St. Forty Martyrs

On March 9, the Bulgarian Orthodox church celebrates the Feast of the St. Forty Martyrs –forty soldiers from the Armenian town of Sevastia, who were burnt on stake by the emperor Likiniums, because they did not want to give up their faith in the Christian belief. Exactly on this day in 1230, the great Bulgarian king Ivan Asen II defeated the feudal lord Teodor Komnin in the battle near Klokotnitza and annexed large areas of land to the Bulgarian territory. To commemorate this victory, Ivan Asen II built the monastery St. Forty Martyrs in Tarnovo, which back then was the capital city of Bulgaria.