Elisaeus of Caucasian Albania

Saint Elisaeus, called Eghishe or Yeghishe in the Armenian sources, is venerated as the first preacher of the Gospel and first head of the Church of Caucasian Albania, the ancient land that lay on the territory of present-⁠day Azerbaijan. Local tradition names him a disciple of the holy Apostle Thaddeus and the founder of the "mother church" of the East, raised at Kish (Gis). He received the crown of martyrdom in the lands he enlightened, and his name has remained, above all among the Udi people, the symbol of Albanian Christianity.

What the sources say

The oldest account of Elisaeus survives in Armenian literature: in the History of the Land of Aluank by Movses Kalankatuatsi, in the writings of Mkhitar Gosh, and in the chronicle of Kirakos Gandzaketsi. These texts present him as a disciple of the Apostle Thaddeus, sent to Armenia, who returned to Jerusalem after Thaddeus died a martyr. There he was ordained bishop by James, the brother of the Lord, and set out for the East.

The story exists in two versions. In the first, Elisaeus is one of five disciples of Thaddeus (or of Thaddeus of Edessa, whom some take to be the same man as the apostle of the Seventy). He passes through Persia and reaches Sagarn in the land of Uti with three disciples. Their lawless kinsmen pursue them, one of the disciples dies as a martyr, and the other two abandon him.

Left almost alone, Elisaeus arrives at Kish, builds a church there and celebrates the Divine Liturgy. The chronicler says that on that spot the Church of the eastern land was founded. Afterwards, on the plain of Zergun, at a place where pagans offered sacrifice to idols, the saint received the crown of martyrdom. The authors do not say who committed the crime. His remains were thrown into a pit at a place called Gomenk and lay covered for a long time.

The second version, mentioned in a dispute in the time of the Armenian Catholicos Abraham I (607 to 615), does not name Thaddeus. Elisaeus appears as a "disciple of the Lord", and James is called patriarch of Jerusalem. The account is reduced to the journey from Jerusalem to Kish and the founding of that church. The Albanians believed that their country had been evangelized about 270 years before Armenia.

The finding of the relics

The same History of the Albanians says that after some time devout men found the saint's relics. They were first carried to the church of Urekan, then to the monastery of Jrvshtik. In the reign of King Vachagan III this became the monastery of Yeghishe Arakyal, that is, of the Apostle Yeghishe.

History and tradition

Scholars do not agree about the value of these narratives. Jean-⁠Pierre Mahé has argued that the tradition cannot be dismissed as a mere legend. The Albanian lectionary discovered at Sinai contains the opening of the Epistle of James, which is rarely found in other lectionaries. He believes the Albanians knew themselves to have been converted by an envoy of James, the first bishop of Jerusalem, so as to form one of the twelve tribes of the new Israel. On his view, Elisaeus travelled in the second half of the first century to Edessa and then to Albania, where he founded at Kish the "mother of the churches of the East".

Other specialists are far more reserved. Robert Hewsen regards the historicity of Elisaeus as extremely doubtful. Mahé and Zaza Aleksidze think the shorter second version may be the original Albanian form and the first an Armenianized redaction. If Elisaeus was a disciple of the Lord and ordained by James, he would be equal to Thaddeus, and the Church of Albania would be as apostolic as the Armenian one. Some Armenian authors argued the opposite, that Albanian monks invented the legend to escape Armenian oversight. Aleksan Hakobyan attributes it to Catholicos Yeghiazar (683 to 689), who wanted a Church independent of the Armenian one.

The saint's route is also debated. Hieromonk Alexy (Nikonorov) identified Sagarn with Zrykh, Zergun with Yargun and Gomenk with Gelmets. Others sought Gomenk at the church of Kurmukhi, or in the village of Bum, once inhabited by Udis.

Tradition also says that the baptism of King Urnayr by Saint Gregory the Illuminator was the "second baptism" of Albania. Mahé shows that this account is anachronistic, since the king lived in the second half of the fourth century and in 371 was still a pagan. In the same region, according to tradition, Dadi, another disciple of Thaddeus, also preached, and the monastery of Dadivank was raised over his tomb.

Veneration

The veneration of Elisaeus, which probably took shape in the sixth and seventh centuries, was very lively in the lands inhabited by the Udis, the small Christian people of Azerbaijan. A letter of the Udis of Shaki to Tsar Peter I, dated 20 March 1724, calls him the enlightener of the "Albanian nation". His disciples Vlas the Martyr (taken to be the local form of Saint Blaise) and Komrad were also honoured. By tradition the church of Saint Elisaeus at Nij was built in 1823 over the tomb of Vlas.

Churches dedicated to him stood at Kish, at Vartashen (today Oghuz), at Khoshkashen (today Qarabulaq), at Sugovushan and elsewhere. His feast was kept on the day of the Ascension of the Lord, and that of Komrad three days later. At Bum it was kept a week later. On the right bank of the Kura his cult was weaker. Only two holy places bear his name there, the monastery of Yeghishe Arakyal and one at Gishi. By one opinion the name of the first comes from folk etymology and recalls a brave young man named Yeghish, killed by a tyrant for defending his wife's honour.

His name also lives on in the old Georgian region of Eliseni (Eniseli), where a village still keeps it. Elisaeus is not found in the official Orthodox calendars. Even so, he has two modern icons today, one kept in the Myrrhbearers Cathedral in Azerbaijan, made in the 2010s, the other painted in 2024 at Zinobiani in Georgia, with the name written in the old Albanian script.