The New Martyrs of Batak are the Orthodox Christian inhabitants of the town of Batak, in south-central Bulgaria, who were killed during the Ottoman suppression of the April Uprising of 1876. They are venerated as a collective commemoration of new martyrs; very few of them are known individually by name. Their feast is kept on May 17.
The killings took place during the broader reprisals against the failed Bulgarian rising of April 1876. According to the historical record, irregular Ottoman troops known as bashi-bazouks, under the command of Ahmed Aga of Barutin, surrounded the town. After the townspeople were induced to give up their arms, the irregulars attacked. The church of St Nedelya (St Kyriaki) became the final refuge of the population; following a siege of several days, those who would not renounce their Christian faith were put to death.
Estimates of the number killed vary widely in the sources, from around twelve hundred to several thousand, with a figure near five thousand most often cited; the town had numbered roughly eight to nine thousand inhabitants before the uprising. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church venerates them not as combatants but as Christians who suffered death rather than abandon the faith, and the foundations of the rebuilt church in Batak are said to rest upon their relics.
The reports of the massacre, documented by foreign observers such as the American diplomat Eugene Schuyler and the journalist Januarius MacGahan, drew wide international attention and contributed to the agitation over the 'Bulgarian Horrors' in Western Europe. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church formally glorified the victims of the 1876 uprising as saints at a Service of Glorification in Sofia on April 3, 2011.
