Introduction Part I. Bones of Contention or Professionals, Dilettantes, and Who Owns History 1. A “social drama” at the BulgarianAcademy of Sciences 2. From breach to crisis 3. No redress, or where are Levski’s bones? 4. “Professionals” and “dilettantes” 5. Recognizing the schism or what is worse: bad professionals or good nationalists? Part II. The Apostle of Freedom or What Makes a Hero? 1. What is a hero and are heroes born? 2. The “making” of Vasil Levski 3. A banner for all causes: appropriating the hero 4. Contesting the hero 5. The literary and visual hypostases of the hero 6. From hero for all to dissident and back Part III. The National Hero as Secular Saint: The Canonization of Levski 1. The split or how a bicephalous organism functions 2. The canonization and its implications 3. Levski and the Bulgarian church: memory and narration 4. The orchestration of a grass-roots cultus 5. Commemoration, ritual and the sacred 6. Heroes and saints: the dialectics of reincarnation Conclusion: Weak nationalism and its heroes Appendices Appendix I. The scholarly consensus on the 1956 excavations until the 1980s in the writings of Stamen Mikhailov. A critical analysis Appendix II. The discussion at the Academy of Sciences : 10, 12 and 27 February 1986 Appendix III. Letter of 20 Bulgarian historians to Todor Zhivkov, 4 May 1987 Appendix IV. Poems written by citizens on the topic of Levski’s grave Appendix V. Letter of Radka Poptomova, April 1987 Appendix VI. Letter of medieval section at AI, June 2001 Appendix VII. The double-headed hierarchy of the Bulgarian Orthodox church (1996-2004) Appendix VIII. School questionnaires on Levski Appendix IX. Samples of student papers on Levski Appendix X. Facsimile of report by Chervenkov and Pavlov to Todor Zhivkov, 1956. (Grobît na Vasil Levski, 2002, 150-151, 155). + mention in Part I, n. 165