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74-565: The word veche is a transliteration of the Russian "вече" ( pl.  веча, vecha ), which is in turn inherited from Proto-Slavic *vě̑ťe ( lit.   ' council, counsel ' or ' talk ' ), which is also represented in the word soviet , both ultimately deriving from the Proto-Slavic verbal stem of * větiti ' to talk, speak ' ). Procopius of Caesarea mentioned Slavs gathering in popular assemblies in

148-523: A 9th-century election of the legendary founder of the Piast dynasty , Piast the Wheelwright , and a similar election of his son, Siemowit , but sources for that time come from the later centuries and their validity is disputed by scholars. The election privilege was usually limited to the elites, which in the later times took the form of the most powerful nobles ( magnates , princes ) or officials, and

222-439: A distinction between two pitch accents, traditionally called "acute" and "circumflex" accent. The acute accent was pronounced with rising intonation, while the circumflex accent had a falling intonation. Short vowels (*e *o *ь *ъ) had no pitch distinction, and were always pronounced with falling intonation. Unaccented (unstressed) vowels never had tonal distinctions, but could still have length distinctions. These rules are similar to

296-557: A function. This way, the number of boyars could be increased, by selling functions to those who could afford them. The close alliance between the boyar condition and the military-administrative functions led to a confusion, aggravated by the Phanariots : these functions began to be considered as noble titles, like in the Occident. In fact, this was not at all the case. Traditionally, the boyars were organized in three states: boyars of

370-750: A late-period variant, representing the late 9th-century dialect spoken around Thessaloniki ( Solun ) in Macedonia , is attested in Old Church Slavonic manuscripts. Proto-Slavic is descended from the Proto-Balto-Slavic branch of the Proto-Indo-European language family, which is the ancestor of the Baltic languages , e.g. Lithuanian and Latvian . Proto-Slavic gradually evolved into the various Slavic languages during

444-551: A macron above the letter, while in the latter it is not clearly indicated. The following table explains these differences: For consistency, all discussions of words in Early Slavic and before (the boundary corresponding roughly to the monophthongization of diphthongs , and the Slavic second palatalization ) use the common Balto-Slavic notation of vowels. Discussions of Middle and Late Common Slavic, as well as later dialects, use

518-439: A state function and/or a court function. These functions were called dregătorie or boierie . Only the prince had the power to assign a boierie. Landowners with serfs but no function were categorized as mazil but were still considered to be of noble origin ( din os boieresc , literally "of boyar bone"). Small landowners who possessed a domain without distinction ( devălmășie ) were called moșneni, răzeși , while

592-590: Is referred to the people. The veche is thought to have originated in the tribal assemblies of Eastern Europe , thus predating the state of Kievan Rus' . The Poliane in Kiev, according to the Primary Chronicle , are said to have consulted among themselves ( s"dumavshe poliane ) before deciding to ultimately pay tribute to the Khazars . The words duma and dumati are used in later instances to refer to

666-480: Is slight dialectal variation. It also covers Late Common Slavic when there are significant developments that are shared (more or less) identically among all Slavic languages. Two different and conflicting systems for denoting vowels are commonly in use in Indo-European and Balto-Slavic linguistics on the one hand, and Slavic linguistics on the other. In the first, vowel length is consistently distinguished with

740-484: Is the unattested , reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages . It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium BC through the 6th century AD . As with most other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; scholars have reconstructed the language by applying the comparative method to all the attested Slavic languages and by taking into account other Indo-European languages . Rapid development of Slavic speech occurred during

814-462: The kontsy (boroughs or "ends") of Novgorod also had their own veche to elect borough officials. The veche for the city selected the prince, posadnik and archbishop. Historians debate whether the Novgorod veche consisted of entirely free males or was instead dominated by a small group of nobles known as boyars . Traditional scholarship argues that a series of reforms in 1410 transformed

