Petka of the Balkans (St. Paraskevi of Epivates)

St. Paraskevi (Petka) of Epivates — of Tarnovo, of the Balkans — is an eleventh-century ascetic and hermitess, not a martyr, commemorated on 14 October, who must be kept entirely distinct from the second-century Great Martyr of Rome whose name she shares. Born at Epivates on the Sea of Marmara near Constantinople, she gave away her goods, lived as an ascetic in the wilderness of the Jordan and elsewhere, returned to her homeland, and reposed in peace; her incorrupt relics were discovered, and over the following centuries travelled Epivates → Tarnovo → Belgrade → Constantinople → Iași, where they remain enshrined. She is among the most beloved saints of Bulgaria, Serbia, and Romania, where she is “Sfânta Parascheva,” patroness of Moldavia and of the city of Iași. Her principal Life is that of Patriarch Euthymius of Tarnovo (late 14th c.); the modern scholarship on her cult and the journey of her relics is associated above all with Matei Cazacu.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Great Martyr; healer of the eyes)

A Different Saint of the Same Name

The reader must begin by setting aside the Roman Great Martyr entirely. The saint treated here is not a second-century virgin-martyr of Rome but an eleventh-century ascetic of the Byzantine Balkans, and almost nothing in her life resembles the Passio of the Roman Paraskevi: she was not a preacher arraigned before a pagan emperor, she suffered no tortures, she was not beheaded, and she is not the patroness of the eyes. She lived as a hermitess and died in peace; her fame rests not on a martyrdom but on the incorruption of her relics and their long Balkan journey (so the Bibliotheca Sanctorum, distinguishing the entries on Parasceve of Rome and Parasceve/Petka of Epivates; cf. The Name Paraskevi). Her feast is 14 October, not 26 July (Nikodemos the Hagiorite, Synaxaristes, 14 October).

The name is the same word in two languages. The Greek Paraskeve (Παρασκευή, “Friday,” “Preparation”) is rendered in the Slavic tongues as Petka (from pet, “five,” the older reckoning of Friday as the fifth day), and in Romanian as Parascheva; so in Bulgarian, Serbian, and Russian sources she is Sveta Petka and in Romanian Sfânta Parascheva — a translation of the one name, not the multiplication of saints (see The Name Paraskevi). Because the Greek and the Slavic forms are the same name, a Greek hearing of “Agia Paraskeve” and a Bulgarian hearing of “Sveta Petka” could easily suppose they spoke of one saint; the fact that they often do not is the central reason this collection keeps the cults apart (see The Conflation Problem).

To keep her epithets straight: she is called of Epivates for her birthplace, of Tarnovo for the Bulgarian capital that first received her relics and where her great Life was written, of the Balkans for the breadth of her cult, and the New (Παρασκευὴ ἡ Νέα, “Paraskeve the Younger”) precisely to distinguish her from the older Roman martyr (so the synaxarial and liturgical tradition; Bibliotheca Sanctorum, s.v.). The epithet the New is itself a witness that the tradition knew there were two and meant to mark the difference.

The Life: Epivates, the Wilderness, the Return, the Repose

The fullest narrative of her life comes from the Life written by Patriarch Euthymius of Tarnovo in the late fourteenth century, building on an earlier and much shorter Byzantine notice; the following is what that hagiographic tradition attests, reported as such and not as independently documented biography (METHODOLOGY §3.5; on Euthymius’s Life see below).

According to the Life, Paraskeve was born at Epivates (Greek Ἐπιβάται; modern Boyalık / Selimpaşa on the European shore of the Sea of Marmara, west of Constantinople) to pious and well-to-do Christian parents (Euthymius of Tarnovo, Life of St. Petka; Bibliotheca Sanctorum, s.v. Parasceve of Epivates). The traditional dating places her in the eleventh century, though the chronology is not secured by contemporary documents and depends on the hagiographic tradition and the later history of her cult [Disputed: the *Bibliotheca Sanctorum* and the standard hagiographic tradition place Paraskeve of Epivates in the 11th c.; some treatments give the 10th–11th c. or leave the century imprecise, since no contemporary witness fixes her dates and the *Life* of Euthymius is late (14th c.) — Cazacu, *Sainte Parascève de Tarnovo*, reviews the difficulty].

