07 works, Today, September 13th, is Ketevan the Martyr's day, her story illustrated #255

Unknown artist

St. Queen Ketevan

Fresco

Shio-Mgvime monastery, Mtskheta, Georgia

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Ketevan the Martyr (c. 1560 – September 13, 1624) was born to Prince Ashotan of Mukhrani (Bagrationi) and married Prince David of Kakheti, the future David I, king of Kakheti from 1601 to 1602. She was a queen of Kakheti, a kingdom in eastern Georgia. She was regent of Kakheti during the minority of her son Teimuraz I of Kakheti from 1605 to 1614.

Mikhail Sabinin

Queen Ketevan of Georgia
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Mikhail (Gobron) Sabinin ((1845–1900) was a Russo-Georgian monk, historian of the Georgian Orthodox Church and icon painter.

 

He was born to the Russian priest from Tver, Pavel Sabinin, and a Georgian woman. Educated at the Tiflis gymnasium in the 1860s, he then attended St. Petersburg Theologian Academy and attained to a magister degree for his work History of the Georgian Church until the End of the 6th Century, the first comprehensive treatment of the subject produced in Russian. 

 

He travelled in several regions of Georgia, studying monuments of Christian architecture, copying frescos and icons, recording legends and collecting manuscripts. In St. Petersburg, he was tonsured a monk and given the name Gobron after a 10th-century Georgian saint. In 1882, he published The Paradise of Georgia, a voluminous lithographed edition of biographies of important Georgian Orthodox Christian saints. In the 1880s, he served at the famous Iviron Monastery on Mount Athos. In 1882 he published also The Passion of Eustathius of Mtskheta.

 

In 1898, he clashed with the office of Russian exarchate at Tiflis over his criticism of Russification and was removed from Georgia to Moscow where he died of pneumonia on May 10, 1900. More on Mikhail Sabinin

Don Cristoforo De Castelli

 Teimuraz I and his wife, c. 17th century

First published in MICHEL TAMARATI. L'Eglise Georgienne des origines jusqu'et nos jours. (Rome: Societe Typographico-Editrice Romaine, 1910.)

Cristoforo Caselli, also known as Da Palma or il Temporello or Cristofaro Castelli, (circa 1460 - 1521) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance period.

Caselli was born in Parma. He earned his livelihood between 1489 and 1492 as a journeyman at Venice, where he painted, in 1495, an altar-piece now hanging in the Sacristy of Santa Maria della Salute. He was a contemporary of the painter, later engraver from Parma, Francesco Marmitta.

He is also documented as working from 1489 to 1495 alongside Giovanni Bellini and Alvise Vivarini and others, in the decoration of the Great Council Hall in the Doge’s Palace in Venice. These works were lost in the fire of 1577.

In 1496 he became a master at Parma, where he may have later worked with Parmigianino (born 1503). In 1507 he finished the monochrome of the Dead Christ in the cathedral. More on Cristoforo Caselli

After David's death, she engaged in religious building and charity. However, when David's brother Constantine I, who was taken in his childhood to Persia where he was converted to Islam, killed his reigning father, Alexander II, and his brother George, and usurped the crown with the Safavid Iranian support in 1605. Ketevan rallied the Kakhetian nobles against the patricide and routed Constantine's loyal force. The usurper died in battle. 

Ketevan showed characteristic mercy to Constantine's surviving supporters and his Iranian Qizilbash officers. She ordered that the wounded enemy soldiers be treated accordingly and accepted in service if they desired. The Muslim merchants, who suffered in the war, were compensated and set free. Ketevan had Constantine's body laid in rest and sent to Ardebil.

Mohammad Qasim
Shah Abbas I

Oil on canvas

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After the uprising she negotiated with Shah Abbas I of Iran who was the suzerain over Georgia, to confirm her underage son, Teimuraz I, as king of Kakheti, while she assumed the function of a regent.

In 1614, sent by Teimuraz as a negotiator to Shah Abbas, Ketevan effectively surrendered herself as an honorary hostage in a failed attempt to prevent Kakheti from being attacked by the Iranian armies. She was held in Shiraz for several years until Abbas I, in an act of revenge for the recalcitrance of Teimuraz, ordered the queen to renounce Christianity, and upon her refusal, had her tortured to death with red-hot pincers in 1624.

Unknown artist

Holy Martyr Ketevan, Queen of Georgia

Church of the Archangels, Kakheti, Georgia

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Saint Martyr Ketevan was crucified on a cross-shaped tree and tortured with hot tongs. They put a red-hot helmet on her head, hit her with steel rods, and impaled her body with her fingernails. The thick smoke from his hair and burning head rose, and the blessed martyr gave her soul to God on September 13, 1624.

Unknown artist

The scene of martyrdom of St. Queen Ketevan

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Unknown artist

Detail; The scene of martyrdom of St. Queen Ketevan

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Portions of her relics were clandestinely taken by the St. Augustine Portuguese Catholic missioners, eyewitnesses of her martyrdom, to Georgia where they were interred at the Alaverdi Monastery. The rest of her remains were said to have been buried at the Church of St. Augustine in Goa, India. After several expeditions to Goa in the 21st century to search for the remains, they were believed to be found in late 2013. More on Ketevan the Martyr 

Unknown artist

Holy Great Martyr Ketevan, Queen of Georgia

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