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888-669: The Kingdom of Poland as the result of the Galicia-Volhynia wars , local boyars were equated since 1430 in rights along with Polish nobility ( szlachta ). A great number of boyars fled to the lands of Great Duchy of Lithuania in Volhynia and Podolia . In the Carpathian regions inhabited by present day Romanians, the boyar ( boier ) class emerged from the chiefs (named cneaz ("leader") or jude ("judge") in

962-566: The Nogais , and some remained Muslims for a generation after the Mongols were ousted. What is interesting about the boyars is their implied duties. Because boyars were not constitutionally instituted, much of their powers and duties came from agreements signed between princes. Agreements, such as one between Ivan III and Mikhail Borisovich in 1484 showed how allegiances needed to be earned and secured, rather than implied and enforced. Instead of

1036-619: The Pskov Land and later Pskov Republic had legislative powers; it could appoint military commanders and hear ambassadors' reports. It also approved expenses such as grants to princes and payments to builders of walls, towers and bridges. The veche gathered at the court of the Trinity Cathedral , which held the archives of the veche and important private papers and state documents. The veche assembly included posadniki (mayors), "middle" and common people. Historians differ on

1110-509: The Rurik dynasty. The boyar Boris Godunov tried to proclaim himself tsar, but several boyar factions refused to recognize him. The chaos continued after the first False Dmitriy gained the throne, and civil war erupted. When the Romanovs took over, the seventeenth century became one filled with administrative reform. A comprehensive legal code was introduced, and a merging of the boyars into

1184-614: The veche bell , although it is more likely that the common procedure was more complex. The whole population of the city, including boyars, merchants, and common citizens, then gathered in front of the Cathedral of Saint Sophia or at Yaroslav's Court on the Trade Side . Of all other towns of Novgorod Land , the chronicles only mention a veche in Torzhok ; however they possibly existed in all other towns as well. The veche of

1258-512: The veche bell was removed and transported to Moscow. The veche , known in Poland as wiec , were convened even before the beginning of the Polish statehood in the Kingdom of Poland . Issues were first debated by the elders and leaders, and later presented to all the free men for a wider discussion. One of the major types of wiec was the one convened to choose a new ruler. There are legends of

1332-714: The veche into something similar to the public assembly ( Concio ) of the Republic of Venice ; it became the lower chamber of the parliament. An upper chamber knowns as the Council of Lords ( sovet gospod ) was also created which oversaw the veche , with title membership for all former city magistrates ( posadniki and tysyatskiye ). Some sources indicate that veche membership may have become full-time, and parliament deputies were now called vechniki . Some recent scholars call this interpretation into question. The Novgorod veche could be presumably summoned by anyone who rang

1406-542: The veche was summoned in front of the Cathedral of St. Sophia . There are not many references of a veche in towns in the 11th century, but there are significantly more in the 12th century, with such references mostly concerning Novgorod and Pskov. Medieval chronicles, such as the Primary Chronicle , and the Novgorod First Chronicle for Novgorod especially, are the basic source regarding

1480-504: The veche .The next generation of Russian chronicles, including the Suzdal Chronicle , are also important sources. Most of the information about the veche concerns the 13th to 15th centuries. For veche proceedings, the veche had to be convoked first, often by the prince, but the main topic of the meeting usually was about a conflict between the prince and the population. Not much is known about actual proceedings except that

1554-681: The 10th century, and it is found in Bulgaria , also popular as old Bulgar title boila , which denoted a high aristocratic status among the Bulgars. It was probably built from bol - meaning many and yarin, yarki - meaning bright, enlightened . In support of this hypothesis is the 10th-century diplomatic protocol of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII , where the Bulgarian nobles are called boliades , while

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1628-490: The 10th to the 17th centuries. Also known as bolyar ; variants in other languages include Bulgarian : боляр or болярин ; Russian : боярин , romanized :  boyarin , IPA: [bɐˈjærʲɪn] , pl.  бояре; Romanian : boier , IPA: [boˈjer] ; and Greek : βογιάρος . The title Boila is predecessor or old form of the title Bolyar (the Bulgarian word for Boyar). Boila

