Drawn to Christ in Kartli

Living in a Christian household and a Christian society, Abo learned the Georgian language, attended the divine services, read and heard the Scriptures, and conversed with priests, and so came gradually and by his own searching to faith in Christ. The Life presents his conversion not as a sudden or coerced event but as the slow ripening of a mind drawn to the truth it found around it.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox

A Conversion Within a Christian World

When Abo came to Kartli in the service of Prince Nerse, around 775, he entered a society that was, at its core, Christian — however heavily it lay under Arab overlordship (see Tbilisi under the Arab Emirate). The Life of Ioane Sabanisdze is careful to present Abo’s turn to Christ as something that grew within this world rather than being imposed upon him. Living in the household of a Christian prince and among a Christian people, the young Arab began to be drawn to the faith that surrounded him (Sabanisdze, Martyrdom of Abo, c. 786–790; trans. Lang, Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints, 2nd ed., SVS Press, 1976, pp. 115–133). The tradition summarized in the Orthodox synaxaria preserves the concrete steps: Abo “began to learn the Georgian language, attend the divine services, and speak with local priests” (OCA notice, “Martyr Abo the Perfumer,” oca.org, following the Life).

This portrait matters both historically and theologically. Historically, it fits what we know of the position of a young professional in a Georgian noble household: to serve well, and to live in Kartli at all, Abo had to learn Georgian, and in learning the language he was drawn into the liturgical and scriptural culture that the language carried. Theologically, the Life is at pains to show that Abo’s conversion was free and considered — the fruit of study, attendance at worship, and conversation — precisely because that freedom is what makes his later refusal to recant a genuine confession rather than a mere inherited allegiance. He did not stumble into Christianity; he reasoned and prayed his way to it, and then would not be reasoned out of it (Sabanisdze, Martyrdom of Abo, trans. Lang, 1976; on the free and deliberate character of the conversion as the Life presents it, see The Life as a Source).

Learning the Language, Learning the Scriptures

The Life gives unusual weight to Abo’s study — a detail that also reflects the literary and catechetical concerns of its author. Abo learned Georgian, and through it he came to the Scriptures: he heard the readings of the Church, listened to the divine services, and applied himself to understanding the Christian faith by direct engagement with its texts and its worship, in conversation with priests who could instruct him (Sabanisdze, Martyrdom of Abo, trans. Lang, 1976; OCA notice, oca.org). This is the portrait of a catechumen in the fullest sense: not a passive recipient of a change of allegiance but an inquirer who studies before he commits.

Sabanisdze, himself a learned churchman writing a work saturated with Scripture, plainly intends this study to be exemplary (Rapp, Studies in Medieval Georgian Historiography, CSCO 601, Peeters, 2003, on the scriptural and literary texture of the Life). Abo the Arab, coming from outside, embraces the Georgian Scriptures and the Georgian Church more deliberately than many born within them — a point with obvious force for the author’s own audience of Georgian Christians tempted, under Arab pressure, to take their faith lightly or to drift toward Islam (see Sabanisdze and the Georgian Church Under Pressure). The convert’s earnest study is held up as a rebuke and an encouragement to the complacent.

From a Muslim Upbringing to Faith in Christ

Abo had been raised a Muslim in Baghdad (see Abo the Arab Perfumer), and the Life does not pretend that his passage to Christ was a small thing. It was a movement from the faith of the ruling power, in which he had been formed, to the faith of a subject people — and, in the law of that ruling power, an act that would eventually cost him his life (see Baptism in Safety). The tradition presents this not as a rejection born of grievance but as a positive attraction to Christ: what drew Abo was the truth and the beauty he found in the Christian faith and worship of Kartli, not a repudiation of his origins as such (Sabanisdze, Martyrdom of Abo, trans. Lang, 1976).

This is a point to hold carefully and soberly, and the collection returns to it (see A Martyr for Christ, Not Against a People). The Life is a Christian martyrdom, written to strengthen Christians under Islamic rule, and it naturally presents Christ as the truth Abo found; it is not a neutral comparative account of two religions, and it should not be read as one. But within its own frame it is notably free of crude polemic against Abo’s former religion: the emphasis falls on what Abo was drawn toward — the person of Christ, the Scriptures, the worship of the Church — rather than on invective against what he left. That emphasis is faithful to the historical Abo as the tradition remembers him: an Arab who remained an Arab, and who chose Christ not out of hatred of his people but out of love for the Lord he had come to know in Kartli (Sabanisdze, Martyrdom of Abo, trans. Lang, 1976; and see An Arab Saint of Georgia).

The Threshold of Baptism

The Life presents Abo as coming to full Christian conviction while still within the reach of Islamic law — that is, while the household was still in or near Arab-controlled territory, where his open baptism would have been a capital offense (see Tbilisi under the Arab Emirate). His faith thus outran the possibility of its public expression: he believed as a Christian before he could be baptized as one, and the sacramental seal had to wait until the household withdrew to the safety of the Christian north. That gap — between the heart already given to Christ and the baptism that could only be received in safety — is the subject of the next file, and it is one of the sharpest illustrations in Abo’s story of exactly what was at stake in his conversion (Sabanisdze, Martyrdom of Abo, trans. Lang, 1976; and see Baptism in Safety).

See Also

• Abo the Arab Perfumer — the Muslim origins from which he came
• Baptism in Safety — where and why he was finally baptized
• Living Openly as a Christian — the fearless confession that followed
• Sabanisdze and the Georgian Church Under Pressure — the convert as an exemplar for wavering Christians

References

• Ioane Sabanisdze. The Martyrdom of Abo, c. 786–790. Trans. David Marshall Lang, in Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints, 2nd ed., pp. 115–133. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1976.
• Rapp, Stephen H., Jr. Studies in Medieval Georgian Historiography: Early Texts and Eurasian Contexts. CSCO 601, Subsidia 113. Louvain: Peeters, 2003.
• “Martyr Abo the Perfumer of Tbilisi, Georgia.” Orthodox Church in America, oca.org. (Abo’s learning of Georgian, attendance at the services, and conversation with priests, following the Life.)