Bulgaria emerged and received official recognition following two victories over the cosmopolitan Byzantine empire. The first battles took place in the Danube delta area in the year 680 A.D. The conflicts continued in the following year, spreading south of the Balkan Range. This is cited in the Acts of the Sixth Oecumenical Council of the Christian Church in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul).

This council, over the course of almost a year, debated and asserted - in opposition to the monothelitic heresy - the official thesis that Christ had two wills, one divine and the other human.

On March 18th, 681, the Byzantine emperor Constantine IV Pagonatus departed from the Council to curb the incursions of the Proto-Bulgarians into Thrace, which violated the wholeness of the empire. But he failed to break their dauntless will and strength. The sixteenth sitting of the Council took place on August 9th of the same year and this is how presbyter Constantine of Apameia in Second Syria addressed the Council: 'I have come to your holy council to tell you that if I had been let to come and speak, we should have suffered what we have been through in the war with the Bulgarians. Because I wanted, from the very beginning of this council, to come and ask that peace be made, so that something be done to unite the two sides, and either be spared the misery, that is to say, both those who preach the single will and those who uphold the two wills'. It is asserted on the basis of this source that the decisive event occurred not earlier than March 18th and no later than August 9th of the year 681.