The Elenska Basilica or Elensko Basilica is a large partially preserved late Roman

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

 (early Byzantine

Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...

) Christian

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

 basilica

Basilica

The Latin word basilica , was originally used to describe a Roman public building, usually located in the forum of a Roman town. Public basilicas began to appear in Hellenistic cities in the 2nd century BC.The term was also applied to buildings used for religious purposes...

 in west central Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

. Dating to the 5th–6th century AD, it lies 5 to 6 km (3.1 to 3.7 mi) northeast of Pirdop

Pirdop

Pirdop is a town located in South-West Bulgaria of Sofia Province in the southeastern part of the Zlatitsa - Pirdop Valley at 670 m above sea level. It is surrounded by the Balkan Range to the north, Sredna Gora Mountain to the south, and Koznitsa and Galabets saddles to the east and west,...

 and 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) from Anton

Anton, Bulgaria

Anton is a village in western Bulgaria, part of Sofia Province. It is the administrative centre of Anton Municipality, which lies in the easternmost part of Sofia Province. Anton is situated in the Zlatitsa–Pirdop Valley, 80 kilometres east of the capital Sofia...

, on the right bank of the Elenska (or Elensko) River (Еленска река, Elenska reka). The initially domeless basilica, which features thick walls and defensive towers, had a dome

Dome

A dome is a structural element of architecture that resembles the hollow upper half of a sphere. Dome structures made of various materials have a long architectural lineage extending into prehistory....

 added in the mid-6th century, during the reign of Justinian I

Justinian I

Justinian I ; , ; 483– 13 or 14 November 565), commonly known as Justinian the Great, was Byzantine Emperor from 527 to 565. During his reign, Justinian sought to revive the Empire's greatness and reconquer the lost western half of the classical Roman Empire.One of the most important figures of...

. The church was ruined in the early 18th century, during the Ottoman

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

 rule of Bulgaria.

Architecture

Archaeologists have clearly distinguished two separate building periods based on the basilica's ruins. The Elenska Basilica's middle and western sections are older and constructed out of brick

Brick

A brick is a block of ceramic material used in masonry construction, usually laid using various kinds of mortar. It has been regarded as one of the longest lasting and strongest building materials used throughout history.-History:...

 and crushed stones, whereas the more recent eastern section was built out of homogeneous bricks with thick grout

Grout

Grout is a construction material used to embed rebars in masonry walls, connect sections of pre-cast concrete, fill voids, and seal joints . Grout is generally composed of a mixture of water, cement, sand, often color tint, and sometimes fine gravel...

s joined using red mortar

Mortar (masonry)

Mortar is a workable paste used to bind construction blocks together and fill the gaps between them. The blocks may be stone, brick, cinder blocks, etc. Mortar becomes hard when it sets, resulting in a rigid aggregate structure. Modern mortars are typically made from a mixture of sand, a binder...

. Analysis of the church's ruins, which are up to 8.5 metres (27.9 ft) in height, has established that it was a three-nave

Nave

In Romanesque and Gothic Christian abbey, cathedral basilica and church architecture, the nave is the central approach to the high altar, the main body of the church. "Nave" was probably suggested by the keel shape of its vaulting...

d basilica. The church's dimensions were 30.5 by. It featured a large apse

Apse

In architecture, the apse is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome...

 in the centre, flanked by two smaller apses. The middle nave was divided into two squares by four identical columns. The narthex

Narthex

The narthex of a church is the entrance or lobby area, located at the end of the nave, at the far end from the church's main altar. Traditionally the narthex was a part of the church building, but was not considered part of the church proper...

, which lay in the church's western section, accommodated a diaconicon

Diaconicon

The Diaconicon is, in the Eastern Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Churches, the name given to a chamber on the south side of the central apse of the church, where the vestments, books, etc, that are used in the Divine Services of the church are kept .The Diaconicon contains the thalassidion...

 and a prothesis

Prothesis (altar)

The Prothesis is the place in the sanctuary in which the Liturgy of Preparation takes place in the Eastern Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Churches....