Moved while still young by the Gospel call to give to the poor, the Life relates, she distributed her possessions and left home to embrace the ascetic life. The hagiographic tradition takes her to the East — to Constantinople, and then into the wilderness of the Jordan and the deserts beyond, where she lived for years as a solitary, in fasting, vigil, and prayer after the manner of the desert ascetics, until in old age she was bidden (in the Life, by an angelic or visionary summons) to return to her homeland (Euthymius of Tarnovo, Life of St. Petka; summarized in Bibliotheca Sanctorum, s.v.; Nikodemos the Hagiorite, Synaxaristes, 14 October). Returning to the region of Epivates, she reposed in peace — not by martyrdom, but as an aged ascetic — and was buried without special honor, her identity unremembered by those who laid her to rest (Euthymius, Life; Bibliotheca Sanctorum, s.v.). This peaceful, unmartyred end is the decisive biographical fact that separates her from the Roman Paraskevi: she is venerated as a venerable ascetic (hosia / prepodobna), not as a martyr.

The Discovery of the Incorrupt Relics

The turning-point of her cult, in the hagiographic tradition, is the discovery of her body. The Life relates that long after her burial — by the usual telling, generations later — a holy man’s corpse cast up by the sea was buried near her forgotten grave; the stench of the decaying body offended a nearby ascetic, and Paraskeve appeared in a vision (in the developed accounts, to more than one person) revealing her identity and asking that her own remains be raised. When her grave was opened, her body was found incorrupt and fragrant, and it was translated with honor into a church at Epivates, where miracles — including healings — began to be reported (Euthymius of Tarnovo, Life of St. Petka; Bibliotheca Sanctorum, s.v.; cf. the synaxarial summary in Nikodemos, Synaxaristes, 14 October). From this point her veneration spread, and her incorrupt relics become the physical center of the entire cult that follows — the object whose journey across the Balkans is the rest of her story.

The Journey of the Relics: Epivates → Tarnovo → Belgrade → Constantinople → Iași

What gives Paraskeve of Epivates her extraordinary pan-Balkan range is the translation history of her relics, which moved with the rise and fall of the Christian states of the region. The canonical sequence — Epivates, then Tarnovo, then Belgrade, then Constantinople, then Iași — is well established in outline, but the precise dates of several stages are contested, and where they are, the disputes are flagged below. None of the precise dates should be read as documented beyond what the sources support (METHODOLOGY §3; Cazacu, Sainte Parascève de Tarnovo).

1. Epivates → Tarnovo (Bulgaria), under Tsar John (Ivan) Asen II. The first major translation carried the relics from Epivates to Tarnovo, the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire, where they were enshrined and where the saint became a national patron. The translation is associated with Tsar John Asen II (Ivan Asen II, r. 1218–1241) and is traditionally placed in the 1230s, in the aftermath of his victory at Klokotnitsa (1230), when his power extended over much of the southern Balkans and he could secure the relics from Epivates [Disputed: the translation to Tarnovo is associated with John Asen II (r. 1218–1241) and is commonly dated to the 1230s — frequently to 1230/1231 in the wake of Klokotnitsa, sometimes to 1238 — but the exact year is not fixed by a contemporary document and the sources differ; Cazacu, *Sainte Parascève de Tarnovo*, treats the dating, as does the *Bibliotheca Sanctorum* entry]. It was at Tarnovo, in the later fourteenth century, that Patriarch Euthymius composed the great Slavonic Life that shaped the saint’s cult for the whole Orthodox Slav world (see below).

2. Tarnovo → Belgrade (Serbia). When the Ottoman advance overwhelmed Bulgaria — Tarnovo fell in 1393 — the relics were eventually carried west into Serbian keeping and enshrined at Belgrade. The standard accounts associate this translation with the Serbian despotate and, in the most common telling, with the Serbian princess Mara Branković (Maria), through whose mediation the relics came to Belgrade in the fifteenth century [Disputed: the translation from Tarnovo to Belgrade is variously placed in the late 14th or the 15th century and variously associated with the early Ottoman seizure of Bulgarian Tarnovo and with later Serbian acquisition (the figure of Mara Branković recurs in the sources); the intermediate stages and dates are not uniformly reported — Cazacu, *Sainte Parascève de Tarnovo*, and the *Bibliotheca Sanctorum* review the variants]. At Belgrade the saint became a patron of the city and of the Serbian land, and her cult took deep root in Serbian devotion, where she remains Sveta Petka to this day (cf. Greece, Bulgaria and Others).

