Tirichan of Georgia

Holy Martyr Tirichan of Georgia, also called Tarichan, is remembered together with his brother David. According to the account of their martyrdom, they were the sons of pious Armenian parents, Vardan and Tagine. After their father's death their maternal uncle, the pagan Theodosius, wished to seize the inheritance and tried to persuade Tagine and the children to embrace paganism. Tagine fled with the children to southern Georgia. Theodosius, fearing that they would grow up and reclaim the estate, searched for them in Tao-⁠Klarjeti and killed the two brothers, who were herding cattle in the mountains. According to the hagiographer, the murderer was blinded at once. Tagine, weeping for her sons, took pity on her brother and anointed his eyes with earth soaked in David's blood, and Theodosius saw immediately and confessed Christ. At night the bodies of the martyrs shone with light. Theodosius built a church in the name of David, and the relics of Tirichan were taken to Armenia by the governor Divri, where a church dedicated to Saint Tirichan was built.

The account of their martyrdom has come down in a single Georgian manuscript of the tenth century, copied at the Iviron Monastery on Athos by disciples of Venerable Euthymius the Athonite, Arsenius of Ninotsminda and John Grdzelidze, and it shows many features of the literary school of Tao-⁠Klarjeti. No Armenian version has been found. The Armenian Church does not venerate David and Tirichan, which is linked with the fact that their martyrdom was perhaps composed by a Chalcedonian author in Tao-⁠Klarjeti, where the persecuted boys had fled from the Monophysite Armenians. The work was probably written in Georgian, and so it entered the calendar of the Georgian Church, and later David and Tirichan came to be venerated as Georgian saints.

He is commemorated on 31 May, in the new style.