Church of St. Petka in Staničenje

The Church of St. Petka, formerly the Church of St. Nikola, is the oldest church in Staničenje. The fresco epitaph which is written on the west wall above the entrance notes that Arsenije, Jefimija, Konstantin and some other members, whose names have been erased by time, painted and built the church between 1331 and 1332. In the time of Bulgarian Emperor Ivan Alexander (bulg. Ivan Asen) and Vidin master, Bulgarian noble Belaur. Some mentioned on the fresco epitaph were already dead by the time the church was completed, so construction was finished by their sons. Later, a narthex and porch on the south side of the church was built but not preserved. A vestibule with an open wooden porch was built in the 19th century.[5]

No written information has been found about the church during the Middle Ages under its former dedication to St.Nikola. In the search for possible records, it was assumed that the church was mentioned as the Church of St. in one Ottoman document, dated to sometime during the rule of Sultan Mehmed III. In later centuries, several historical sources of data recorded statements which illuminate the fate of the church in Staničenje in the late 18th century and the first decades of the 19th century. In some memoirs of archpriest Aleksa Minčić from Staničenje, the following is noted:

"A long time ago, it must have been at the end of the 18th century, the priests and all the people who happened to be [in the church] perished, so after that the church was closed for the next 30 years. And it was like this: one year, just for Annunciation, in the time when the priests organized a Divine Liturgy, in the church and the churchyard were many people. Suddenly, [the thugs from] Kardzhali struck and attacked the people in the church and churchyard, and the most horrible killing and slaughtering of people and priests began. All people and priests were killed that day. Everything was plundered and the church was almost destroyed in that Kardzhali action. And today, when someone digs in the churchyard, human bones are found. Those are the bones from the Annunciation. Since then, the church in Staničenje could no longer serve its purpose until 1829. In that time, [it] did not have a priest because they were often killed. In that year, 1829, the people of Staničenje get one priest and they ask the landowner to allow them to recover back the church so it can serve its purpose. The landowner accommodates them under the condition that they must give him, in the name of a church holiday, 26th July, a sterile sheep every year. People of Staničenje recovered the church and it began to serve again to its purpose, and the landowner, since that year, received sterile sheep from the village every year."

Thanks to some surviving records, that event can be reliably dated to the 1796. In a liturgical book from the Monastery of St. Dimitrije near Bela Palanka, it was recorded that those years Kardzhali plundered and burned many villages and towns. The same event was mentioned in the record of priest Nikola on a manuscript of the Gospel, which is now held in Sofia. The church was desecrated for the last time in the fall of 1877, following the liberation from the Ottoman Empire. The Circassians plundered, looted, and desecrated all of Staničenje, burning all the liturgical books in the Church of St. Petka as well.

During the restoration which followed soon after the liberation, the Church of St. Petka received her first church bells. On one of them is a relief of St. Sava and an inscription which says:

• "After 500 years of slavery under the Turks, for the first time, we ring out the bell in remembrance of our posterity and for the glory of the Church of St. Petka –Staničenje municipality."

At the bottom of the bell, 1882 is engraved. On the second bell, there is an inscription reading:

• "To commemorate our liberation from the Turks, and to the glory of our King Milan M. Obrenović, we pour out this bell. –From Villagers of Staničenje to our church St. Petka."

Around the perimeter of the bottom of the bell was inscribed "Đorđe Bota and the sons" and also the year 1882.

In an attempt to obtain more information from a possible chronicles and residual memories, Radivoje Ljubinković, during archeological works, conducted a questionnaire among the oldest inhabitants of the village. From this, he learned that the church was not significantly rebuilt or enlarged in the last 100 years (meaning after the liberation in 1877), and the final form was acquired during Turkish rule. He recorded the legend that the main church in the village was the church of St. Jovan the Baptist, once located near the present cemetery, and after its demolition, the Church of St. Petka became the village church. The founder of the Serbian Archeological Society and the member-trustee of Pirot district was Jovan Popović, a teacher from Staničenje. In the first issue of Starinar, published in 1884, Popović detailed his reports from the field and architectural findings from the area of Staničenje. It is interesting that this highly educated teacher failed to mention the Church of St. Petka among the village's antiquities, apparently not recognizing a medieval settlement in such a modest and remodeled form.[6]

