Trendafil Kerelov

Saint Trendafil Kerelov, great martyr (born around 1800, died 1876), was a figure of the Bulgarian National Revival, for decades mayor of the town of Batak and one of the organizers and spiritual guides of the Batak uprising in the spring of 1876. He was killed by Ottoman irregulars during the Batak massacre. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church canonized him on 3 April 2011, together with the other people of Batak who were killed and the victims of the Novoselo monastery of the Holy Trinity, at the Liturgy in the Cathedral of Saint Alexander Nevsky in Sofia, served by Patriarch Maxim of Bulgaria. Our record calls him a priest, but the Bulgarian sources do not say he was a priest: they present him as the mayor and elder of the town.

Before the massacre

In his youth he spent twelve years in the service of the mutasarrif of Drama, Seyid Emirli, and took part in trading journeys by land and sea, on which he learned to speak Turkish, Greek, Romanian and Arabic. He returned to Batak, married the daughter of a leading citizen, Delya Kavlakova, and founded the Kerelov family. He traded in timber and hides, grew gradually prosperous and became one of the leading men of the town. For three decades, with some interruptions, he was its mayor.

With the help of Seyid Emirli he was twice received by Sultan Abdulmejid and obtained for Batak the right of possession of the whole Batak plain and kept the town's sawmills. As mayor, in 1835 he opened the first secular school in Batak and brought as its teacher the scholar and publisher Hadji Nayden Ioanovich. He had close ties with the painter Stanislav Dospevski, who made an oil portrait of him in 1857, kept today in the National Art Gallery.

The uprising and his death

Together with his sons, the voivodes Stefan, Angel and Peter Kerelov, he was one of the leading figures of the uprising in the spring of 1876. His son Peter was killed during the uprising, before the eyes of his father and those close to him. When the uprising was put down, the irregulars led by Ahmed Aga Barutanliyata killed the people of Batak with cruelty, and the houses were looted and burned.

Ahmed Aga sent Trendafil to look among the townspeople for his two sons, Stefan and Angel, who were among the leaders of the uprising, but they had fled the town on the very first night. When he returned he was taken to the aga's house and tortured to make him give up all his money. He was burned alive, at the age of sixty-⁠five, before the eyes of those close to him. We know of his death from the testimony of his daughter-⁠in-⁠law, Bosilka Kerelova, who was present, and from the writing of Robert Jasper More, "Under the Balkans", which describes the same end. Stefan and Angel and their families lived to see the Liberation of 1878.

Veneration

In 1976 the people of Batak raised a bust-⁠monument on the place where he was tortured. At the beginning of the twenty-⁠first century the brass bust was stolen, and in 2006 the pedestal was moved to the historic square of the town and rebuilt in stone. On 3 April 2011 Patriarch Maxim announced the canonization of the martyrs of Batak and blessed their icon. Saint Trendafil is painted alone in the upper left corner of the icon, on the pyre, together with the scene of the end of his daughter-⁠in-⁠law's child. Together with the priests Peter and Neycho and the leading citizen Angel Kavlaka, he also has his own place in the Life of the Martyrs of Batak. Our record gives no commemoration date.