Saint Ketevan the Martyr

Ketevan the Martyr

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketevan_the_Martyr

Saint Ketevan

ქეთევან წამებული.png

• Queen of Kakheti
• Tenure 1601–1602
• Spouse David I
• Issue
• * Teimuraz I
• * Vakhtang
• * Helena
• Dynasty Bagrationi-Mukhrani
• Father Ashotan I, Prince of Mukhrani
• Born 1565
• Died 13 September 1624
• Shiraz
• Burial Alaverdi Monastery
• Religion Georgian Orthodox Church

Ketevan the Martyr (Georgian: ქეთევან წამებული, ketevan tsamebuli) (1565 – September 13, 1624) was a queen of Kakheti, a kingdom in eastern Georgia. She was killed at Shiraz, Iran, after prolonged tortures for refusing to give up the Christian faith and convert to Islam.

Life

Ketevan 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. After David’s death, Ketevan engaged in religious building and charity. However, when David’s brother Constantine I killed his reigning father, Alexander II, 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. After the uprising, she negotiated with Shah Abbas I of Iran 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 Abbas I, 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. 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.[1] The rest of her remains were said to have been buried at the St. Augustine Church 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.[2][3][4][5]

Queen Ketevan was canonized by Patriarch Zachary of Georgia (1613–1630), and September 13 (corresponding to September 26 in the modern Gregorian calendar) was instituted by the Georgian Orthodox Church as the day of her commemoration.[citation needed]

The account of Ketevan's martyrdom related by the Augustinians missioners were exploited by her son, Teimuraz, in his poem The Book and Passion of Queen Ketevan (წიგნი და წამება ქეთევან დედოფლისა, ts'igni da ts'ameba ketevan dedoplisa; 1625) as well as by the German author Andreas Gryphius in his classical tragedy Katharine von Georgien (1657).[6] The Georgian monk Grigol Dodorkeli-Vakhvakhishvili of the David Gareja Monastery was another near-contemporaneous author whose writings, a hagiographic work as well as several hymns, focus on Ketevan's life and martyrdom. The Scottish poet William Forsyth composed the poem The Martyrdom of Kelavane (1861), based on Jean Chardin's account of Ketevan's death.[7]

Relics and archaeological findings

The importance of Queen Ketevan for the Georgian people has led to a relic "hunt" during the last decades, notably in Goa. Since 1989, various delegations coming from Georgia have worked together with the Archaeological Survey of India to try to locate Ketevan's grave within the ruins of the Augustinian convent of Our Lady of Grace, at Old Goa, Goa. These efforts were thwarted because the teams were unable to correctly interpret the Portuguese documents that provided clues as to Ketevan's burial place. These historical sources stated that Ketevan's palm and arm bone fragments were kept inside a stone urn beneath a specific window within the Chapter Chapel of the Augustinian convent. In May 2004, the Chapter Chapel and window mentioned in the sources were found during a collaboration work between Portuguese and Overseas Citizen of India architect Sidh Losa Mendiratta and the Archaeological Survey of India, Goa-circle (at the time when Nizammudin Taher was superintendent archaeologist). Although the stone urn itself was missing, its coping stone and a number of bone fragments were found close to the window mentioned in the Portuguese sources.[8]

Niraj Rai of the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, India carried out ancient DNA analysis on these human bone remains excavated from the St. Augustine convent by sequencing and genotyping of the Mitochondrial DNA. The investigations of the remains revealed an unusual mtDNA haplogroup U1b, which is absent in India, but present in Georgia and surrounding regions. Since the genetic analysis corroborates archaeological and literary evidence, it is likely that the excavated bone belongs to Queen Ketevan of Georgia.[9]

General sources

Media related to Ketevan the Martyr at Wikimedia Commons

Lang, David Marshall (1976). Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints. New York: Crestwood. (Excerpt "The Passion of Queen Ketevan")

Notes

1. ^ Suny, Ronald Grigor (1994), The Making of the Georgian Nation: 2nd edition, pp. 50-51. Indiana University Press, ISBN 0-253-20915-3.
2. ^ Georgians seek buried bones of martyred queen. The Guardian. June 25, 2000. Cited by The Iranian. Accessed on October 26, 2007.
3. ^ Georgia - Basic facts. Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. February, 2007. Accessed on October 26, 2007.
4. ^ Georgians seek buried bones of martyred queen. The Guardian. June 25, 2000. Cited by The Iranian. Accessed on October 26, 2007.
5. ^ It is Confirmed, Relic Found in Goa is of a Georgian Queen. 'The New Indian Express'. December 23, 2013. Accessed on January 7, 2014.
6. ^ Rayfield, Donald (2000), The Literature of Georgia: A History, pp. 105-106. Routledge, ISBN 0-7007-1163-5.
7. ^ Forsyth, William (1861), The Martydom of Kelavane, p. iii. London: Arthur Hall, Virtue & Co..
8. ^ This archaeological work was featured in an episode of the documentary program "Schliemans's Erben", aired by the German channel ZDF, at 20:00 on March 16, 2008. ([1])
9. ^ Niraj Rai et al, Relic excavated in western India is probably of Georgian Queen Ketevan, Mitochondrion, Available online 16 December 2013

http://news.discovery.com/history/lost-remains-of-slain-ancient-que...

