Ramaz

Holy Martyr Ramaz is one of the nine child martyrs of the village of Kola, in Tao, in southern Georgia: Guram, Adarnase, Bakar, Vache, Bardzim, Dachi, Juansher, Ramaz and Parsman. They suffered in the sixth century.

In the village of Kola, at the sources of the river Mtkvari (Kura), in Tao (today the province of Kars, in north-⁠eastern Turkey), Christians and pagans lived side by side, the latter being the majority. The children of pagans and Christians played together all day. When the bells announced the service, the Christian children went to church, and after them the nine pagan boys always followed. At the church gates they were stopped, but they begged so insistently to enter that one day the Christians told them that if they wished to come to church they should receive the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, be baptized and partake of the Mysteries. The children accepted gladly. The Christians told the priest of their wish, and he, not fearing the expected anger of the pagans, led them one harsh winter night to the river and baptized them, immersing them three times in the icy water. At the baptism a miracle took place: the water grew warm, and the children saw angels. Strengthened in the faith, they did not wish to return to their idolatrous parents and stayed with the Christians.

The parents, learning of their children's baptism, took them by force from the church and led them home with curses, shouts and blows. The children bore all the insults and torments and for seven days, hungry and frozen, repeated only this: we are Christians and we will not deny our Lord Jesus Christ. The angry pagans decided to kill them with stones. The whole village dug a great pit at the source of the river, in the place where they had been baptized, threw them into it and, the parents first and then the others, threw stones until the pit was full.

They are commemorated on 7 March (6 March in leap years), in the Georgian calendar; their names have not been entered in the present calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church.