Living Openly as a Christian

Returning with Nerse’s household to Tbilisi about the year 782, the baptized Abo did not conceal his faith. For roughly three years he lived openly and fearlessly as a Christian in the Arab-ruled city — worshipping in the Church, strengthening the persecuted Christians, and not hiding that he, an Arab and former Muslim, had become a follower of Christ — though he knew that the law of the emirate treated such apostasy as a capital crime.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox

The Return to Tbilisi

After the baptism in the Christian north (see Baptism in Safety), the political situation eased enough for Prince Nerse and his household to return to Kartli, and Abo returned with them to Tbilisi. The tradition places this return about the year 782 (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 date c. 782 for the return, and the roughly three years to the martyrdom of 786, are given in the derived synaxarion tradition, e.g. OCA notice, “Martyr Abo the Perfumer,” oca.org). [Disputed: the exact year of the return and the precise length of the open confession depend on the single narrative of the Life and its later summaries; the tradition gives “about three years” between the return and the martyrdom of early 786, which is consistent with a return c. 782–783, but no independent document fixes the year (Lang, Lives and Legends, 1976).]

Abo returned a changed man in the most consequential sense: he was now, sacramentally and irreversibly, a Christian, and — in the eyes of the ruling power — an apostate from Islam. He carried that status back into the very city whose law made it a capital matter (see Tbilisi under the Arab Emirate). What he then did with it is the heart of this part of the story.

An Open and Fearless Confession

Abo did not live quietly or conceal his faith. The Life presents him as confessing Christ openly in Tbilisi — worshipping publicly with the Christians, keeping the fasts and vigils of the Church with rigor, and making no secret of the fact that he, an Arab of Baghdad, had abandoned Islam for Christ (Sabanisdze, Martyrdom of Abo, trans. Lang, 1976). The synaxarion tradition, following the Life, describes him as laboring in Tbilisi as a Christian for about three years, encouraging the Christians and even seeking to draw others — including his fellow Arabs — to the faith (OCA notice, oca.org, following the Life). This is not the portrait of a convert lying low until danger passed; it is the portrait of a man who, having received baptism in safety, deliberately lived out its consequences in the open, in the one place where doing so was most dangerous.

The Life gives particular weight to Abo’s role in strengthening the local Christians. Under Arab domination the Georgian Christians were a subordinate community, and the pressure to conform, to compromise, or to drift toward the religion of the rulers was real (see Sabanisdze and the Georgian Church Under Pressure). Into that situation came an Arab convert whose very existence was a rebuke to such wavering: a man of the ruling nation who had chosen the faith of the ruled, and who lived it with a boldness that shamed timidity. The Life plainly intends Abo’s open confession to function as an encouragement to its Georgian Christian readers — and it is likely that the historical Abo did in fact serve exactly this role in the Christian community of Tbilisi in the early 780s (Sabanisdze, Martyrdom of Abo, trans. Lang, 1976; Rapp, Studies in Medieval Georgian Historiography, CSCO 601, Peeters, 2003, on the Life’s exemplary purpose).

The Deliberateness of the Danger

It is essential to see that Abo’s openness was not naivety about his situation. He knew the law; he had been baptized in the north precisely because he could not be baptized in Tbilisi without incurring the apostasy penalty (see Baptism in Safety). To return and live openly as a Christian was therefore a calculated acceptance of mortal risk. The Life presents this as courage and as fidelity, not as recklessness: Abo does not court death, but neither will he purchase safety by hiding or by dissembling his faith. He lives as a Christian openly because that is what being a Christian, for him, now means (Sabanisdze, Martyrdom of Abo, trans. Lang, 1976).

This deliberateness is what distinguishes Abo’s case from a mere accident of exposure. He was not a secret Christian unluckily discovered; he was a public one whose confession was, in the end, simply denounced (see Arrest and the Demand to Recant). The roughly three years of open life form, in effect, a prolonged confession that preceded and prepared the final one — a slow martyrdom of daily risk that culminated in the swift martyrdom of the sword. In the theology of the Life, these years are not a mere prelude but part of the witness itself: Abo confessed Christ not only in the one dramatic refusal before the judge but in a thousand ordinary days of not hiding (Sabanisdze, Martyrdom of Abo, trans. Lang, 1976).

The Gathering Danger

The Life indicates that the danger to Abo was not constant across the three years but sharpened with a change in the local authority. A new and more zealous emir or governor, less tolerant of so conspicuous an apostate, brought matters to a head (Sabanisdze, Martyrdom of Abo, trans. Lang, 1976; OCA notice, oca.org, referring to Abo’s capture “by a new emir’s servants”). [Disputed: the identity and precise title of the ruling authority at the time of Abo’s arrest, and whether the change of ruler was the decisive factor, rest on the Life’s narrative and are not independently documented; the tradition consistently presents the martyrdom as triggered by denunciation to the Arab authorities of a man whose Christianity had been public for years (Lang, Lives and Legends, 1976).] Whatever the precise trigger, the outcome followed from the situation Abo had knowingly accepted: a former Muslim living openly as a Christian in an Arab-ruled city could be denounced at any time, and eventually he was. That denunciation, arrest, and the demand to recant are the subject of the next file.

See Also

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.
  • Lang, David Marshall. Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints. Introduction and apparatus to the Passion of Abo.
  • 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. (The return c. 782, the three years, the capture under a new emir.)