Monument to Pope Hariton

Overview

Along the path that leads to the Dryanovo Monastery, there is a monument to the leader of the detachment - priest Hariton. It was also staged on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the uprising. Pop Hariton or Hariton Stanchev Halachev is a Bulgarian revolutionary, participant in the April Uprising. He was born in Gabrovo between 1830 and 1835. After graduating from primary school in his hometown, he learned the craft of slippers. He became a novice in the Transfiguration Monastery near Tarnovo. In 1860 he became a monk, then was ordained a deacon and became a hieromonk. In 1866, at the request of the spiritual authority, by order of the Tarnovo mutesarif Farhi Bey Pop Hariton, he was exiled to the Maglizh Monastery, Kazanlak region. He lived there until 1870. He is known for his violent and rebellious nature. Contributes to the success of the revolutionary cause in this area. He was a priest in the village of Yaykanliy / Dabovo, and later in the villages of Kasapkyoy, Pashakshla and Karamankyoy, Babadag region (Northern Dobrudja). In the parish of Babadag he defended the Bulgarian peasants from the arbitrariness of the Turkish ags, bandits and Circassians. In the summer of 1875 he led a small detachment in the Tulcea region. After the failure of the Stara Zagora uprising in Bulgaria in the autumn of 1875, he moved to Romania. Known by the activists of the Giurgiu Revolutionary Committee for the planned new general uprising, he and his party secretly crossed the Danube River near Svishtov on March 28, 1876 and headed secretly to the district center. On the night of March 31, they found themselves in the village of Samovodene. The next day a meeting was convened and Father Hariton was appointed to work in the district committee of Gorna Oryahovitsa. He was actively involved in the preparation of the April Uprising. When the uprising broke out prematurely, Father Hariton led a detachment of about 200 insurgents from the western region of the Tarnovo Revolutionary District. On April 29, 1876, near the Dryanovo Monastery, the detachment was surprised by a regular Turkish army and a bashibozuk, who threatened to surround the company. The rebels barricaded themselves in the monastery and defended themselves for 9 days until May 7. [3] On May 1, Pop Hariton was left blind as a result of an accident (gunpowder ignited while making rifle fireworks). On the last day of the battle, he said goodbye to the rebels, telling them: “My heroes! Not as grandmothers, but as lions, come out of this furnace, and whoever lives, let me remember! And take me to the entrance and I will die there as best I can! ” The rebels said goodbye to him, took him to the entrance of the monastery and went to escape. The duke died there with a weapon in his hand, stabbed by Turkish bayonets.