Nicholas Barbulov

Priest Nikola Barbulov was a teacher and priest of the village of Novo Selo (today Apriltsi), killed by the Turks on 9 May 1876, in the massacre at the Holy Trinity Monastery. He was canonized as a holy martyr by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church on 3 April 2011; he is commemorated on 26 April (9 May by the new calendar), together with the other martyrs of Novo Selo.

He was a learned man who studied with effort in Bessarabia, a lover of books, a skilled teacher and a worthy priest, who raised many pupils; his spiritual sons were the most active part of the body of the Church, and many of them received the priesthood. Those who honoured him compared him to the great patriarch Euthymius, because he stayed to the end the keeper of his flock. He was not a bloodless martyr: he died in terrible torments without renouncing the faith, in the massacre of 9 May 1876 at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Novo Selo, when the monastery was attacked by bashi-⁠bazouks and Circassians. His body, with those of the other martyrs, rests today in the monastery church. The Russian Church too entered his name in its calendar, in 2011, with commemoration on 26 April (9 May).