Progonos Sgouros

Progon Skura, ;) was a late 13th-century Byzantine senior military commander from Principality of Arbanon (Medieval Albania) with the rank of megas hetaireiarches. He was lord of Ohrid during the Byzantine Empire's territorial control over the city.

Biography Progon Skura was an Albanian from Durrës (Byzantine Dyrrhachion) and belonged to the prominent Skuraj family. He was married to Eudokia, a female relative of Andronikos II Palaiologos (r. 1282–1328), becoming a gambros of the Byzantine emperor.

Around 1294–1295, he restored the Church of the Virgin Peribleptos in Ohrid, at the time under Byzantine rule, which later came to be known as St. Clement after Saint Clement of Ohrid. Progonos donated an Iconostasis of 8 panels, together with an icon of the Virgin Peribleptos of which only a fragment survived, with the iconostasis depicting the main feasts of the Church. The works were painted by Eutychios and Michael Astrapas, from Thessaloniki. A portrait of Saint Astius in the church was likely donated by him as a symbol of the close ties between Durrës and Ohrid.

In 1296, during Stefan Milutin's invasion of Northern Albania, Progonos would be given command of an Albanian-Byzantine army which would engage the Serbian king somewhere between Ohrid and Tetovo. The battle would result in a victory for Progonos.

Within the church, an inscription mentions Progonos and his wife Eudokia in Greek:

"This divine shrine of the most holy Lady Mother of God Peribleptos was built with the help and expenses of Monsignor Progon Zguros, the Great Etheriarch and his wife Mrs. Eudokia, the son-in-law of our most powerful and pious, the emperor of the Romans, Andronicus Palaeologus…”