3. Belgrade → Constantinople (Ottoman period). After the Ottoman conquest of Belgrade (1521) under Sultan Süleyman, the relics were taken from the captured city and brought, with other spoils and sacred objects, to Constantinople, where they passed into the keeping of the Ecumenical Patriarchate (Bibliotheca Sanctorum, s.v.; Cazacu, Sainte Parascève de Tarnovo). For something over a century they remained in the Ottoman capital, in the custody of the Great Church, venerated by the Christians of the City [Disputed: the relics are generally said to have come to Constantinople after the Ottoman capture of Belgrade in 1521; the precise lodging and movements of the relics within the City during the 16th–17th centuries are reported variously in the sources].

4. Constantinople → Iași (Moldavia/Romania), 1641. The final and decisive translation carried the relics to Iași (Jassy), the capital of Moldavia, brought by the Moldavian Voievode Vasile Lupu (r. 1634–1653). According to the standard account, Vasile Lupu, a great benefactor of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, received the relics from the Patriarchate of Constantinople in gratitude for his having paid off a large portion of the Great Church’s debts, and the relics were enshrined in the newly built Church of the Three Holy Hierarchs (Trei Ierarhi) at Iași in 1641 (Bibliotheca Sanctorum, s.v.; Cazacu, Sainte Parascève de Tarnovo; cf. Romania) [Disputed: the arrival at Iași is traditionally and very widely dated to 1641 (the relics enshrined at the Trei Ierarhi church under Vasile Lupu); some accounts specify the day of arrival or give 1639/1641 for stages of the negotiation and translation — the year 1641 is the standard date but the surrounding particulars vary in the sources]. There — later transferred to the Metropolitan Cathedral of Iași, where they rest today — the relics have remained ever since, the object of one of the largest annual pilgrimages in the Orthodox world.

The Cult: Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania

Few saints are venerated across so wide a Balkan and Romanian world. In Bulgaria she is a national patron, her cult rooted at Tarnovo since the Asenid translation and bound up with the medieval glory of the Second Bulgarian Empire (Cazacu, Sainte Parascève de Tarnovo; Bibliotheca Sanctorum, s.v.; cf. Greece, Bulgaria and Others). In Serbia she is Sveta Petka, patroness of the land and of countless churches and springs, the recipient of immense popular devotion. In Romania she is Sfânta Parascheva (often called Cuvioasa Parascheva, “the Venerable Parascheva,” to mark that she is an ascetic and not a martyr), the patroness of Moldavia and of the city of Iași; her feast on 14 October draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to her shrine at the Metropolitan Cathedral, in one of the great annual gatherings of Romanian Orthodoxy (cf. Romania). Across all three traditions she is venerated as a venerable ascetic and wonderworker — a healer and protector invoked in need — and not as a martyr; the Romanian epithet Cuvioasa and the Greek Hosia both mark precisely the category that distinguishes her from the Roman Paraskevi.

