The Death of the Queen

In the seventh year of her ordeal Shushanik’s wasted body failed. The Martyrdom narrates the end with liturgical care: the farewells — Jojik and his household among them — the blessing of her tormentors’ repentant kin, the last communion, and death on 17 October. The day is the source’s; the year is computed, and the scholarship ranges over 474–476. This file narrates the death and burial as the text gives them and sets out the chronological problem in full.

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

The Seventh Year

The Martyrdom marks the turn plainly: in the seventh year of the passion, the queen’s health broke. The text describes a body destroyed by the cell — ulcerated where the fetters and the ground had worn it, swollen, consumed by the fasts and the fevers of the lowland fortress — and a spirit unaltered; her regimen of prayer continued from the mat on which she could no longer rise (Jakob Tsurtaveli, Martyrdom of the Holy Queen Shushanik, trans. Lang, Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints, 1976; the Armenian recension summarizes the six prior years’ attrition — “fettered, hungry and naked” — Passion, trans. Maksoudian, 1997). Jakob, her confessor, is the narrative’s warrant for these last scenes as for the rest; he depicts himself and the clergy of Tsurtavi in attendance through the final weeks (Jakob Tsurtaveli, Martyrdom, trans. Lang, 1976; on his self-placement in the text, Rayfield, The Literature of Georgia, 2010, 42–44).

The deathbed the text draws is deliberately liturgical — a confessor’s death staged as the church’s victory. The notables of the march and the households of the pitiakhshate came for blessing and farewell; Jojik, Varsken’s faithful brother, came with his wife and children to receive her last blessing — the family reconciliation that the apostate himself is absent from (Jakob Tsurtaveli, Martyrdom, trans. Lang, 1976; the Armenian version gives Jojik the same final role, trans. Maksoudian, 1997). She forgave; the tradition records her praying for those who had wronged her, in the pattern of the protomartyr Stephen (Acts 7:60), and blessing those who had stood by her (Jakob Tsurtaveli, Martyrdom, trans. Lang, 1976; Machitadze, Lives of the Georgian Saints, 2006). Attended by the bishops and clergy — the Armenian tradition names bishops among those who gave her the last rites (Passion, Armenian version, trans. Maksoudian, 1997) [Disputed: the names of the attending hierarchs vary between the recensions and are not certain; the presence of bishops and clergy at the end is common to the tradition] — she received the holy mysteries and, in the menologion’s phrase, “gave up her soul as a noble confessor” (Passion, Armenian menologion notice, trans. Maksoudian, 1997).

The Date: 17 October, in a Computed Year

The day of her death is the source’s own and is not in dispute: the seventeenth of October — the date carried by the Georgian text and its liturgical tradition, and preserved in the Orthodox calendars that commemorate her on 17 October (Jakob Tsurtaveli, Martyrdom, trans. Lang, 1976; the Eastern Orthodox liturgical commemoration of “Martyr Susanna, Queen of Georgia” on 17 October — so the received calendars, e.g. the OCA calendar, following Machitadze, Lives, 2006; see Feasts and Calendars).

The year is another matter, and per §4.2 the computations are laid out with their proponents.

[Disputed: the year of Shushanik’s death — scholarship ranges 474–476. The Martyrdom gives no absolute year; every candidate is computed from its internal count (apostasy → seven years → death) anchored to an external event, and the anchors disagree. (a) 474: anchoring to the text’s own opening — “the eighth year” of Peroz, i.e. 466/467, for the apostasy — yields death in 473/474; Maksoudian’s introduction to the Armenian version states it directly: she “died in the eighth year, which would correspond to AD 474” (Maksoudian, trans., Passion of Saint Shushanik, introduction, 1997). (b) 475: the conventional date of the Georgian tradition and most modern reference works, compatible with Toumanoff’s dating of Varsken’s accession and apostasy journey to c. 470 minus the pre-fortress year — so the received Life (“she died in the year 475,” Machitadze, Lives, 2006) and the standard encyclopedic treatments (following Rayfield, The Literature of Georgia, 2010/2013, 42–44); this collection’s headline dating (“17 October 475”) follows this convention while flagging it. (c) 476: reached by pushing the apostasy to 470 proper and counting the full seven years inclusively — a reconstruction found in parts of the scholarship on the text’s dating (whose terminus post quem of 476 for composition presupposes it; cf. the “traditionally c. 476–483” dating of the work, Rayfield, Literature of Georgia, 2010, 42). No document decides among these; the range 474–476 should be treated as the honest statement of knowledge, and this collection collapses it nowhere.]

