The Church of Saint Sofia

Sofia is one aspect of Jesus as the image of Divine Wisdom. Sofia is not only a spiritual category, but also a woman's name. It was worn by the Christian Saint Sofia, who lived in the 2nd century. The story describes the life of the righteous and deeply-believing Christ-widow Sophia and her three high-believing daughters. Emperor Hadrian, who ruled Rome in the 2nd century AD, was worshiped in the worship of the goddess Artemis. He ordered his mother and her children to bring him. After promises of gifts, he could not persuade the family of a humble widow to give up Christ. Then the emperor decided on drastic measures. With torture, he tried to persuade them to give up their faith. But the mother and daughters were too devoted to their faith, for which they paid with their lives. All three girls did not survive the torture, but Sofia, who laid their bodies torn to the ground and died in their graves after three days.
There are many Orthodox churches dedicated to Sofia - Wisdom of God. Among them, the most famous is the Church of Saint Sophia in Constantinople, the main church of the Byzantine Empire until 1453 throughout the Orthodox world.
The Church of Saint Sofia - Wisdom of God is located in the center of the Bulgarian capital Sofia, near the temple-monument of St. Alexander Nevsky. It is one of the oldest churches in Sofia and its history is closely related to the history of the city. Today, the temple is considered one of the symbols of the capital Sofia.

The church was built in the sixth century, during the Byzantine emperor Justinian (reigned 527-565), on the foundations of four ancient Christian temples from the fourth century.
The Church of Saint Sofia was built on the site of the necropolis of Serdika (the ancient name of Sofia), other older churches in IV. and dozens of stone tombs. During the archaeological work, fragments from the mosaic of one of the oldest temples were found. It is estimated that the building can hold up to 5,000 believers. In the XI - XIV centuries the Church of Saint Sofia was metropolitan and its glory was so great that in the XIV century it gave its name to the city. In the sixteenth century, during the Ottoman rule, the church was converted into a mosque and the murals were destroyed. According to legend, in the sixteenth century. in front of the church was burned alive the golden master George, who refused to convert to Islam. The great earthquakes of 1818 and 1858 destroyed the minaret and caused damage to the building, and according to one legend, during the second earthquake, the two sons of the Hoxha were killed in the building. Muslims saw this as a bad sign and abandoned the temple. It was deserted for a long time, and after the Liberation of Bulgaria from Turkish slavery (1878) was transformed into a warehouse.

The building has been rebuilt several times since the beginning of the twentieth century. archaeological research is being done here. Currently, the appearance of the temple is as close as possible to its authentic appearance from the time of late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Not far from the church in 1873 the revolutionary Vasil Levski was hanged. Behind the church is the tomb of the great Bulgarian writer Ivan Vazov.
Today, in the immediate vicinity of the temple is the monument of an unknown warrior, a symbol of homage to the memory of all Bulgarian soldiers who died for their homeland.



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