1702-455: The 16th and 17th centuries, many of those Rus boyars who failed to get the status of a nobleman actively participated in the formation of the Cossack army. Boyars in Novgorod and Pskov formed a sort of republic, where the power of princes (knyaz) was strongly limited until the conquest by Moscow. Boyars kept their influence in the Russian principalities of Vladimir, Tver and Moscow. Only after

1776-580: The 6th century: But when the report was carried about and reached the entire nation, practically all the Antae assembled to discuss the situation, and they demanded that the matter be made a public one(...). For these nations, the Sclaveni and the Antae, are not ruled by one man, but they have lived from of old under a democracy, and consequently everything which involves their welfare, whether for good or ill,

1850-540: The 9th to 13th century, boyars wielded considerable power through their military support of the Rus's princes. Power and prestige of many of them, however, soon came to depend almost completely on service to the state, family history of service and, to a lesser extent, land ownership. Boyars of Kievan Rus were visually very similar to knights, but after the Mongol invasion, their cultural links were mostly lost. The boyars occupied

1924-615: The 9th-century Bulgar sources call them boila . A member of the nobility during the First Bulgarian Empire was called a boila , while in the Second Bulgarian Empire , the corresponding title became bolyar or bolyarin . Bolyar , as well as its predecessor, boila , was a hereditary title. The Bulgarian bolyars were divided into veliki ("great") and malki ("minor"). Presently in Bulgaria,

1998-482: The Great, who took power in 1697, took it upon himself to westernize Russia, and catch it up with the modern world. After the revolt of the streltsy regiments in 1698, Peter the Great returned to Russia, forcing government officials and those that were financially able to have clean shaven faces and wear Western clothing. Peter also reformed the judicial system, and created a senate with members appointed by him, replacing

2072-578: The Phanariot epoch, however, any man could be a prince if appointed by the sultan , and rich enough to buy this appointment from the grand vizier . During the Ottoman suzerainty, and especially during the Phanariot régime, the title of Prince became an administrative function within the imperial Ottoman hierarchy, and thus the ultimate form of boyardness. The title of Prince of Wallachia or Moldavia

2146-471: The Proto-Slavic period, coinciding with the massive expansion of the Slavic-speaking area. Dialectal differentiation occurred early on during this period, but overall linguistic unity and mutual intelligibility continued for several centuries, into the 10th century or later. During this period, many sound changes diffused across the entire area, often uniformly. This makes it inconvenient to maintain

2220-570: The Proto-Slavic/Common Slavic time of linguistic unity roughly into three periods: Authorities differ as to which periods should be included in Proto-Slavic and in Common Slavic. The language described in this article generally reflects the middle period, usually termed Late Proto-Slavic (sometimes Middle Common Slavic ) and often dated to around the 7th to 8th centuries. This language remains largely unattested, but

2294-575: The Slavic notation. For Middle and Late Common Slavic, the following marks are used to indicate tone and length distinctions on vowels, based on the standard notation in Serbo-Croatian : There are multiple competing systems used to indicate prosody in different Balto-Slavic languages. The most important for this article are: The following is an overview of the phonemes that are reconstructible for Middle Common Slavic. Middle Common Slavic had

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2368-536: The South Slavic languages, as well as Czech and Slovak, tended to preserve the syllabic sonorants, but in the Lechitic languages (such as Polish) and Bulgarian, they fell apart again into vowel-consonant or consonant-vowel combinations. In East Slavic, the liquid diphthongs in *ь or *ъ may have likewise become syllabic sonorants, but if so, the change was soon reversed, suggesting that it may never have happened in

2442-448: The accent (moved it to the preceding syllable). This occurred at a time when the Slavic-speaking area was already dialectally differentiated, and usually syllables with the acute and/or circumflex accent were shortened around the same time. Hence it is unclear whether there was ever a period in any dialect when there were three phonemically distinct pitch accents on long vowels. Nevertheless, taken together, these changes significantly altered

