Ketevan the Martyr

Saint Ketevan the Great Martyr was queen of Kakheti, a kingdom in eastern Georgia, and regent during the minority of her son Teimuraz I. She received the crown of martyrdom on 13 September 1624, at Shiraz in Persia, for refusing to renounce the Christian faith. She is venerated as a saint by the Georgian Orthodox Church.

She was born around 1560, the daughter of Prince Ashotan of Mukhrani, of the Bagrationi house, and was married to Prince David, the future King David I of Kakheti (1601-1602). After her husband's death she devoted herself to building churches, monasteries and hospitals. In 1605 her brother-⁠in-⁠law Constantine I killed his father, King Alexander II, and took the throne with Persian support. Ketevan rallied the Kakhetian nobles against the usurper and routed his army; Constantine fell in battle. According to the Persian sources, she showed mercy to the surviving supporters of Constantine and to his officers, ordered the wounded cared for, and compensated the Muslim merchants who had suffered. She sent Constantine's body to Ardabil. She then negotiated with Shah Abbas I, suzerain of Georgia, that her minor son Teimuraz I be confirmed king of Kakheti, and she was regent from 1605 to 1614.

In 1614, wishing to prevent a Persian attack on her country, she went herself to the shah with rich gifts and offered herself as a hostage. She was imprisoned, according to some sources with her grandsons Alexander and Levan, at Shiraz or Isfahan, where she stayed nearly ten years. The shah promised to make her queen of Persia if she accepted Islam, but neither torments nor bribery shook her faith. In revenge for the defiance of Teimuraz, the shah ordered her tortured with red-⁠hot pincers, and she died on 13 September 1624.

Portuguese Augustinian missionaries, witnesses of the martyrdom, secretly took part of the relics and brought them to Georgia, where they were buried at the Alaverdi monastery; the rest was taken to India and placed in the church of Saint Augustine at Goa, where, after several expeditions in the twenty-⁠first century, the remains were believed found at the end of 2013. Patriarch Zachary of Georgia canonised her, and 13 September was appointed for her commemoration. Her son Teimuraz dedicated to the martyr the poem The Book and Passion of Queen Ketevan (1625), and the German Andreas Gryphius wrote the tragedy Catharina von Georgien (1657). At Lisbon, in the Graça convent, a large azulejo panel depicting her martyrdom was found in 2008.