Talale of Mesukevi

Holy Martyr Talale of Mesukevi, a Georgian, was one of the seventeen Georgian nobles, led by Suchius, who died burned on Mount Sukaketi, around the year 123, for faith in Christ.

Suchius and his sixteen companions, Georgians, were great officials at the court of the ruler of Caucasian Albania. Accompanying the ruler's daughter, Satenik, the wife of the Armenian king Artaxias (88-123), they came to Artashat, the ancient capital of Armenia. There the Greek Christian Chrysos preached, enlightened and ordained priest by the holy Apostle Thaddeus. The nobles believed in the Saviour and resolved to devote their whole life to the service of God. All seventeen newly baptized Georgians followed Chrysos to Mesopotamia; at Baptism in the waters of the Euphrates, performed by the priest Chrysos, they were found worthy to see the Lord of glory Jesus Christ. At the place of Baptism they raised an honoured cross, called the "Cross of the Annunciation". Chrysos gave them new names: to the eldest, Suchius (in place of Bagadras), and to his companions Andrew, Anastasius, Talale, Theodoret, Ivhirion, Jordan, Condratus, Lucian, Mimnenos, Nerangios, Polyeuctus, Jacob, Phocas, Domentian, Victor and Zosimas.

After the martyr's death of the blessed Chrysos, Suchius became the guide of the brotherhood. Soon all moved to a wild place on Mount Sukaketi, near the mountain village of Bagrevandi, where the former nobles led a life of severe ascetic labour, with scanty mountain plants for food and cold spring water to drink. The new ruler of pagan Albania, Datianos, learned that his former nobles had accepted Christianity and settled in prayerful solitude. He charged his man Barnabas with a band of soldiers to persuade them to return to the court and to the old faith. Barnabas found Suchius and his companions, but they, keeping their vow of service to God, rejected all entreaties. Then, by order of Barnabas, Suchius and his companions were pinned to the ground in the form of a cross and burned. Dying, Condratus, and after him the other martyrs, began to sing Psalm 21. After the burning their bodies were cut up and scattered over the whole Mount Sukaketi, from which the martyrs received the name Mesukevi (more exactly, Sukaketi). This took place in 123 (by other accounts, in 130; an eleventh-⁠century Athonite manuscript of Iviron gives the year 100). The holy remains stayed unburied and incorrupt until the fourth century, when the local Christians laid them in coffins and buried them (the names of the martyrs were found written on the rock). The holy hieromartyr Gregory, enlightener of Armenia († about 335, commemorated on 30 September), raised a church and monastery on that place; later a healing spring welled up there.

Talale is commemorated on 28 April and, in the new style, on 22 November (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Alan Saints.