More than 1,000 years after his death, the remains of medieval ruler Czar Samuel have arrived in Bulgaria. A symbol of Bulgarian national identity, Samuel was a warrior emperor who battled the Byzantine Empire to expand his kingdom before suffering defeat and dying soon after in 1014. His supposed remains were discovered in a Greek border area in the 1960s.
The coffin and remains were flown on Saturday to the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, on board a military aircraft that was surrounded by air force fighter jets. Thousands of people poured into a public square to honour the czar’s arrival, which capped years of fraught negotiations between Bulgaria and Greece until an accord was reached this week. Bulgarian politicians across the spectrum paid tribute to the medieval ruler, listening to the national anthem and a 21-gun salute.
Crowds cheered as fighter jets performed a flypast. Martin Nestorov, a 42-year-old software engineer, told the news agency he attended the ceremony “to welcome Czar Samuel back to Bulgaria, where he belongs”. A procession brought the remains to be laid in the Church of Saint Sofia, a sixth-century basilica that is the capital’s namesake and where church officials say Samuel was baptised.
The handover of Samuel’s remains is part of a broader accord between the Greek and Bulgarian culture ministers. In exchange, Greece is slated to receive 48 objects that Bulgarian troops pillaged from churches and monasteries in Greece during World War I. Speaking before the handover, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he hoped the ceremony would boost Greece’s campaign to repatriate the Parthenon Marbles, a collection of 2,500-year-old marble sculptures taken from the Acropolis in Athens and later displayed in the British Museum.
Bulgaria is not the only country to have claims on Samuel. A huge statue of the czar stands in the North Macedonian capital of Skopje, with Macedonians claiming him as “their” ruler. In 2022, a bilateral commission recommended presenting Samuel as the head of a state that “most contemporary historiographers consider to be the Bulgarian Empire”, based in what is currently North Macedonia.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