. A baptisterium

Baptisterium

In classical antiquity, a baptisterium was a large basin installed in private or public baths into which bathers could plunge, or even swim about. It is more commonly called natatorium or piscina....

 was located in the church's southern section. A 1.6 m (5.2 ft) wide defensive wall surrounded the church. Four rectangular defensive towers were located in each corner of the wall. The towers were almost identical in size and measured around 7.3 by. The defensive wall is thought to have been 6 to 8 m (19.7 to 26.2 ft) tall.

History

The Elensko area where the church is located (and which was the basis for its name) was known to have been inhabited in antiquity by a Thracian

Thracians

The ancient Thracians were a group of Indo-European tribes inhabiting areas including Thrace in Southeastern Europe. They spoke the Thracian language – a scarcely attested branch of the Indo-European language family...

 tribe, who around the 6th–5th century BC joined the Bessi

Bessi

The Bessi were an independent Thracian tribe who lived in a territory ranging from Moesia to Mount Rhodope in southern Thrace, but are often mentioned as dwelling about Haemus, the mountain range that separates Moesia from Thrace and from Mount Rhodope to the northern part of Hebrus...

 state. Thracologist Alexander Fol

Alexander Fol

Alexander Fol was a Bulgarian historian and Thracologist. In 1957, he studied history at the University of St. Kliment Ohridski in Sofia and earned a PhD in 1966. He worked as a university lecturer from 1972 and became a professor in 1975...

 links the area's name (which he derives from the Bulgarian word елен elen, "deer

Deer

Deer are the ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. Species in the Cervidae family include white-tailed deer, elk, moose, red deer, reindeer, fallow deer, roe deer and chital. Male deer of all species and female reindeer grow and shed new antlers each year...

") to an ancient legend about a deer who would descend from the Balkan Mountains

Balkan Mountains

The Balkan mountain range is a mountain range in the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula. The Balkan range runs 560 km from the Vrashka Chuka Peak on the border between Bulgaria and eastern Serbia eastward through central Bulgaria to Cape Emine on the Black Sea...

 on the same day every year to be ritually sacrificed

Animal sacrifice

Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing of an animal as part of a religion. It is practised by many religions as a means of appeasing a god or gods or changing the course of nature...

 by the natives. Indeed, plenty of deer remains have been unearthed in the vicinity of the basilica. Another theory derives the name of the area from the Bulgarianized name of the Greeks

Names of the Greeks

The Greeks have been called by several names, both by themselves and by other people. The most common native ethnonym is Hellenes ; the name Greeks was used by the Romans and then in all European languages....

, елини elini ("Hellenes"), explained by the church's construction in the early Byzantine period.

The Elenska Basilica was in active use during the Second Bulgarian Empire

Second Bulgarian Empire

The Second Bulgarian Empire was a medieval Bulgarian state which existed between 1185 and 1396 . A successor of the First Bulgarian Empire, it reached the peak of its power under Kaloyan and Ivan Asen II before gradually being conquered by the Ottomans in the late 14th-early 15th century...

 (11th–14th century) as a literary centre and an Eastern Orthodox

Eastern Orthodox Church

The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...

 monastery. A 13th-century literary work in Middle Bulgarian

History of the Bulgarian language

The History of the Bulgarian language can be divided into four major periods:* prehistoric period ;...

, the Pirdop Acts of the Apostles

Acts of the Apostles

The Acts of the Apostles , usually referred to simply as Acts, is the fifth book of the New Testament; Acts outlines the history of the Apostolic Age...

, may have been authored there, as a legend says it was discovered in the church's ruins in the 19th century. It remained in use until around 1700, when the local Ottoman forces under Yahya Pasha are thought to have purposefully destroyed it during a military campaign. The Ottomans reportedly bombarded the church with cannons and set it ablaze because they regarded the monks as rebellious.

The earliest archaeological research on the Elenska Basilica dates to the 1890s, when local teachers explored the ruins. Archaeologist Petar Mutafchiev conducted excavations in 1913 and published his findings in the article The Elenska Basilica in the vicinity of Pirdop. The church has only been slightly reconstructed since then. The basilica's ruins are in a satisfactory and stable condition, though the surrounding defensive wall has been mostly destroyed.