Sabanisdze and the Georgian Church Under Pressure

The Martyrdom of Abo was written for a purpose: to strengthen the Georgian Christians under Arab domination. Sabanisdze holds up an Arab convert who chose the faith of the Georgians as a rebuke to any Georgian tempted, under pressure, to compromise or abandon it. Understanding this ecclesial and national purpose is part of understanding the text — and it does not diminish its value, but explains its shape.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox

The Georgian Church in the Eighth Century

By the time Abo was martyred and Sabanisdze wrote, the Georgian Church had already existed for more than four centuries, and its situation was one of ancient faith under new political subjection. Christianity had come to Kartli in the fourth century through St. Nina (see St. Nina of Georgia), and the Church had been enriched in the sixth century by the monastic foundations of the Thirteen Assyrian Fathers (see The Thirteen Assyrian Fathers); it was autocephalous, with its own Catholicos. But in the eighth century it lived under Arab overlordship, its faithful a subordinate community, its lands a contested march of the caliphate (see Tbilisi under the Arab Emirate). The pressures of such a situation are familiar: tribute, subordinate status, the slow gravitational pull of the ruling religion and culture, and the temptation — especially for the ambitious or the fearful — to ease one’s lot by conforming, compromising, or converting to Islam.

It is into this situation that Sabanisdze writes, at the commission of the Catholicos Samuel (see A Masterpiece of Georgian Literature). The Life is not a disinterested chronicle; it is a pastoral and national intervention in the life of a Church under pressure, and its author is entirely open about wanting to fortify his people’s fidelity (Sabanisdze, Martyrdom of Abo, c. 786–790; trans. Lang, Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints, 2nd ed., SVS Press, 1976, pp. 115–133; Rapp, Studies in Medieval Georgian Historiography, CSCO 601, Peeters, 2003, on the Life’s purpose).

The Convert as Rebuke and Encouragement

The rhetorical genius of Sabanisdze’s choice of subject lies in the paradox of Abo himself. Sabanisdze does not hold up a Georgian hero to a Georgian audience; he holds up an Arab — a man of the ruling nation, born and raised in the religion of the overlords — who nonetheless chose the faith of the Georgians and died for it. The argument is implicit but unmistakable: if an Arab of Baghdad, with every worldly incentive to remain a Muslim, could come to love Christ enough to die for Him, how much more should the Georgians, born to this faith, hold fast to it under mere pressure (Sabanisdze, Martyrdom of Abo, trans. Lang, 1976; Rapp, Studies in Medieval Georgian Historiography, 2003, on the exemplary and identity-forming function). The convert’s zeal is deployed as both a rebuke to Georgian complacency and an encouragement to Georgian steadfastness.

This purpose shapes the emphases of the Life. Abo’s earnest study of the Georgian Scriptures (see Drawn to Christ in Kartli) is exemplary for readers who possessed those Scriptures by birthright and might value them too lightly; his open and fearless confession over three years (see Living Openly as a Christian) is a model for a community tempted to keep its faith quiet; his refusal to recant under the offer of life (see Arrest and the Demand to Recant) is the pattern of fidelity the author wants his readers to be ready for. The martyrdom is narrated not only to honor Abo but to form the reader.

Faith and Nation Intertwined

A distinctive feature of the Life, much noted in the scholarship, is the way it binds fidelity to Christ together with Georgian identity. Under foreign domination, the Christian faith and the Georgian nation came to reinforce one another: to be Georgian was, increasingly, to be Christian, and to hold the faith was, in part, to hold one’s identity as a people against the pressure of assimilation (Rapp, Studies in Medieval Georgian Historiography, 2003, on the Georgian Church as a factor in the formation of national consciousness; and see Abo and Georgian Identity). Sabanisdze’s Life is one of the early texts in which this fusion is visible and deliberate: the martyrdom of the Arab convert becomes an occasion for reinforcing the Georgian Christians’ sense of themselves as a distinct, faithful people.

There is a paradox here that the collection treats more fully elsewhere (see An Arab Saint of Georgia): the figure used to consolidate Georgian Christian identity is not a Georgian at all but an Arab. But the paradox is precisely the point. By making an Arab the exemplar, Sabanisdze roots Georgian identity not in blood but in faith — the thing that unites Abo the Arab with his Georgian readers is not ethnicity but their common confession of Christ. The nation is defined by the faith, and the faith is open even to a man of the ruling people. This is a subtle and generous move, and it is one reason Abo’s story resists the cruder forms of nationalist or ethnic reading (Rapp, Studies in Medieval Georgian Historiography, 2003; and see A Martyr for Christ, Not Against a People).

What the Purpose Means for the Source

Recognizing the Life’s pastoral and national purpose is required by the repository methodology (§3.5), which pins each claim to its source and reckons with that source’s aims. But it is important to say clearly what this recognition does and does not imply. It does not imply that the Life is unreliable or that Abo’s martyrdom is a fiction serving an agenda: the core narrative is attested by a near-contemporary of the same city and stands on strong ground (see The Life as a Source). What it implies is more modest and more useful: that the Life’s emphases — its stress on Abo’s study, his zeal, his exemplary steadfastness — are shaped by the author’s purpose of edification, and should be read as the interested (but well-informed and near-contemporary) testimony of a churchman writing to strengthen his people. The purpose explains the shape of the text; it does not dissolve its substance.

Every hagiography has a purpose; the honest course is to name it. Sabanisdze’s purpose was to fortify the Georgian Church under Arab domination by the example of an Arab who chose Christ. That purpose produced one of the earliest masterpieces of Georgian literature and preserved for the Church a genuine martyr, remembered truly if also purposefully. Both things are so, and the collection holds them together.

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.
  • Rapp, Stephen H., Jr. Studies in Medieval Georgian Historiography: Early Texts and Eurasian Contexts. CSCO 601, Subsidia 113. Louvain: Peeters, 2003. (The Life’s pastoral and identity-forming purpose; the Georgian Church and national consciousness.)
  • Lang, David Marshall. Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints. Introduction to the Passion of Abo.
  • METHODOLOGY.md §3.5, this repository.