Agatha (, ; ) was the

wife A wife (: wives) is a woman in a marital relationship. A woman who has separated from her partner continues to be a wife until their marriage is legally dissolved with a divorce judgment; or until death, depending on the kind of marriage. On t ...

of Emperor

Samuel of Bulgaria Samuel (also Samoil or Samuil; , ; , ; Old Church Slavonic: Самоилъ; died 6 October 1014) was the Tsar (''Emperor'') of the First Bulgarian Empire from 997 to 6 October 1014. From 977 to 997, he was a general under Roman I of Bulgaria, th ...

Biography

According to a later addition to the history of the late-11th-century

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

historian John Skylitzes, Agatha was a captive from

Larissa Larissa (; , , ) is the capital and largest city of the Thessaly region in Greece. It is the fifth-most populous city in Greece with a population of 148,562 in the city proper, according to the 2021 census. It is also the capital of the Larissa ...

, and the daughter of the magnate of Dyrrhachium, John Chryselios. Skylitzes explicitly refers to her as the mother of Samuel's heir Gavril Radomir, which means that she was probably Samuel's wife. On the other hand, Skylitzes later mentions that Gavril Radomir himself also took a beautiful captive, named

Irene Irene is a name derived from εἰρήνη (eirēnē), Greek for "peace". Irene, and related names, may refer to: * Irene (given name) Places * Irene, Gauteng, South Africa * Irene, South Dakota, United States * Irene, Texas, United States ...

, from Larissa as his wife. According to the editors of the '' Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit'', this may have been a source of confusion for a later copyist, and Agatha's real origin was not Larissa, but Dyrrhachium. According to the same work, it is likely that she had died by ca. 998, when her father surrendered Dyrrhachium to the Byzantine emperor

Basil II Basil II Porphyrogenitus (; 958 – 15 December 1025), nicknamed the Bulgar Slayer (, ), was the senior Byzantine emperor from 976 to 1025. He and his brother Constantine VIII were crowned before their father Romanos II died in 963, but t ...

. Only two of Samuel's and Agatha's children are definitely known by name: Gavril Radomir and Miroslava. Two further, unnamed, daughters are mentioned in 1018, while Samuel is also recorded as having had a bastard son. Agatha is one of the central characters in Dimitar Talev's novel ''Samuil''.

References

Sources

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Agatha 990s deaths People from Larissa Bulgarian consorts 10th-century births 10th-century Bulgarian women 10th-century Bulgarian people 10th-century Byzantine women Mothers of Bulgarian emperors