On Tuesday, September 29, the culture ministers of Greece and Bulgaria signed a memorandum of understanding: Greece would hand over to Bulgaria the remains identified as those of medieval ruler Czar Samuel — also rendered as Tsar Samuil. In exchange, Athens is to receive nearly 50 religious artefacts that were removed to Bulgaria during World War I from Greek churches and monasteries.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev called it a "historic agreement," saying the handover ended six decades of efforts by Sofia to bring the remains home after their discovery in Greece in 1965. Greek archaeologist Nikolaos Moutsopoulos found them during excavations at the Basilica of Saint Achillios on an island in Prespa Lake in northern Greece; in recent years they had been kept at the Museum of Byzantine Culture in Thessaloniki.
Samuel, or Samuil, reigned from 997 to 1014 during the First Bulgarian Empire and is deemed a national hero by Bulgarians for struggling to preserve his country's independence from the neighbouring, Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire. Defeated in battle, he died shortly afterwards in 1014.
"If in the past Tsar Samuel divided us, I can say that today he unites us," Radev said at the ceremony in Thessaloniki. "He strengthens our strategic cooperation and makes the historical relations between our states and peoples even stronger." The relics, he said, "belong to both our peoples; they constitute our memory and our bond."
The accord is two-sided: Bulgaria returns roughly 48 religious objects taken from Greek churches and monasteries during the First World War; Greece hands over remains identified as Samuel's. Notably, the identification itself is hedged — many outlets carefully write "identified as" rather than asserting it outright.
Hours after the signing, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis pivoted to another restitution fight: he suggested the international community's reassessment of such returns should encourage Britain to follow suit and send the Parthenon Marbles back to Athens from the British Museum. The Guardian noted Athens' implication that "the UK should follow suit."
On Saturday, October 3, the handover ceremony took place at Thessaloniki's Museum of Byzantine Culture, with Mitsotakis and Radev in attendance. Bulgarian military personnel carried the coffin; the remains were then flown to Sofia aboard a military aircraft escorted by fighter jets — a state-honour treatment.
Thousands of citizens gathered in central Sofia to commemorate the repatriation, with the national anthem, a 21-gun salute and remarks from political leaders across the spectrum. Radev used the occasion to call for unity within Europe and an end to historical grievances between neighbouring nations. The remains were subsequently transferred to the Church of Saint Sofia, a sixth-century basilica in the capital where church officials say Samuel was baptized; the public can pay their respects there.
Not everyone is satisfied. Several prominent Greek academics and religious leaders have criticised the arrangement as inadequate on the Bulgarian side. And Samuel's identity itself remains contested: North Macedonia also claims him as a historical figure, though a bilateral commission in 2022 recommended characterising him as head of what historians consider the Bulgarian Empire, based in contemporary North Macedonia.
For Bulgaria, this feels like a homecoming a thousand years late. The forensic details of the identification may still be debated — but for a nation that has written Samuel into its collective memory, the ceremony itself is the answer.