Greece returns Tsar Samuil’s remains to Bulgaria after more than 1,000 years

Greece will hand over to Bulgaria the remains of Emperor Samuil, who ruled from 997 to 1014, it was confirmed today after the information was first published by Greek media. The mortal remains of Emperor Samuil are currently kept at the Museum of Byzantine Culture in Thessaloniki and will be handed over to the Bulgarian state during a ceremony on October 3, the Sofia Globe portal reports.

The tomb of Emperor Samuil was discovered in 1965 in the Church of St. Achillius on the island of the same name in Lake Prespa and was found by the Greek professor Nikolaos Moutsopoulos. Bulgaria has repeatedly requested the return of the remains over recent decades, including a request made in 2015 by the then president Rosen Plevneliev. The issue was raised again in 2022, during the term of the then prime minister Kiril Petkov.

Bulgarian prime minister Rumen Radev said that after intensive negotiations, Bulgaria and Greece have reached a historic agreement on the return of Tsar Samuil’s remains to his homeland. According to him, the Bulgarian government will approve the text of the agreement today and authorize the minister of culture to sign it with his Greek counterpart. The agreement also provides for the mutual transfer of historical, religious and cultural objects, as well as relics, for preservation, Radev said.

The handover ceremony will be held on October 3 at the Museum of Byzantine Culture in Thessaloniki, in the presence of Bulgarian and Greek state leaders. Radev announced that the remains of Tsar Samuil, after being transported to Sofia by a Spartan aircraft, will be buried in a special sarcophagus in the Church of St. Sophia. As he stated, the remains found in two other sarcophagi in the same church, believed to belong to Emperor Gavril Radomir and other members of the imperial family, will also be handed over to Bulgaria.

In a Facebook post on September 28, former prime minister Nikolay Denkov, parliamentary leader of the “We Continue the Change” group, said it took “much diplomatic effort” from several Bulgarian governments, but that “one of our dreams came true today.” “The remains of Tsar Samuil will finally be placed in a Bulgarian church. And Bulgarians will again be able to pay homage to their heroic ruler in their homeland. We thank (Greek) prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for this gesture, which raises the friendly Bulgarian-Greek relations, which have developed particularly actively since 2022, to an even higher level,” he said.

The question of Tsar Samuil’s historical legacy has been a subject of dispute for years between Bulgaria and North Macedonia. The Joint Bulgarian-North Macedonian Commission on Historical and Educational Issues concluded in 2022 that Samuil was the ruler of a large medieval state that the main part of modern historiography defines as the Bulgarian Empire, with its seat on the territory of today’s North Macedonia.