Maria ( - )

Individual Events and Attributes

Marriage

Individual Note

Maria was the wife of tsar Ivan Vladislav of Bulgaria. She was the last empress-consort (tsaritsa) of the First Bulgarian Empire.

Her antecedents are unknown. It is believed that Maria was married to Ivan Vladislav in the late 10th century. Her husband was the son of Aron, who was the brother of Emperor Samuel (Samuil) of Bulgaria. In 987 Samuel ordered his brother Aron executed for treason together with his entire family. The massacre was survived only Ivan Vladislav, who was saved through the intercession of his cousin, Samuel's son Gabriel Radomir.

Maria and Ivan Vladislav had several children, including:

Presian, who briefly succeeded as emperor of Bulgaria 1018

Aron, Byzantine general

Alusian, who was briefly emperor of Bulgaria in 1041

Trayan. Father of Maria of Bulgaria, who married Andronikos Doukas.

Catherine (Ekaterina), who married the future Byzantine Emperor Isaac I Komnenos

Tsar Samuil died in 1014 and the Bulgarian throne was inherited by his son Gavril Radomir. In 1015 Ivan Vladislav murrdered his savior Gavrail Radomir, while the latter was hunting near Ostrovo (Arnissa), and seized the Bulgarian throne.

Maria's husband followed the determined policy of his predecessors to resist the ongoing Byzantine conquest over Bulgaria, but he was killed before the walls of Dyrrhachium in the winter of 1018. After his death the widowed empress Maria and much of the Bulgarian nobility and court submitted to the advancing Basil II in exchange of guarantees for the preservation of their lives, status, and property. Maria together with her children were sent to Constantinople, where she was granted the title zoste patrikia (lady-in-waiting of the empress). Her family was integrated into the Byzantine court and provincial aristocracy.

In 1029 Maria together with her son Presian entered a conspiracy against emperor Romanos III Argyros. The plot was discovered, Presian was blinded and Maria was exiled to a monastery in Asia Minor.

SOURCES:

Runciman, Steven, The First Bulgarian Empire. 1930.

Skylitzes, Synopsis Historiarum.¹

Sources