Greece Gives Bulgaria Czar Samuel’s Reputed Remains for Looted Church Treasures

Greece and Bulgaria completed an unusual exchange of history on Saturday. In a ceremony in Thessaloniki, Greece handed over remains attributed to Czar Samuel, the medieval Bulgarian ruler, and received in return 48 religious artefacts that Bulgarian troops took from churches and monasteries in northern Greece during World War I.

The handover followed a memorandum signed by the two countries’ culture ministers, Lina Mendoni of Greece and Eftim Miloshev of Bulgaria, after years of difficult negotiations, according to Euronews and Al Jazeera, which drew on AFP and AP reporting. The returned artefacts, removed in 1917, will be displayed at Thessaloniki’s Museum of Byzantine Culture until November 5 before going back to the churches and monasteries they came from.

Samuel, who ruled from 997 until his death in 1014, fought the Byzantine Empire to expand his realm and died soon after a crushing defeat. He remains a powerful symbol of Bulgarian national identity. Remains believed to be his were found in a Greek border area in the 1960s.

They were flown to Sofia aboard a military aircraft escorted by fighter jets. Thousands of people gathered in a central square as politicians from across the spectrum paid tribute, with the national anthem and a 21-gun salute, Al Jazeera reported. A procession then carried the remains to the Church of Saint Sofia, the sixth-century basilica that gave the capital its name, where church officials say Samuel was baptized.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said the two countries’ joint efforts had allowed them to leave the shadows of the past behind and that Europe must not reopen old wounds. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said historical heirlooms cannot be treated as the spoils of war.

Mitsotakis also turned to a much older dispute. Speaking at the Thessaloniki museum, he said Greece would not accept arrangements that imply recognition of foreign ownership of the Parthenon Marbles and would not borrow, as he put it, its own treasures, Euronews reported. He called the Parthenon a universal monument that remains violently dismembered. The 2,500-year-old sculptures were taken from the Acropolis and are displayed in the British Museum in London, Al Jazeera noted.

Not everyone in the region sees the ceremony the same way. North Macedonia also claims Samuel as part of its history; a huge statue of him stands in Skopje. In 2022 a joint commission recommended presenting him as the ruler of a state that most historians consider the Bulgarian Empire, based in what is now North Macedonia, Al Jazeera reported.

The exchange shows how the return of cultural property, long a source of friction among neighbors, can also become a tool of reconciliation when governments are willing to trade.