Map of St. Petka Church in Staničenje

The elevated plateau above the coast of the Nišava river and its local microenvironment, where the church is located, represents a dominant strategic position. Soil composition on which church was built consist of fluvial sediments– earth with sand, fine gravel, and many of pebbles of various sizes, from very small ones to large stones about 20–30 centimeters in diameter. During research, it was found that the oldest cultural layer, formed at the site, was from the time when the church was constructed. A solitary discovery of an early Byzantine fibula, followed by a later discovery of bricks (mostly of their fragments) embedded within the soil, as well as a carved altar in the function of a column, does not indicate the existence of an ancient layer. During the research of the church and its surrounding churchyard, it was noticed that there was evidence of several construction phases through many centuries. The oldest phase is the primary construction of the feudal Church of St. Nikola, accompanied by a narthex in the following years, and the whole ensemble is vividly painted in 1331–1332. In the second phase, some time after the destruction of narthex, in its stead an ordinary porch was built. This upgrade has not precisely been dated in time, but it can be assumed that it was sometime before the end of the 16th century. The next two phases of extensions and upgrades can be reliably dated to the 18th century, before 1796 when the old church in Staničenje was severely damaged.

During the third phase, a spacious half-timbered narthex was built on the site of the former porch, after which an annex with a longitudinal rectangular base was added to the southern side of the church, which places it in the fourth stage of construction interventions on the church. The fifth phase was classified as the restoration conducted in 1829, and would lend the church its form until 1972. The last phase of construction of the church was a conservation and restoration effort carried out from 1973 to 1976, when the Church of St. Petka was rebuilt and had its open narthex restored, thus giving the church its final form.[7]

Chursch of St. Petka before reconstruction

In its original 1332 state, St. Nikola's church was built as a humble rectangular church with a semi-circular altar apse on the east with a total length of 8.9 meters and a width of 5.1 meters. The church is vaulted with a barrel vault, built of cut limestone, the top of which is about 5.6 meters above the floor level. The walls are crudely constructed, with irregularities that can be seen even on the surfaces covered with paintings. The thickness of the walls is uneven, decreasing in higher areas. Northern and southern walls, closer to the floor, are approximately 0.9 meters, while some walls nearer to the vault do not exceed 0.7–0.8 meters. A similar phenomenon can be seen in the wall of the altar apse on the ground level – the wall is over one meter thick. The foundation walls are very shallow (0.3–0.4 meters) and were roughly built by pouring the wall mass into an irregularly dug trench. The materials of the walls are almost entirely made from river pebbles attached with a mortar binder. They were reinforced with wooden crossbars (beams of square cross section, from 15×15 centimeters to 18×18 centimeters) which were located inside the structure of the wall mass – two parallel beams were placed in horizontal lines at the distance between them were 0.7 to 0.8 meters vertically. On the outer face of the wall, they appear only under the roof cornice and at the same level they cut the base of both gables. From the inside part of the wall, outer beams are covered only with a layer of fresco plaster. In the western wall, there is a modestly modeled entrance with a stone threshold and shallow jambs. The architrave lintel consists of a series of beams of square cross sections and in that frame there was a wooden structure with double-winged doors.[7]

The interior of the church is illuminated only by two small windows. One window, elevated about three meters above the floor level, was placed just below the arch in the central part of the southern wall. It was modeled in the form of round-arched niche, with a relatively narrow opening to the outside part of the wall. Later, that window was bricked, but its original form with fresco decoration was preserved. There was a similar window above the altar in the wall of the altar apse. It was later replaced by a larger window during the reconstruction, but during conservation work it was restored, similar to another one from the south wall. The interior is decorated with frescoes, painted on walls which were divided into two compartments; these were removed in a later phase. That wall was large, 0.55 meters thick and about 2.3 meters tall. On the top side of that wall was placed a molded cornice, which protracted along the northern, western and southern walls, separating the first zone with a gallery of paintings and founder fresco-portraits with an inscription saying Arsenije, Jefimija, i Konstan built the church in 1331-1332.
The nave , measuring 4.2x3.35m, was separated from the large altar space by a wall altar partition. Due to the limited area of the altar, the original altar table made of bricks was set up with the apse wall. All that remains of it is a print on the surrounding painting, surrounded by a red border, and a substructure discovered during archaeological excavations. It is about a meter from the floor, topped with shingles, approximately 0.7 meters wide, which stood on a stone column.[7]

The Church of St. Petka was covered with roof tiles, which is evidenced by the fact that there are no remains of roof bricks and no indications of the existence of a lead covering above the vault. The cornice, which has not been preserved in its original form, was probably made of a series of roughly-hewn stone slabs.[7]