The uncertainty is worth a moment’s reflection rather than embarrassment. A three-year range for a fifth-century Caucasian death — derived from a text written within a decade by an eyewitness — is extraordinarily good by the standards of the age and the region; compare the multi-decade ranges for the era’s kings (see the sibling treatment of Vakhtang’s chronology, the Vakhtang source-methodology). The precision of the day against the vagueness of the year is itself a signature of liturgical memory: the community kept her death-day because it kept her feast; no one needed the year, and so no one kept it (on this pattern in hagiographic transmission, see Methodology).

The Burial

The Martyrdom closes — in the fuller tradition; the oldest Georgian manuscript breaks off before the end (see Manuscripts, Recensions, Translations) — with the burial. The clergy and people of Tsurtavi buried her with honor at the place appointed, amid the mourning of the march’s Armenians and Georgians together; the Armenian menologion notice compresses: she “was buried with honor in the land of Georgia” (Passion, Armenian version with menologion notice, trans. Maksoudian, 1997; Jakob Tsurtaveli, Martyrdom, trans. Lang, 1976; Machitadze, Lives, 2006). The grave at Tsurtavi became at once a shrine — the veneration that Section 05 traces begins, on the evidence of the text’s very existence, immediately: a community that within a few years commissioned or received a full passion-narrative from her confessor was a community already keeping her memory liturgically (Rayfield, Literature of Georgia, 2010, 42–44, on the text’s function; see Veneration and the Political Sequel).

Per §3.5, the ledger of this file: the source’s own — the seventh-year illness, the farewells and Jojik, the last communion, the day (17 October), the burial at Tsurtavi. Computed, with the range given — the year (474–476). Tradition beyond the earliest text — the hierarchs’ names, the later relic history (see The Relics and Metekhi). The martyr the Church venerates and the woman the historian can document are, in this rare case, nearly the same figure — the gap between them is three calendar years, not the usual centuries.

The Death, Read from Within the Church

For the Church (§4.1), the manner of this death is its meaning. Shushanik did not die under a tribunal’s sword; she was worn to death across seven years by a persecution that would have ended any day at the price of a gesture. The tradition therefore honors her under the double crown the Byzantine and Caucasian churches gave such endurance: martyr in intention and confessor in form, whose “unbloody” instrument was time itself. Her last recorded acts — forgiveness, blessing, communion — are the martyrology’s demonstration that the seven years had failed to produce the one thing persecution seeks, an embittered or broken soul. That demonstration, written down by the man who heard her confessions, is the founding document of Georgian literature — the subject of Section 06.

References

Jakob Tsurtaveli. The Martyrdom of the Holy Queen Shushanik (c. 476–483). Condensed English trans. in D. M. Lang, Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints. London: Allen & Unwin, 1956; 2nd rev. ed. London: Mowbrays, 1976. (The seventh year; the farewells; the last communion; 17 October; the burial.)
The Passion of Saint Shushanik (Armenian version), trans. Krikor Maksoudian, preliminary version in Sion (1997); online at attalus.org/armenian, with introduction and the 1834 menologion notice. (The attrition summary; Jojik; “gave up her soul as a noble confessor”; “buried with honor in the land of Georgia”; the 474 computation.)
Machitadze, Archpriest Zakaria. The Lives of the Georgian Saints. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2006. (The received Life: death in 475; the forgiveness tradition; the calendar data as carried into English by pravoslavie.ru and the OCA lives.)
Rayfield, Donald. The Literature of Georgia: A History. 3rd ed. London: Garnett Press, 2010 (2013 printing, 42–44). (The text’s dating and function; the conventional chronology.)
Toumanoff, Cyril. Studies in Christian Caucasian History. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1963. (Varsken’s dates 470–482, underlying the 475 convention.)
Scripture: Acts 7:60 (the protomartyr’s prayer of forgiveness, the pattern the tradition invokes).
METHODOLOGY.md §3.5, §4.2, this repository. (Ranges, not false precision; both-sides treatment of the computations.)