The Sources: Euthymius of Tarnovo, the Earlier Vita, the Office

The literary foundation of the cult is the Slavonic Life by Patriarch Euthymius of Tarnovo (Sv. Evtimiy), composed in the late fourteenth century — the last patriarch of medieval Bulgaria before the Ottoman conquest, and one of the great figures of the so-called Tarnovo literary school. Euthymius’s Life of St. Petka is the developed, theologically and rhetorically elaborated vita that carried her cult through the Slav and Romanian worlds, and it is the principal narrative source for everything related above about her life, her relics’ discovery, and the early translation (Euthymius of Tarnovo, Life of St. Petka, late 14th c.; on its place see Cazacu, Sainte Parascève de Tarnovo; Bibliotheca Sanctorum, s.v.). Behind Euthymius lies an earlier, shorter Byzantine notice — a brief Greek vita / synaxarial account that supplied the bare framework Euthymius expanded; the Greek hagiographic tradition for Paraskeve of Epivates is catalogued in the Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca (BHG), distinct from the Roman martyr’s BHG 1420 (BHG; Bibliotheca Sanctorum, s.v.). A later note in the tradition reports that a Greek deacon or cleric had earlier written a vita judged too plain, which prompted the commissioning of fuller versions — a detail relevant chiefly to the textual history [Disputed: the relationship between the earlier Greek vita, the Slavonic *Life* of Euthymius, and the intermediate versions is reconstructed differently in the scholarship; Cazacu, *Sainte Parascève de Tarnovo*, sets out the textual filiation].

Her liturgical commemoration is fixed at 14 October, with a full akolouthia (office) for the feast — hymns, canon, and synaxarion reading proper to the venerable Paraskeve of Epivates, distinct from the 26 July office of the Roman martyr (Nikodemos the Hagiorite, Synaxaristes, 14 October; the printed Greek and Slavonic Menaia for 14 October). The office consistently styles her hosia (venerable, ascetic), never martyr — the liturgical books themselves keeping the two saints apart.

Modern Scholarship: Matei Cazacu

The principal modern study of the saint, her cult, and the translation-history of her relics is the work of the historian Matei Cazacu, whose Sainte Parascève de Tarnovo and related studies trace the vita tradition, the Asenid translation to Tarnovo, the Serbian and Constantinopolitan stages, and the final translation to Iași, and assess the contested dates and the political circumstances that moved the relics from one capital to the next (Cazacu, Sainte Parascève de Tarnovo: vie et culte). Cazacu’s work is the natural starting point for anyone wishing to separate the secure outline of the relic-journey from the variant and legendary particulars, and it is on his and the Bibliotheca Sanctorum’s authority that the contested dates above are flagged rather than asserted (METHODOLOGY §3–4).

Why She Must Be Kept Apart

The whole point of treating Petka of Epivates in her own file is that she is not a chapter in the Roman martyr’s story. She is a different person, of a different century, with a different biography, a different feast, a different category (ascetic, not martyr), a different patronage, and a different geographic heartland. The Roman Paraskevi is a second-century virgin-martyr of the Greek and Mediterranean world, patroness of the eyes, feast 26 July; Petka is an eleventh-century Balkan ascetic, venerated for her incorrupt relics enshrined at Iași, patroness of Moldavia, feast 14 October. To merge them — to imagine a single “St. Paraskevi” who was both — is a category error that nonetheless pervades popular devotion and even some printed Lives, and it is exactly the error this collection is built to forestall (see The Conflation Problem; The Cult and the Record; and on telling all the namesakes apart, Paraskevi of Iconium and the Overlaps).

References

Bibliotheca Sanctorum. 12 vols. Rome: Istituto Giovanni XXIII della Pontificia Università Lateranense, 1961–1970. (The entry on Parasceve/Petka of Epivates, distinct from Parasceve of Rome; the life, the relic-translations, and the cult.)
Euthymius of Tarnovo, Patriarch. Life of St. Petka (Paraskeve). Late 14th c. (The principal Slavonic-Bulgarian Life; the developed narrative of the saint’s life, the discovery of the relics, and the Tarnovo translation.)
Cazacu, Matei. Sainte Parascève de Tarnovo: vie et culte. (The standard modern study of the vita tradition, the cult, and the translation-history of the relics; the contested datings of the Tarnovo, Belgrade, Constantinople, and Iași stages.)
Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca (BHG). 3rd ed. Ed. François Halkin. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1957. (The Greek hagiographic tradition for Paraskeve of Epivates, catalogued apart from the Roman martyr’s BHG 1420.)
Nikodemos the Hagiorite. Synaxaristes (Συναξαριστής). (The 14 October entry for the venerable Paraskeve of Epivates and her office.)
The Menaion for 14 October (Greek and Slavonic). (The akolouthia/office of the venerable Paraskeve, styling her hosia, not martyr.)
METHODOLOGY.md, this repository (esp. §3.5 on hagiographic attestation and §3–4 on disputed dates).