Elisaveta Zliyska

The nun Elisaveta (Elizabeth) Zliyska († 1876) was one of the nuns of the Holy Trinity convent at Novo Selo (today Apriltsi), killed by the Turks on 9 May 1876 in the monastery church. She was canonized as a holy martyr by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church on 3 April 2011; she is commemorated on 26 April (9 May by the new calendar), together with the other martyrs of Novo Selo.

The story of the martyred nuns is not preserved in detail: only what is told in the accounts handed down from generation to generation in the families of Novo Selo and the testimonies of the four nuns who escaped with their lives. In the convent the nuns lived in angelic virginity and devoted their labours and prayers both to their own salvation and to the good of their neighbours. On 9 May 1876, when the bashi-⁠bazouks burst into the village, the nuns took refuge in the monastery church; the Turks fired at the windows, entered and cut down all in the church, among them the abbess Susana, six nuns, Elisaveta among them, and one laywoman. Their relics are today in the monastery church.