2516-452: The accent was free and thus phonemic; it could occur on any syllable and its placement was inherently a part of the word. The accent could also be either mobile or fixed, meaning that inflected forms of a word could have the accent on different syllables depending on the ending, or always on the same syllable. Common Slavic vowels also had a pitch accent . In Middle Common Slavic, all accented long vowels, nasal vowels and liquid diphthongs had

2590-643: The activities of the veche . The Primary Chronicle also indicates the recognition of the people as a separate political agent in a 944 treaty with the Byzantine Empire : "And our grand prince Igor and his boyars, and the whole people of Rus have sent us". The earliest mentions of the veche in chronicles refer to examples in Belgorod in 997, Novgorod in 1016, Kiev in 1068, and Pskov in 1123. The assemblies discussed matters of war and peace, adopted laws, and called for and expelled rulers. In Kiev,

2664-552: The areas north of the Danube , and celnic south of the river) of rural communities in the early Middle Ages , who made their judicial and administrative attributions hereditary and gradually expanded them upon other communities. They were approved by the Ottoman Empire , which had suzerainty over the area. After the appearance of more advanced political structures in the area, their privileged status had to be confirmed by

2738-427: The attack on Novgorod . This was to ensure the boyars and their military power remained loyal to the tsar. The grand duke also made sure that peasants could not leave the princes' lands, or from one place to another, in the mid-1400s, effectively establishing serfdom . The boyars gained rewards and gifts as well. Some boyars were sent to regions as governors, and could “feed off” the locals in this way. Still, by

2812-552: The autumn of 1509, Grand Prince Vasily III visited Novgorod, where he received complaints from the Pskov veche against the Muscovite governor of the city. At first, Vasily encouraged complaints against the governor, but soon demanded that the city abolish its traditional institutions, including the removal of the veche bell. From that point on, Pskov was to be ruled exclusively by his governors and officials, and on 13 January 1510,

2886-633: The beginning of the syllable. By the beginning of the Late Common Slavic period, all or nearly all syllables had become open as a result of developments in the liquid diphthongs . Syllables with liquid diphthongs beginning with *o or *e had been converted into open syllables, for example *TorT became *TroT, *TraT or *ToroT in the various daughter languages. The main exception are the Northern Lechitic languages ( Kashubian , extinct Slovincian and Polabian ) only with lengthening of

2960-546: The bell ceased to ring as in Vladimir. And Prince Alexander thought he had been rude to the Holy Mother of God, and he ordered it taken back to Vladimir. And when the bell was brought back and installed in its place, its peal once again became acceptable to God. The Novgorod veche was the highest legislative and judicial authority in the city until 1478, after Novgorod was formally annexed by Ivan III . Each of

3034-479: The bishop could function as the chairman, while in other instances, the prince could assume this role. A semi-legendary account of Aleksandr of Suzdal ( r.  1309–1331 ) moving the veche bell from Vladimir to his appanage center Suzdal during his reign as grand prince is found in chronicles: This Prince Alexander from Vladimir took the veche bell from the Church of the Holy Mother of God to Suzdal and

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3108-459: The boyar opposition with the use of the oprichnina terror purges. Land grants were also given to subjects that provided military service, and soon this type of land grant became the more common compared to inherited land among the boyars. Ivan IV consolidated his power, centralized royal power, and made every effort possible to curb the influence of the princes. After Ivan IV, a time of troubles began when his son Fedor died without an heir, ending

3182-644: The boyars' independent political power became obsolete. The independence and autonomy experienced by the princes of the regions in Muscovy was abolished under Ivan IV by the end of the sixteenth century, making them "the prince's sons", or just simple boyars serving the Grand Prince. Ivan IV divided Muscovy into two parts in 1565, and in the private part, the terror began. The boyars attempted to band together and resist, but instead of constitutionally establishing their role in government, Ivan IV ruthlessly crushed

