Nicholas of Sofia the New

Holy New Martyr Nicholas the New of Sofia was a shoemaker from Ioannina, in Epirus, stoned to death at Sofia on 17 May 1555, for remaining faithful to Orthodoxy under Ottoman rule. He is one of the nine holy martyrs of Sofia and is remembered on 17 May by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

Life

According to his life, Nicholas was born at Ioannina, in Epirus. He was a shoemaker, a quiet, pious and hardworking man. When he came to Sofia, the Ottomans began to tempt him to change his faith. He stood firm in the Orthodox faith and then the Ottoman notables decided to make him accept their faith by deceit. They invited him to a meal, put a sleeping drug in his coffee and, when he fell asleep, circumcised him in the Muslim rite. Learning what they had done, Nicholas fled and for a year hid at home. The Ottomans urged him to go to the mosque, but he firmly refused. Then he was bound and tortured. They dragged him to the qadi, but the latter did not find him guilty and ordered him to be released. The angry mob, however, dragged him to the place called Yuchbunar and stoned him to death on 17 May 1555.

After his death, his remains were burned at the cemetery called Tarnitsa, and the ashes scattered, that no memory of him should remain, but the Sofia cleric Matthew Grammatikos told a boy to gather particles of his relics, and the Christians buried them in secret.

Veneration

Metropolitan Jacob of Sofia convened a council and glorified the new saint. He placed the relics of the martyr (parts of his skull and bones) in the coffin with the relics of the protector of Sofia, the holy king Milutin, in the church of Saint Archangel Michael. Later a part of his holy relics was put in a wooden church. The Sofia scholar, Deacon Matthew Grammatikos, a contemporary and eyewitness of the sufferings and death of Saint Nicholas, wrote a service and a longer life of the saint. The manuscript is kept today in the Church Historical and Archaeological Institute at the Holy Synod in Sofia.

Today, on the place of his killing, at number 125 Tsar Simeon street in Sofia, there is a small chapel, and in the garden by the monument to the Adrianople volunteers stands the great church dedicated to him, "Saint Nicholas of Sofia", the second largest in Sofia after the Alexander Nevsky cathedral, built to the plan of the architect Anton Tornyov. One source says it was built in 1900, on Pirotska street. Each year, on 17 May, a small group of people gathers at the grave to pray. In 2010 a church in his honour was consecrated in the village of Chernogor, Tutrakan district, by Metropolitan Neophyte of Ruse. In the usual icon he is shown in the dress of a Roman soldier, with a red cloak and the martyr's cross, the cloak signifying spiritual warfare and the other elements martyrdom. A street in the Nadezhda II district of Sofia bears his name.