Kondrat of Mesukevi

Holy Martyr Kondrat of Mesukevi, a Georgian, was one of the seventeen martyrs of Sukhius and his companions: Andrew, Anastasius, Talale, Theodoritus, Ivhirion, Jordan, Kondrat, Lucian, Mimnenos, Nerangios, Polyeuctus, James, Phocas, Domentian, Victor and Zosimas. They were Georgians by birth, nobles at the court of the ruler of Caucasian Albania (Agvania), a land lying in present-⁠day Azerbaijan.

Accompanying the daughter of the Albanian ruler, Satenik, wife of the Armenian king Artaxias (88-123), Sukhius and his sixteen companions came to Artashat, the old capital of Armenia. There the Greek Christian Chrysos was preaching, enlightened and ordained priest by the holy Apostle Thaddeus († around 44). The nobles believed in the Saviour and resolved to devote their lives to the service of God. All seventeen new converts followed Chrysos into Mesopotamia and at the baptism in the waters of the Euphrates, performed by the priest Chrysos, they were counted worthy to see the Lord of Glory, Jesus Christ. At the place of baptism they raised a venerable cross, called the "Cross of the Annunciation". At Baptism Chrysos gave them all new names: to the eldest Sukhius, in place of Bagadras, and to his companions the names listed above, among them Kondrat.

After the martyr's death of the blessed Chrysos, Sukhius became the spiritual guide of the brotherhood. Soon they all moved to a wild place, on the mountain of Sukaketi, near the mountain village of Bagrevandi. There the former nobles lived a life of the strictest asceticism, with scant mountain plants for food and cold spring water for drink. The new ruler of pagan Albania, Datianos, learned that his former nobles had accepted Christianity and settled in prayerful solitude. He sent his courtier Barnabas with a band of soldiers to urge them to return to the court and the former faith. Barnabas found Sukhius and his companions, but, keeping their vow of serving God, they rejected all persuasion.

By order of Barnabas, Sukhius and his companions were nailed to the ground in the form of a cross and burned. As he died, Saint Kondrat, and then the other martyrs, sang the twenty-⁠first psalm. After the burning their bodies were cut to pieces and scattered over the mountain of Sukaketi, which is why the martyrs were called those of Mesukevi (more correctly, of Sukaketi). This took place in the year 123 (by other sources in 130; an eleventh-⁠century Athonite parchment manuscript of the Iviron monastery gives the year 100).

The holy relics remained unburied and uncorrupted until the fourth century, when the local Christians placed them in coffins and buried them; the names of the martyrs were found inscribed on the rock. The holy hieromartyr Gregory, enlightener of Armenia († around 335), built a church there and founded a monastery. Later a healing spring appeared there.

Saint Kondrat is commemorated on 28 April and on 22 November, in the new style, with the Synaxis of the Alan Saints.