Beaten, burned, then tied to wild horses and dragged over rocks in Ephesus – that is how the martyrs Onesiphorus and Porphyrius died, according to old accounts of their lives. The Orthodox calendar honours them on 9 November. The church also marks the day of the venerable Matrona and Theoctista, and of St Nectarios of Aegina.
Onesiphorus and Porphyrius were Christians who suffered under the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian. He ruled from 284 to 305 and is remembered for the harshest persecution of Christians. According to their lives, both men came from Ephesus.
Matrona was an abbess in Constantinople in the 5th century. Theoctista came from the island of Lesbos and lived in the 9th century. Nectarios is almost a man of our time. He was Metropolitan of Pentapolis and died in 1920. Believers honour him as a miracle worker. The Ecumenical Patriarchate declared him a saint on 20 April 1961, and his relics are kept at the Holy Trinity Monastery on the island of Aegina. Of the saints of the day, only he lived in the 20th century.
Outside the church, the oldest event on this date is from 1877 and the newest is from 1989. Two round anniversaries fall between them. On 9 November 1901, the Historical Society was founded in Sofia – 125 years ago. On 9 November 1961, the first research reactor of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the IRT-2000, was officially opened in Sofia – 65 years ago.
The trumpeter of Kaleto
On 9 November 1877, during the Russo-Turkish war of liberation, Russian troops freed Vratsa from Ottoman rule. A mounted detachment under Maj Gen Nikolai Leonov rode into the town. Staff trumpeter Ivan Petlak sounded the stand-down call from Kaleto hill.
In the old-style calendar the date is 28 October. In the new style it is 9 November.
From Kristallnacht to the Berlin Wall
Today is also the International Day against Fascism and Antisemitism. The date marks the night of 9 to 10 November 1938, when mass attacks on Jews began in Germany. It is called Kristallnacht, after the broken glass of Jewish shops and homes. The day is not official in Bulgaria, but the BTA news agency includes it in its daily calendar.
On 9 November again, in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. It had split the city in two since 1961. Thirty-seven years have passed since then.
The next day, 10 November 1989, a plenum of the Bulgarian Communist Party's Central Committee removed Todor Zhivkov as general secretary. This started Bulgaria's move to democracy. Less than 24 hours passed between the night in Berlin and the plenum in Sofia.