Bidzini, Elizabar and Shalvi

The Holy Martyrs Bidzini, Elizabar and Shalvi are three Georgian princes who were killed in Persia in the year 1661 because they would not renounce Christ, after leading an uprising against Persian rule in Kakheti. They are commemorated on 18 September.

The uprising

In the seventeenth century the Persian occupiers had destroyed churches and monasteries and moved thousands of Georgian families into Persia. The Persian governor of Kakheti, Salim Khan, let the settled Tatars profane the churches. Prince Bidzina Cholokashvili of Kakheti, together with Shalva of Ksani and his uncle Elizbar, united the armies of Kakheti and Kartli. On the night of 15 September 1659, at the feast of the Alaverdi church, they struck the Persians by surprise and crushed them; Salim Khan barely escaped. The Georgians attributed the victory to the Great Martyr George, who they say appeared in the battle on a white horse.

The martyrdom

Shah Abbas II demanded that King Vakhtang V hand over the rebels. The princes went to Persia without protest, were received with gifts, then were asked to renounce the Christian faith. They accepted neither the enticements nor the torments, nor the thirst and insect stings under the burning sun. Elizbar and Shalva were beheaded, after their legs were cut off at the shins because the executioners were too short. Bidzina, saying that nothing is sweeter than death for Christ, was dressed in a woman's veil, paraded on a donkey and cut up alive, limb by limb, until his heart was pierced with a spear.

The bodies lay a day in the open, surrounded at night by light, then Christians buried them in secret. Later Ketevan, Shalva's wife, and their son David sent men to bring the relics back to Georgia. Crowds met them at the Kartli border and laid them in the Church of the Archangels at Ikorta.