Catherine of Bulgaria

Catherine of Bulgaria (Church Slavonic: Єкатерїна, Greek: Αἰκατερίνη, romanized: Aikaterini, Bulgarian: Екатерина, romanized: Ekaterina; died after 1059) was empress consort to Byzantine emperor Isaac I Komnenos and co-regent of Constantine X for a period after the abdication of her spouse in 1059. She was a daughter of Ivan Vladislav of Bulgaria and his wife Maria, and thus a sister of Presian and Alusian. Catherine was also a paternal aunt of Maria of Bulgaria.

Catherine was a daughter of Ivan Vladislav (reigned 1015–18), the last Tsar of Bulgaria.^[1] She married the general Isaac Komnenos.^[2] After he became emperor in 1057, Isaac raised her to Augusta.^[3]

Isaac abdicated the throne on November 22, 1059. He retired to the Stoudios Monastery and spent the remainder of his life, until his death in late 1060 or 1061, as a monk.^[2][4] Following her husband's abdication, she appears to have co-reigned for a while with Constantine X, but eventually she too retired to the Myrelaion monastery under the monastic name of Xene.^[5]

Catherine had at least two children with Isaac:^[6]

• Manuel Komnenos (ca. 1030 – 1042/57), probably the "son of Komnenos" recorded as having been engaged to the daughter of the protospatharios Helios. He died sometime between 1042 and 1057.^[7]
• Maria Komnene (born ca. 1034), her beauty is remarked upon by Psellos, but she remained unmarried, and retired with her mother to the Myrelaion.^[8]

• Kazhdan, Alexander, ed. (1991). The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504652-8.
• Sewter, Edgar Robert Ashton, ed. (1953). The Chronographia of Michael Psellus. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. Archived from the original on 2014-08-14. Retrieved 2018-08-10.
• Varzos, Konstantinos (1984). Η Γενεαλογία των Κομνηνών [The Genealogy of the Komnenoi] (PDF) (in Greek). Vol. A. Thessaloniki: Centre for Byzantine Studies, University of Thessaloniki. OCLC 834784634. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-04-01. Retrieved 2019-06-12.

• Book 7 of the Chronographia which deals with the period 1056-1078. The text is part of the Internet Medieval Source Book.