Tsar Samuil's Remains Go From Thessaloniki to Bulgaria
Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said Greece will hand over the remains linked to Tsar Samuil since 1969 at the Museum of Byzantine Culture, with a welcome set for Sofia.
Greece will hand over to Bulgaria the remains attributed to Tsar Samuil in Thessaloniki on Saturday, October 3, and the news reopens a debate in North Macedonia, a neighbor of Serbia, where Samuil’s state is interpreted differently than in Sofia. The date and the course of the handover were announced by Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev ahead of a cabinet meeting.
Radev said he will take part in the ceremony himself, and media in Skopje translated his words into Macedonian:
On Saturday, October 3, in the morning, I will be at the Museum of Byzantine Culture in Thessaloniki, where, at a ceremony organized by the Prime Minister of Greece, the remains of Tsar Samuil will be officially handed over to the Bulgarian state.
According to the portal Republika’s translation, Radev stressed that this is the outcome of intensive negotiations between Bulgaria and Greece.
How will the handover work?
As announced, the remains will be flown to Sofia on a military plane, the “Spartan.” Radev called on citizens to gather the same day at 12:30 in Prince Alexander I of Battenberg Square, from where a procession will head to the Saint Sophia church, where the remains will be placed in a special sarcophagus. “Then, together in the procession, we will accompany him to Saint Sophia for his last journey,” Radev added.
The agreement has not yet been signed. The Bulgarian government still has to approve its text and authorize the culture minister to sign it with his Greek counterpart. The document also provides for a mutual handover of historical, religious and cultural objects and relics, and the portal Skopje1 reports that remains from two other sarcophagi are being handed over along with Samuil’s, among them those of Tsar Gavril Radomir and other members of the imperial family.
The Greek portals ePolitical.gr and Dete.gr report that the handover required the consent of the Greek Orthodox Church, which has now been given. According to Greek media, Athens had tied the issue for years to its own demands for the return of church relics, manuscripts and other cultural property taken from monasteries in northern Greece during the two world wars.
What is known about the remains?
The remains were found in 1969 by the Greek archaeologist Nikolaos Moutsopoulos while excavating the Basilica of Saint Achilleios, on the island of the same name in Lesser Prespa Lake, in present-day Greece. Moutsopoulos linked one of the tombs to Samuil, who died in 1014, and Greek archaeological sources still say his burial place was probably in the basilica’s right aisle. Since 2014 the remains have been kept in the Museum of Byzantine Culture in Thessaloniki.
Bulgaria’s Foreign Ministry bases the identification on the position of the grave, the burial context and anthropological data, which it says match the medieval chronicles. Radev assessed that the effort to bring them back has lasted six decades and that the agreement is a historic moment for Bulgaria.
The issue is not new. Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev paid tribute to the remains in the Thessaloniki museum in 2014, and a year later he said publicly that Bulgaria should keep seeking their transfer to the country. The topic returned to the high political level in 2022, under the government of Kiril Petkov, when Sofia and Athens were strengthening cooperation in energy, infrastructure, logistics and ports.
Why is the topic sensitive in Skopje?
In North Macedonia, Samuil is the subject of differing historical interpretations, because his state was centered on the territory of the present-day North Macedonian state. The issue was also considered by the Joint Multidisciplinary Expert Commission of Skopje and Sofia on historical and educational issues. In its officially published recommendation, Samuil is described as the ruler of a large medieval state that “most of modern historical scholarship considers a Bulgarian Empire centered on the territory of today’s Republic of North Macedonia,” and his fate as a symbol of the shared history of the two countries.
For the Macedonian public, handing the remains over to Sofia is therefore more than a logistical operation. The procession in the Bulgarian capital and the statement that Samuil is returning to “the Bulgarian state” come at a time when his legacy is still discussed in different languages in Skopje and Sofia. The ceremony in Thessaloniki is set for the morning of October 3, and the welcome in Sofia for 12:30 the same day.