3256-480: The burden of governing Muscovy. Small principalities knew their loyal subjects by name, but after the consolidation of territories under Ivan, familial loyalty and friendship with the boyar's subjects turned those same subjects into administrative lists. The face of provincial rule disappeared. Boyar membership, until the 16th century, did not necessarily require one to be Russian, or even Orthodox, as historians note that many boyars came from places like Lithuania or

3330-472: The central power, which used this prerogative to include in the boyar class individuals that distinguished themselves in the military or civilian functions they performed, by allocating them lands from the princely domains. Historian Djuvara explained the hypotheses concerning the origin of the Romanians , such as advancing the theory that the vast majority of the nobility in the medieval states that made up

3404-493: The centralization of power by Moscow was the power of the boyars diminished. During the 14th and 15th centuries, the boyars of Moscow had considerable influence that continued from the Muscovy period. However, starting with the reign of Ivan III , the boyars were starting to lose that influence to the authoritative tsars in Muscovy. Because of Ivan III's expansionist policies, administrative changes were needed in order to ease

3478-429: The class of the boyars of the first state, there was the subclass of the "grand boyars". Those were great landowners who also had some very high functions, such as the function of great vornic . Above those grand boyars was only the prince. Usually a prince was a boyar before his election or appointment as prince, but this was not an absolute condition. Initially, only princely descendants could be elected princes. During

3552-472: The distribution of the pitch accents and vowel length, to the point that by the end of the Late Common Slavic period almost any vowel could be short or long, and almost any accented vowel could have falling or rising pitch. Most syllables in Middle Common Slavic were open . The only closed syllables were those that ended in a liquid (*l or *r), forming liquid diphthongs, and in such syllables,

3626-480: The elite bureaucracy was beginning to form. By the end of the Time of Troubles , the boyars had lost nearly all independent power. Instead of going to Moscow to gain more power, the boyars felt defeated, and felt compelled to go to Moscow to maintain a united and strong Russia. Second, the boyars lost their independent principalities, where they maintained all their power, and instead governed districts and regions under

3700-424: The end of the 15th century, boyar membership had declined, and merit rather than family background decided who became a boyar. When Ivan IV became the tsar, more radical changes were implemented to limit boyar influence. Ivan IV became the grand prince of all Muscovy in 1533 at the age of three, but various boyar factions tried to compete for control of the regency. When Ivan IV came to power in 1547, much more of

3774-419: The extent to which the veche was dominated by the elites, with some saying that real power was held in the hands of boyars, with others considering the veche to be a democratic institution. Conflicts were common and the confrontation between the veche and the posadniki in 1483–1484 led to the execution of one posadnik and the confiscation of the property of three other posadniki who fled to Moscow. In

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3848-412: The first place. Boyar A boyar or bolyar was a member of the highest rank of the feudal nobility in many Eastern European states, including Bulgaria , Kievan Rus' (and later Russia ), Moldavia and Wallachia (and later Romania ), Lithuania and among Baltic Germans . Comparable to Dukes / Grand Dukes , Boyars were second only to the ruling princes , grand princes or tsars from

3922-406: The first, second, and third states. For example, there was a first or a grand postelnic , a second postelnic, and a third postelnic, each one with his different obligations and rights. The difference of condition was visible even in the vestimentation or physical aspect. Only the boyars of the first state had the right, for example, to grow a beard, the rest being entitled only to a mustache. Within

3996-479: The following vowel system ( IPA symbol where different): The columns marked "central" and "back" may alternatively be interpreted as "back unrounded" and "back rounded" respectively, but rounding of back vowels was distinctive only between the vowels *y and *u. The other back vowels had optional non-distinctive rounding. The vowels described as "short" and "long" were simultaneously distinguished by length and quality in Middle Common Slavic, although some authors prefer

