The faith and impatience of the people were so great that the temple was built in 38 days.
There are more than a hundred churches in Bulgaria that bear the name "Assumption". Among them is the church in the Rhodope village of Shiroka Laka. To the Great Mother of God
BGNES tells about the temple, erected in less than 40 days by residents.
The temple remains forever in history as a fiery symbol of the unbreakable and true Christian faith of the Bulgarian woman, unbroken during the long and dark years of slavery.
Before the construction of the Assumption Church in Shiroka Laka, as early as 1702, thanks to the initiative of priest Dimitar Mitinevski, the first chapel in the village was built. The priest devoted more than 70 years of his life to the church, and after his death, the services and services in the village were performed only in summer by travelling monks from the Athos monasteries.
At the beginning of the 19th century, broadcasters repeatedly asked the Metropolitan of Plovdiv to send them a priest, and after a long wait, a local boy was appointed to serve in the church. This is Kostadin Vassilev-Shoko, but after a conspiracy by corrupt officials in the Metropolis, on Dimitrov Day 1828, priest Atanas Grigorov came in his place. Both priests, however, are fighting with all their might to build a large church in the village.
After the end of the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-1829, also known as the War of the Peace of Adrianople, Sultan Mahmud II (the 30th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire) managed to introduce a series of reforms in the administration of the empire.
His reformist and revolutionary Oriental ideas and perceptions of rule marked the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire and dynasty.
According to the clauses of the Peace Treaty of Edirne, signed after the victory of the Ottoman Empire in the war with Russia, the Sultan granted some religious freedom to the enslaved population within the borders of the state and gave his permission to Christians far more freely to profess their faith, build churches and build schools.
The residents of Shiroka Laka were quick to take advantage of the new reforms and in 1833 they sent messengers with the task of asking for permission to build a new Christian church in their village. The delegation, headed by Kostadin Vassilev-Shoko, left for Constantinople to beg permission from the High Gate.
In 1834, the residents received permission with a document "Antiminst of the church from the consecration in 1835" to build a prayer house, but with the condition that it should not be new, but "on the foundations of old churches". There was another condition - the temple was to be erected in exactly 40 days.
The chosen place, where even today I find the Assumption Church, was right opposite the guesthouse of an Ottoman ruler in Shiroka Luka - Smail aga, and if you saw the new church, it would overshadow it in beauty.
The main organizers of the construction were Todor Posrev and Damyan Karov from Shiroka Laka, and they supervised the local construction group. The master craftsman was Mityu Kiryakov, a well-known church builder in the White Sea and the Middle Rhodopes. His name is still carved in large letters in the middle of the balcony railing.
The materials for the construction were brought from the Rupski Kamak area, which is located about two kilometres from the construction site. The people made a living chain and the stones were passed from hand to hand.
The folk memory in the village also tells how men, women, grandmothers, old men, and children left their homes and came to the site of the construction of the temple. Around-the-clock work on the church began with great joy, as people had long dreamed of their own church. Some dug, others carried stones, others prepared them, others cut beams, and others prepared lime and sand. Mothers with infants in their arms built swings in the trees for the babies, and rushed to help in the construction.
Thanks to the tireless work, the broadcasters coped with the difficult task of erecting the temple in 40 days. Legend has it that the impatience of the people was so great that the building was ready on the 38th day.
The church is iconographed twice. The images on the first layer, applied in 1835, are by a self-taught icon painter who painted the eastern half of the temple with 37 separate, unrelated images and scenes. The second layer was laid in 1901 by Radoslav Bulgarov – a teacher and self-taught painter from Stara Zagora.
The frescoes were restored by the National Institute for Cultural Monuments in the period 1980-1987 after the church was registered as an architectural cultural monument in 1973.
The iconostasis was created in 1835, with ten of the icons being the work of Zachary Zograf from the Samokov school.
The church still has original carvings, icons and frescoes. | BGNES
