04 — The Passion

The long martyrdom: six years in fetters in the fortress of Tsurtavi — the Martyrdom’s own figure — within an ordeal the source counts at seven years; her asceticism in the cell and her ministry from it (the sick healed at her prayer, the childless and the grieving counseled, as her confessor attests); and her death on 17 October, in a year the scholarship places between 474 and 476.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox (shared pre-division veneration with the Armenian Apostolic Church)

Contents

File Description
the-six-years-in-the-fortress.md The cell and its regimen: the fetters, the cold and the vermin the text dwells on, the fasts and the Psalter; the people who came — healings and counsel as Jakob attests them; the source’s own figures for the ordeal’s length
the-death-of-the-queen.md The final illness in the seventh year; the farewells — Jojik and his household, the clergy; the last communion; death on 17 October; the disputed year (474–476) and how each date is computed; the burial

Summary

The Martyrdom is explicit about the passion’s arithmetic: “she spent six years in prison in the same fetters” (Passion, Armenian version, trans. Maksoudian, 1997; the Georgian text carries the same six-year count — trans. Lang, 1976), within an ordeal of seven years from the first violence, and she died on the seventeenth of October (Jakob Tsurtaveli, Martyrdom, trans. Lang, 1976). The year is computed, not stated: 474 by the text’s own Peroz-era anchor (Maksoudian, introduction, 1997), 475 by the conventional chronology, 476 in parts of the scholarship [Disputed: see the second file]. The first file reconstructs the prison years and the paradoxical ministry the source attests in them; the second narrates the death and burial and fixes the chronology honestly.

See Also