4070-534: The formation of the feudal states, such that the prince merely confirmed their preexisting status as landowners; and those who acquired their domain from a princely donation or who had inherited it from an ancestor who acquired it through such a donation ( cf. the distinction between Uradel and Briefadel in the Holy Roman Empire and in its feudal successor regimes). During the Phanariot régime, there were also boyars who had no land at all, but only

4144-487: The grand prince of the time. Boyars also lost their advisory influence over the grand prince with tools such as the duma, and instead the grand prince no longer felt compelled to listen to the demands of the boyars. The tsar no longer feared losing their military support, and unification of Muscovy became paramount in importance. With Peter the Great , the final nail in the coffin happened for the boyar's power, and they would never recover from his administrative reforms. Peter

4218-424: The grand prince personally overseeing his lands, he had to rely on his captains and close advisors to oversee day-to-day operations. Instead of the great voice the boyars had previously in their advisory roles, they now had less bargaining power and mobility. They answered questions posed by the grand prince, and Ivan III even made sure to get their approval on special events, such as his marriage to Zoe Paleologa, or

4292-465: The highest state offices and, through a council ( duma ), advised the grand duke . They received extensive grants of land and, as members of the Boyars' Duma, were the major legislators of Kievan Rus' . After the Mongol invasion in the 13th century, the boyars from western and southern parts of Kievan Rus' (modern Belarus and Ukraine) were incorporated into Lithuanian and Polish nobility ( szlachta ). In

4366-450: The latter half of the first millennium AD, concurrent with the explosive growth of the Slavic-speaking area. There is no scholarly consensus concerning either the number of stages involved in the development of the language (its periodization ) or the terms used to describe them. One division is made up of three periods: Another division is made up of four periods: This article considers primarily Middle Common Slavic, noting when there

4440-561: The least in Russian and the most in Czech. Palatalized consonants never developed in Southwest Slavic (modern Croatian, Serbian, and Slovenian), and the merger of *ľ *ň *ř with *l *n *r did not happen before front vowels (although Serbian and Croatian later merged *ř with *r). As in its ancestors, Proto-Balto-Slavic and Proto-Indo-European, one syllable of each Common Slavic word was accented (carried more prominence). The placement of

4514-483: The old council of boyars that originally advised the tsar. This move he made was one of many that dismantled the powers and status the boyars previously possessed. Peter was driving out the conservative and religious faction of the boyars out of the courts, and instead using both foreign and Russian officials to fill the administrative system. Several boyars, as well as other nobility, spoke out against these reforms, including historian Mikhail Shcherbatov, who stated that

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4588-414: The preceding vowel had to be short. Consonant clusters were permitted, but only at the beginning of a syllable. Such a cluster was syllabified with the cluster entirely in the following syllable, contrary to the syllabification rules that are known to apply to most languages. For example, *bogatьstvo "wealth" was divided into syllables as * bo-ga-tь-stvo , with the whole cluster * -stv- at

4662-423: The reforms Peter made helped destroy Russian tradition, and created people that tried to "worm their way up, by flattering and humoring the monarch and the grandees in every way." Still, the reforms continued, as by this point, the tsar possessed too much power, and Russia became an absolute monarchy more and more with each ruler. The Galician nobility originally were called boyars. With the annexation of Galicia by

4736-475: The restrictions that apply to the pitch accent in Slovene . In the Late Common Slavic period, several sound changes occurred. Long vowels bearing the acute (long rising) accent were usually shortened, resulting in a short rising intonation. Some short vowels were lengthened, creating new long falling vowels. A third type of pitch accent developed, known as the "neoacute", as a result of sound laws that retracted

4810-425: The serfs (indentured servants) were called rumâni . Although functions could only be accorded by the prince and were not hereditary, land possession was hereditary. The prince could give land to somebody but could not take it from its possessor except for serious reasons such as treason. Therefore, there were two kinds of boyars: those whose families, as chiefs of the ancient rural communities, had held land before

