On 28 October the Bulgarian Orthodox Church honours St Paraskeva of Iconium, a martyr who suffered in Iconium in 303 under Emperor Diocletian.
People named Paraskeva and Paraskev celebrate their name day.
The family beheaded under Decius
The church also remembers today the martyrs Terentius and Neonilla and their children. They were Christians with seven children, who shared their fate.
In court, the whole family refused to make a sacrifice to idols and declared their faith in Christ. They were tortured, but according to their life story, angels helped and healed them. They were thrown to wild beasts, which did them no harm. They were then put into a cauldron of boiling tar, but the fire under it went out. In the end they were beheaded with a sword under Emperor Decius, who ruled from 249 to 251.
A Bulgarian tsaritsa made a saint in Bucharest
Today is also the feast of St Theophana. She was Theodora, the first wife of Tsar Ivan Alexander. She was a patron of books and learning and founded churches and monasteries.
The Romanian Orthodox Church declared her a saint on 21 May 2022 in Bucharest. Her first feast in Bulgaria was planned for 28 October 2022 at the Ivanovo rock-hewn monastery near Ruse. On 28 October the church also honours St Stephen the Sabaite and St Demetrius of Rostov.
What else happened on 28 October
On this date in 1944, Bulgaria signed an armistice with the Allies in Moscow. Ten years earlier, in 1934, Tsar Boris III opened the Soldiers' Memorial in Sofia, a monument to the fallen of the 1st Sofia and 6th Tarnovo infantry regiments. In 1902, the first issue of the newspaper Zemedelsko Zname came out in Stara Zagora.
Greece, Bulgaria's neighbour, marks Ohi Day in memory of 28 October 1940, when it rejected Mussolini's ultimatum. The Czech Republic marks the anniversary of the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918. The day is also the eve of the national holiday of Turkey, Bulgaria's southern neighbour, which falls on 29 October. Today is also International Animation Day. It has been marked since 2002 in memory of the first showing of "luminous pantomimes" in Paris in 1892.
Happy name day to Paraskeva and Paraskev!