Church of St. Athanasius

Overview

The Revival Church "St. Athanasius ”is located in the center of the Christian neighborhood of the southern Rhodopean village of Chernichevo. This Christian church is one of the few preserved in the Kardzhali region.
The church was built in 1847-1848 with the permission of the Turkish authorities. The initiator of its construction is a local chorbadji - Ginyu Kirev. The property was donated by a Russian who had a house with a yard in this place.
Since the church was built before the proclamation of the Bulgarian Exarchate (1870), at first the services in it were conducted in Greek, although not a single Greek lived in the village. The services began to be conducted in Bulgarian after the accession of the local Bulgarian Christians to the Exarchate (around 1889).
The church "St. Athanasius ”was seriously damaged during the attack of the village in the summer of 1913 by bashibozuzi, among whom there are Pomaks from the surrounding villages and even from the village of Dutli (Chernichevo). The temple was set on fire, but because it was built of stone, the walls survived and only the roof structure was destroyed. Later, in the period 1921-1922, the church was rebuilt by patriotic people from Chernichev.
The names of three priests who served in the Chernichev church are known. A local priest - priest Stoyan Nikolov served in it at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. For some time he also served in the neighboring village of Avren, due to the lack of a local priest. After him the services were led by priest Nikola, who gave his spirit to God in 1921. His place was taken by the priest Ivan Velichkov, who came to the village in 1922 - a Macedonian Bulgarian, a refugee from Dramsko. He was a priest and lived here until his death in the 1940s (probably 1948 or 1949). Father Ivan was the initiator of the construction of the old school in Chernichevo, located south of the church. It was built in 1927-29. and discovered in 1930, and now - crumbling, left to chance.
The Orthodox church “St. Athanasius ”, guardian of the spirit and history of the local Bulgarians and representing, in fact, one of the last strongholds of Christianity in this area. And if no urgent measures are taken to restore it, with the resumption of its spiritual life, not only the local Bulgarians will lose, but also Bulgaria, because with his death, the Bulgarian memory goes to the Southern and Eastern Rhodopes, originally and invariably connected with the Bulgarian history.
Architecturally, the church is a three-nave pseudo-basilica with an apse and an open narthex from the west. The side naves are separated from the central one by colonnades of three wooden columns. At the western end of the building there is a balcony (emporium), designed for the church choir, and in the past - for the women's section.
The construction of the church building is massive - the walls are made of stones with mortar solder. The roof is gabled and covered with stone slabs.

Inside the walls have no frescoes. Perhaps there was one before the 1913 fire. The iconostasis was made by Tryavna masters after the restoration of the church.
To the right of the entrance of the temple is a memorial plaque to the men of the village who died during the First World War - in 1917 at the turn of Cherna (now Macedonia).
In the churchyard there is a tombstone of a priest with difficult to read inscriptions.