Sarah-Theodora of Bulgaria

Sarah-Theodora was the second wife of Tsar Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria, who ruled from 1331 to 1371. Said to come from a Jewish family of Tarnovo, she converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, took the name Theodora, and married the tsar in the late 1340s after he divorced Theodora of Wallachia.

A fierce patron of her adopted faith, she instigated a church council against the Jews and founded monasteries. She pressed the claim of her son Ivan Shishman over the elder Ivan Sratsimir; after the tsar died in 1371, Shishman succeeded at Tarnovo while Sratsimir declared Vidin a separate empire.