Church of Saint George in Sozopol: A Bulgarian Orthodox Church
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Bulgaria
- Primary era
- Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Classical, Modern
- Civilizations
- Bulgarian, Ottoman, Roman
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page6 sections
History
The nineteenth-century church
The Church of Saint George in Sozopol is a Bulgarian Orthodox church in Sozopol, Bulgaria, built in 1860 in the Bulgarian National Revival style. Dedicated to Saint George, a Christian martyr traditionally understood to have been a Roman soldier, it belongs to the Sliven Diocese, an ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The church was formerly the cathedral of the Diocese of Sozopol.
The present building stands in Sozopol’s Old Town near the former basilica of the Monastery of Saint John, a religious community and the complex in which its members lived and worshipped. Investigations beneath the church identified an earlier late-antique predecessor dating to around AD 330, placing Christian activity at the site in the fourth century.
Later changes and religious associations
The church has undergone several alterations and repairs. Its current appearance follows a reconstruction completed in 1991. In the early 1990s, the medieval metropolitan basilica of the Monastery of Saint John in the Old Town was excavated and conserved, further clarifying the historical setting around the church.
The church’s religious importance is also connected with relics associated with early Christianity. Its feast day is celebrated on May 6.
Remains
Church building
The surviving church is a three-aisled, single-apse pseudo-basilica. This is a basilica-like building with a central nave and side aisles, but without the full upper-window arrangement of a true basilica. An adjoining bell tower forms part of the complex. The interior contains valuable icons dating from the second half of the nineteenth century, while a mosaic or fresco of Saint George is positioned above the entrance.
Relics preserved in the church
The church preserves a fragment of the True Cross presented by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the honorary primate of the Eastern Orthodox communion. It also holds part of the relics of the Apostle Andrew, one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus, which came from a find at the Monastery of Saint John. Relics of Saint John the Baptist, the Jewish preacher regarded by Christians as the forerunner of Jesus, were discovered on Saint Ivan Island and are kept in the church as well.
