Vagenetia or Vagenitia () was a medieval region on the coast of Epirus, roughly corresponding to modern Thesprotia. The region likely derived its name from the Slavic tribe of the Baiounitai. It is first attested as a sclavinia under some sort of Byzantine control in the 8th/9th centuries, passed under Bulgarian rule in the late 9th century, and returned to Byzantine rule in the 11th. It passed to the Despotate of Epirus after 1204, where it formed a separate province. Vagenetia came under Albanian rule in the 1360s, until conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1430. History The region's name derives from the Slavic tribe of the Baiounitai, who appear in the early 7th century during the Slavic invasions of the Balkans. Already during the 8th century, the Byzantine Empire tried to re-impose some control over the region, as a seal of office attests the presence of a civil governor ("Theodore, basilikos spatharios and archon of Vagenitia"), but the reading of the latter is not certain. Byzantine administration is securely attested towards the end of the 9th century, with the presence of both a bishop called Stephen in the Fourth Council of Constantinople in 879, and the seal of a civil governor (the basilikos protospatharios and archon Ilarion) from the turn of the 10th century. The historian Predrag Komatina suggests that the bishopric was an "ethnic" bishopric for the Baiounitai (but with Greek-language liturgy), which then was succeeded by the Slavic-language episcopate of Clement of Ohrid (893–916), which was not organized on a territorial, but on an ethnic basis, and had no fixed centre. Clement's roving episcopate was gradually replaced by bishoprics based in the various cities of the area. At the time of Clement's activity in the area, and during the early 10th century, Vagenetia and its wider area was ruled by the First Bulgarian Empire; thus the local church also became part of the Bulgarian Church, and later of the Archbishopric of Ohrid. The ultimate descendant of the bishopric of Vagenetia was likely the see of Himara. Vagenetia is next mentioned in literary sources in the Alexiad, which describes how, in 1082, the Italo-Normans under Bohemund crossed the region to capture Ioannina. In the Partitio Romaniae of 1204, Vagenetia appears as a chartoularaton (a special district type indicating Slavic settlement) in the province of Dyrrhachium. In 1205, it is listed by Marino Zeno, the Podestà of Constantinople, among