05 — Veneration
St. Ketevan’s cult in Georgia: her canonization by Catholicos-Patriarch Zachary within a generation of her death, her feast on 13 September, and the national veneration of the queen-martyr; and her place in Georgian memory — her hymnography, and above all the extraordinary fact that the foundational literary monument of her cult is a poem by her own son, Teimuraz I, the warrior-king who was also one of the great poets of the Georgian language.
Tradition: Georgian Orthodox
Ketevan was venerated as a saint almost at once. Her son had her relics enshrined at Alaverdi with honour; the Catholicos-Patriarch numbered her among the saints and fixed her feast; and she took her place in the Georgian Church’s calendar and hymnody as a great martyr and a national heroine. This section treats that veneration in two registers: the liturgical and popular cult in Georgia, and the literary and cultural memory — the hymnography of the Church and the verse of Teimuraz, through which the martyrdom entered the Georgian imagination and has remained there.
The two files treat, first, the cult in Georgia — canonization, feast, relics, and national veneration; and second, Ketevan in Georgian memory — hymnography and, centrally, Teimuraz I the poet-king and his Book and Passion of Queen Ketevan.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| the-cult-in-georgia.md | The canonization by Catholicos-Patriarch Zachary (Zakaria); the feast on 13 September; the relics at Alaverdi and the modern relic-returns; the national character of the veneration of the queen-martyr; churches, icons, and the iconography of the martyrdom. |
| ketevan-in-georgian-memory.md | The hymnography of St. Ketevan; and Teimuraz I of Kakheti, the poet-king, his life of resistance and loss, and his verse martyrology of his mother, The Book and Passion of Queen Ketevan (1625) — the foundational literary monument of the cult. |
See Also
- The Dispersal of the Relics — the relics that anchor the cult
- A National and a Universal Saint — the reach of her veneration
- Orthodoxy: The Church Calendar — the liturgical framework of her feast
References
- Orthodox Church in America. “Greatmartyr Ketevan, Queen of Georgia.” oca.org, commemoration of 13 September.
- Teimuraz I of Kakheti. The Book and Passion of Queen Ketevan (Georgian verse martyrology, 1625).
- Rayfield, Donald. The Literature of Georgia: A History. Richmond: Curzon, 2000.