4884-460: The syllable and no metathesis (*TarT, e.g. PSl. gordъ > Kashubian gard ; > Polabian * gard > gord ). In West Slavic and South Slavic, liquid diphthongs beginning with *ь or *ъ had likewise been converted into open syllables by converting the following liquid into a syllabic sonorant (palatal or non-palatal according to whether *ь or *ъ preceded respectively). This left no closed syllables at all in these languages. Most of

4958-491: The terms "lax" and "tense" instead. Many modern Slavic languages have since lost all length distinctions. Vowel length evolved as follows: In § Grammar below, additional distinctions are made in the reconstructed vowels: Middle Common Slavic had the following consonants (IPA symbols where different): The phonetic value (IPA symbol) of most consonants is the same as their traditional spelling. Some notes and exceptions: In most dialects, non-distinctive palatalization

5032-406: The territory of modern-day Romania was of Cuman origin and not Romanian: "Romanians were called the black Cumans". The Romanian social hierarchy was composed of boyar, mazil ( turkish: mazul ), răzeș ( yeoman, freedman ) and rumân ( serf ). Being a boyar implied three things: being a land-owner, having serfs, and having a military and/or administrative function. A boyar could have

5106-447: The traditional definition of a proto-language as the latest reconstructable common ancestor of a language group, with no dialectal differentiation. (This would necessitate treating all pan-Slavic changes after the 6th century or so as part of the separate histories of the various daughter languages.) Instead, Slavicists typically handle the entire period of dialectally differentiated linguistic unity as Common Slavic . One can divide

5180-619: The word battle ( бој , boj ). The boyars of Serbia were literally "men for the battle" or the warrior class, in contrast to the peasants. They could own land but were obliged to defend it and fight for the king. With the rule of the Ottoman Empire after 1450, the Ottoman as well as the Austro-Hungarian terms exchanged the Serbian one. Today, it is an archaic term representing the aristocracy ( племство , plemstvo ). From

5254-399: The word bolyari is used as a nickname for the inhabitants of Veliko Tarnovo —once the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire . In medieval Serbia , the rank of the boyars ( Боjари , bojari ) was equivalent to the rank of the baron ; meaning "free warrior" (or "free man" in general), it was the first rank after the non-free peasants or serfs . The etymology of the term comes from

5328-1021: Was a title worn by some of the Bulgar aristocrats (mostly of regional governors and noble warriors) in the First Bulgarian Empire (681–1018). The plural form of boila ("noble"), bolyare is attested in Bulgar inscriptions and rendered as boilades or boliades in the Greek of Byzantine documents. Multiple different derivation theories of the word have been suggested by scholars and linguists, such as it having possible roots from old Turkic: bai ("noble, rich"; cf. " bay ") plus Turkic är ("man, men"), proto-Slavic "boj" (fight, battle) or romanian "boi" (oxen, cattle) to "Boier" (owner of cattle). The title entered Old East Slavic as быля ( bylya , attested solely in The Tale of Igor's Campaign ). The oldest Slavic form of boyar — bolyarin , pl. bolyari ( Bulgarian : болярин , pl. боляри )—dates from

5402-925: Was heavily influenced by local traditions and strength of the ruler. By the 12th or 13th century, the wiec institution likewise limited its participation to high ranking nobles and officials. The nationwide gatherings of wiec officials in 1306 and 1310 can be seen as precursors of the Polish parliament (the General Sejm ). Proto-Slavic language Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl. , PS. ; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic )

5476-576: Was probably present on all consonants that occurred before front vowels. When the high front yer *ь/ĭ was lost in many words, it left this palatalization as a "residue", which then became distinctive, producing a phonemic distinction between palatalized and non-palatalized alveolars and labials. In the process, the palatal sonorants *ľ *ň *ř merged with alveolar *l *n *r before front vowels, with both becoming *lʲ *nʲ *rʲ. Subsequently, some palatalized consonants lost their palatalization in some environments, merging with their non-palatal counterparts. This happened

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