from Hungary on 1 May 1365 and captured Vidin on 2 June after a brief siege.
Ivan Sratsimir and his family were captured and taken to the castle of Humnik in Croatia and the region of Vidin was placed under direct Hungarian rule governed through a Ban appointed by the King of Hungary.
[6][7] Ivan Sratsimir spent four years in honorary Hungarian captivity and he and his family were forced to accept Catholicism.
In a contemporary book, a monk wrote:[11][12] This book was written by the sinful and unintelligent Dragan together with his brother Rayko in the days when the Hungarians ruled Vidin and it was great pain for the people at that time.Initially Ivan Alexander, who was still nominally the rightful ruler of Vidin,[13] did not take active measures for its recovery, although his refusal to give safe conduct to the Byzantine emperor John V Palaiologos who was returning to Constantinople from Western Europe was explained by the deterioration of the Bulgarian–Hungarian relations.
[14] By 1369, however, he organised an Orthodox anti-Hungarian coalition for the liberation of Vidin with the participation of the Wallachian voivode Vladislav I Vlaicu and despot Dobrotitsa.
Fine suggests that immediately after the death of his father, Ivan Sratsimir tried to seize the control over the whole of Bulgaria for himself and even captured and held Sofia for a year or two, which led to permanent hostility between the two brothers and spoiled any chances for a common Bulgarian resistance against the Ottomans.
When the crusader army reached Vidin the Bulgarian ruler opened the gates and surrendered the Ottoman garrison.
[26] However, the Christian army suffered a heavy defeat on 25 September in the battle of Nicopolis and the victorious Ottoman sultan Bayezid I immediately marched to Vidin and seized it by the end of 1396 or the beginning of 1397.
Some of the works that have survived from that period include the Tetraevangelia of the Metropolitan Danail and the Vidin collection from 1360, ordered by Empress Anna, which contains the hagiographies of thirteen Orthodox saints and a description of the holy sites in Jerusalem.
Joasaph also demonstrated great respect to Patriarch Evtimiy of Tarnovo, the most prominent figure in the Bulgarian cultural and literary life in the second half of the 14th century.
[30] In the late 1360s, the region of Vidin resisted the forceful conversion to Catholicism undertaken by the Hungarian authorities and remained Orthodox.
In 1395 he sent there a delegation led by the heir to the throne Constantine and Joasaph of Bdin to bring the relics of Saint Philotea to Vidin.
[32] The abundance of coin treasure troves found in the territory of the Tsardom of Vidin is an indication of the wealth and the well-developed trade in the region during the second half of the 14th century.
