On February 11 the
Bulgarian Orthodox Church reveres the memory of Saint George New of
Sofia, a fervent proponent of the Christian faith who paid for his
passionate devotion with martyrdom.
It is believed that Saint George New of Sofia was born
one century after the fall of Bulgaria under Ottoman domination in 1396.
His martyr's death fanned resistance against the attempts of the Turks
to convert the Bulgarian population into the Islam. It was the time when
the fight against the Islam in Western Europe had come to an end and
when the Balkan peoples in the eastern part of the continent had taken
up the defence of Christianity.
Chroniclers describe him as a humble but virtuous
young man who possessed strength of mind and rich mentality. To escape
recruitment in the elite Turkish army made up of Christian boys reared
in the spirit of the Islam as well as doing domestic service for the
sultan, the young man moved to Sofia. There he became a master hand as a
gold smith. He defended with great stoicism the virtues of Christianity.
The Turks went into fantastic lengths to make him accept the Islam by
offering him the bounties of life but could not lead him into
temptation. That is why they threw him into prison several times,
excruciated him and failing to bend his spirit, sentenced him to
execution in public.
George New
perished on the stake on 11 February 1515 half a century after the
unsuccessful crusade for driving the Turks out of the Balkan Peninsula
led by King Vladislaus III and half a century before the battle at the
Greek port of Lepanto in 1571 when the myth about the invincibility of
the Islam collapsed under the blows of the warships of united Christian
Europe. In Bulgaria the martyr's death of Saint George New of Sofia
heralded the beginning of a sequence of uprisings for national
liberation in 16-17 c. A legend has it that trying as the Turks would to
burn the body of George on the stake, it did not turn into ashes. Under
the cover of the night Christians took his corpse to the Saint Marina
church in the territory of the present-day Sofia bishopric and buried it
with chants. After some time, the relics of Saint George New of Sofia
were taken out to be laid in state. Part of them are kept in the
monastery in the nearby village of Dragalevtsi. During the liturgy the
relics of the saint are placed on the communion table in a gold box made
by Sofia goldsmiths. On the icon Saint George New of Sofia holds a cross
in his right hand and a palm twig in the left as a symbol of glory.
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PEACE HAVENS of BULGARIA