Lost Remains of Slain Ancient Queen Unearthed JAN 12, 2014 11:04 AM ET // BY TIA GHOSE, LIVESCIENCE

New DNA analysis of a bone fragment found in an Indian Church suggest that the relic belongs to Queen Ketevan, who was martyred in the 1600s.

The remains of a woman kept in an Indian church likely belong to an ancient queen executed about 400 years ago, a new DNA analysis suggests.

The DNA analysis suggests the remains are those of Queen Ketevan, an ancient Georgian queen who was executed for refusing to become a member of a powerful Persian ruler's harem. The findings are detailed in the January issue of the journal Mitochondrion.

Tumultuous life

Ketevan was the Queen of Kakheti, a kingdom in Georgia, in the 1600s. After her husband the king was killed, the Persian Ruler, Shah Abbas I, besieged the kingdom.

"Shah Abbas I led an army to conquer the Georgian kingdom and took Queen Ketevan as prisoner," said study co-author Niraj Rai, a researcher at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India.

Queen Ketevan languished in Shiraz, Iran, for about a decade. But in 1624, Shah Abbas asked the queen to convert to Islam from Christianity and join his harem. She refused, and he had her tortured, then executed on Sept. 22, 1624. Ketevan the Martyr was canonized as a saint by the Georgian Orthodox Church shortly after.

Missing relics

Before her death, Queen Ketevan had befriended two Augustinian friars who became devoted to her. Legend had it that, in 1627, the two friars secretly dug up her remains and smuggled them out of the country. An ancient Portuguese document suggested her bones were held in a black sarcophagus kept in the window of the St. Augustinian Convent in Goa, India.

But the centuries had not been kind to the church: Part of the convent had collapsed and many valuables had been sold off in the intervening centuries. Early attempts to find her remains failed.

But starting in 2004, Rai and colleagues excavated an area they believed contained the remains and found a broken arm bone and two other bone fragments, as well as pieces of black boxes.

Rare lineage

To find out if the bones belonged to the martyred queen, the researchers extracted mitochondrial DNA, or DNA found only in the cytoplasm of an egg that is passed on through the maternal line.

The arm bone once belonged to a female with a genetic lineage, or haplogroup, known as U1b, the analysis showed. In a survey of 22,000 people from the Indian subcontinent, the researchers found none with U1b lineage. By contrast, the lineage was fairly common in a sample of 30 people from Georgia.

The other two bones showed evidence they were part of genetic lineages common in India, which supported documents suggesting the queen's relics were stored in a room with the bones of two local friars.

"The complete absence of haplogroup U1b in the Indian subcontinent and its presence in high-to-moderate frequency in the Georgia and adjoining regions, provide the first genetic evidence for the [arm bone] sample being a relic of Saint Queen Ketevan of Georgia," Rai told LiveScience.

The study is well done and honest, Jean-Jacques Cassiman, a geneticist at the University of Leuven in Belgium who was not involved in the study, wrote in an email.

"It is a bone presumed to be of the queen and will remain so until its DNA can be compared to that of preferably living relatives and if not available dead relatives," Cassiman said, referring to nuclear DNA that is in all the body's cells.

But until that point, the conclusion is based on statistics. Those statistics strengthen the idea that the bone belongs to St. Ketevan, but aren't strong enough to positively identify the remnant, Cassiman said.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketevan_the_Martyr

Ketevan the Martyr (Georgian: ქეთევან წამებული, ketevan tsamebuli) (c. 1560 – September 13, 1624) was a queen of Kakheti, a kingdom in eastern Georgia. She was killed at Shiraz, Iran, after prolonged tortures by the Safavid suzerains of Georgia for refusing to give up the Christian faith and convert to Islam.

Life Ketevan 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. After David’s death, Ketevan engaged in religious building and charity. However, when David’s brother Constantine I killed his reigning father, Alexander II, 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. According to the Safavid official and chronicler, Fażli Ḵuzāni, Ketevan showed characteristic mercy to Constantine's surviving supporters and his 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.

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. 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.

Queen Ketevan was canonized by Patriarch Zachary of Georgia (1613–1630), and September 13 (corresponding to September 26 in the modern Gregorian calendar) was instituted by the Georgian Orthodox Church as the day of her commemoration.