Enravota

Saint Enravota, also called Voin (the Warrior) or Boyan, was the eldest son of Khan Omurtag of Bulgaria and the first Bulgarian Christian martyr, the earliest Bulgarian saint to be canonised. The Bulgarian Church commemorates him on 28 March.

He was born in the early ninth century and was the elder brother of Malamir, who came to the throne of Bulgaria after their father in 831. Another brother, Zvinitsa, seems to have died earlier. Enravota was passed over for the succession, according to the sources because he was drawn to Christianity, which the boyars saw as a danger to the court; at that time the pagan khans of the Bulgars persecuted Christians. According to the medieval sources, a Greek priest, Kinamon, was in prison, put there in the time of Omurtag (by other accounts, of Krum) for refusing to take part in a pagan sacrifice. Soon after his father's death, Enravota asked Malamir to free him and give him to him. The prisoner's teaching brought him to the Christian faith, and he was baptised, taking the name Boyan.

When Malamir learned of it, he ordered his brother to renounce the faith of the Romans. According to his life, Enravota answered that he loathed the pagan idols and honoured Christ, the true God, and that no one could separate him from his love of Christ. Then Malamir ordered him put to the sword, around 833. According to the eleventh-⁠century chronicler Theophylact of Ohrid, before his death he spoke a prophecy: the faith for which he was dying would spread through all the land of the Bulgars, the cross of Christ would be established and churches built everywhere, and the idols and their temples would fall. The baptism of Bulgaria took place three decades later. Some historians today doubt Theophylact's account and think that Enravota took part in a plot against his brother or the regent Isbul.

The Church enrolled him among the saints under the name of the martyr Boyan-⁠Enravota, prince of Bulgaria, and he is the first saint of Bulgarian roots attested in hagiography; only one church bears his name, at Novi Pazar. A glacier in Antarctica is named after him. His feast is on 28 March.