Martyred Fathers and Mothers of Atchara

The Martyred Fathers and Mothers of Atchara are the martyrs of Atchara in Georgia. Atchara has been a Christian stronghold since apostolic times. It was through this region that Saint Andrew the First-⁠called entered Georgia, preaching the Gospel for the first time in the Iberian land. In the village of Gonio the holy relics of the martyred Apostle Matthias are buried.

Since the sixteenth century Atchara has been subject to constant assaults by the Turks. After victory in the Ottoman-⁠Persian War, the Turks gained a large part of southern and western Georgia: Samtskhe, Atchara and Chaneti were declared Turkish provinces. The invaders knew that to conquer the Georgian people completely they had to uproot Christianity, and so they instituted a systematic campaign of forced conversion to Islam. When bribery and deception failed, they resorted to violence. The scholar Zakaria Chichinadze, in his work The Islamization of Georgia, retold a story he had heard from an elderly Atcharan man: the implanting of Islam in Atchara faced a powerful opposition; many of the elderly men and the majority of women stood firm in the Christian faith and even debated the Turkish mullahs. In the end an order was issued to arrest all dissidents, forcibly convert them to Islam and execute those who resisted. Before long all the elderly Christians of Atchara were arrested and cast into prison, then led to the River Atcharistsqali, to a twelfth-⁠century bridge known as the Bridge of Queen Tamar. On that bridge the Ottomans erected a guillotine. They chopped off the heads of the elderly, sent the ends of their tongues to the pasha and threw their bodies into the river. This happened in the year 1790. Gallows and guillotines were erected in the villages of Atcharistsqali, Keda, Chakvi, Khulo, Machakhela and Gonio.

Documents preserved in the manuscript collection of the Akhaltsikhe Museum describe the martyrdom of the Atcharan Christians in even more horrific detail: while still alive their flesh was stripped and their bodies quartered; they were slashed with swords, their bellies ripped open, roasted over campfires, pierced with flaming rods, thrown into cauldrons of boiling water, had molten lead poured down their throats and were tossed into pools of hot lime. The Georgian Apostolic Church has numbered among the saints all the holy fathers and mothers of Atchara who sacrificed their lives in defense of the Christian faith. They are commemorated on 29 May (new style; 11 June on the old calendar).