Shortly after the church was built, a narthex was added, which had a length of 4 meters of internal space, but because of deviation of the northern wall, its width is unequal. The facade of the narthex is 4.6 meters in length by and approximately 4 meters on the western side. The walls of original the original narthex were about 0.8 to 0.85 meters thick and shallow grounded (about 0.3 meters deep). Therefore it is preserved only in parts. During the subsequent reconstruction, a significant part of the south wall disappeared and the central part of the west wall along with the last remains of the entrance were also destroyed.
According to the founder caption and information obtained by archaeological excavations, the original St. Nikola church in Staničenje was built during the third decade of the 14th century. In that period, the church itself was first built with a single nave base, to which a narthex was added soon - perhaps only a few years later. The aforementioned extension preceded the painting of both the nave and the narthex, which was completed in 1331-1332.[7]

Donor's inscription in the church of St. Petka

According to the fine clothing, jewellery, and wealth of figures painted on the walls, the village of Staničenje stands out from most monuments of its time. A well-organized group of painters carried out the whole gallery of portraits on the western part of the nave, composed of ten figures. Several portraits were painted in the narthex, but today only fresco fragments of them remain, which are kept in the Gallery of Frescoes in Belgrade. Shown are the costumes and figures of noblemen, noblewomen, aristocrats, monks, and nuns, of different ages. These frescoes are important sources of material for understanding the aristocratic and royal costumes of the period.
The founder’s inscription was written on the inner western wall of the nave, above the entrance to the church, covering the entire width of the lintel. The text of the inscription is written in four lines on a white background in black letters of unequal size, and it informs that several people participated in the construction and painting of the church The text begins with the trinity invocation in Church Slavonic language: “Izvolenijem Otca I savršenijem Sina I sapospešenijem”,common to founding inscriptions of Serbs and Bulgarians in the Middle Ages. At the very beginning, the first word was preceded by a small painted cross, partially preserved ( Latin invocatio symbolica ), which usually began and ended inscriptions of this type in the Middle Ages. Unusual, however, is that the mention of the Bulgarian Emperor also mentions the name of the Vidin master Balaur. The label reveals that Balaur was co-ruler, which is important proof of his real power within the Bulgarian elite.[8]

The birth of Christ in church St. Petka in Staničenje

Frescoes in St. Petka Church in Staničenje

Painted work in the church has been mostly preserved. Inside the church, frescoes on the barrel vault were destroyed, but the rest of these frescoes are easy to read and thematically easily understood. However, the quality of frescoes, paintings, and their details have diminished because of pulverization processes. These marks are visible on all parts of the frescoes, and because of that process they appear to be covered with a layer of gray scum. A considerable deal of detail, especially on the incarnate figures, has disappeared forever. Relatively little has been written so far about Staničenje's frescoes. In the first report that Radivoje and Mirjana Ljubinković published after the archeological and conservational works on the church, the church was finally known to science. Unfortunately, frescoes in Staničenje remain largely incomplete.[9]

• The frescoes on the half-shaped vault in the naos, today almost destroyed, contained standing representations of Old Testament prophets, as shown by the small remains of the painting. In the southern half and in the eastern part, there are the remains of three standing figures. Comparing the size of the space in the extension, it can be assumed that there were ten figures on that side, that is, on both sides of the vault a total of over twenty.[10]
• The smaller dimensions of the building led to a diminished quantity of frescoes in the altar. In it, there is no scene of the Communion of the Apostles. The frescoes from the vault and the triumphal arch - the Ascension of Christ and the Annunciation to the Mother of God - belong to the already discussed set of Great Holidays.The conch of the apse contains unusual representations of the Virgin Mary with Christ, enthroned with St. Nicholas and St. Cyril the Philosopher; in the area below, depicted is the Adoration to Christ - the victim. In the niche, Christ lies half-naked, dead, and on the walls are three standing figures of Deacons, and on the eastern and southern walls are frontal busts of two bishops.[11]
• The content of frescoes on the eastern wall of the narthex consists of the following parts:

1. cycle patron of the church,
2. frieze of busts of saints,
3. standing figures in the first zone,
4. high-placed decorative belt

Unlike frescoes in the nave, the remaining frescoes in the narthex were not protected over time, and they have faded and suffered during this time. Interpreting these frescoes is thus far more difficult, and stylistic features can not be easily identified. Three upper zones of the frescoes are a dedicated cycle of St. Nikola, patron saint of Staničenje. In the lower part, starting from the north, are compositions of three dukes in a dungeon. These illustrations are some of the more famous miracles of St. Nikola, but their fresco depictions are incompletely preserved. We can only recognize a figure part one of the three wrongly accused dukes by Emperor Constantine who locks them in a dungeon, as is noted in written sources of St. Nikola.[12]

• М. Popović, S. Gabelić, B. Cvetković, B. Popović, Church of St Nikola in Staničenje, 2005, Belgrade, ISBN 86-80093-50-5