05 — After Her Death

The aftermath: immediate veneration at Tsurtavi, attested by the very existence of a confessor’s passion-narrative within a decade; the political sequel — King Vakhtang Gorgasali’s execution of Varsken in 482, the act with which the great anti-Persian revolt opened (Łazar Pʿarpecʿi); and the later tradition of her relics’ translation to the Metekhi church in Tbilisi, whose received date (578, “under Catholicos Kyrion I”) is internally inconsistent and is weighed honestly here.

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

Contents

File Description
veneration-and-the-political-sequel.md The immediate cult at Tsurtavi; the Martyrdom as liturgical monument; Vakhtang Gorgasali’s execution of Varsken (482) and the revolt of 482–484 — the near-contemporary Armenian attestation and the link to the sibling Vakhtang collection
the-relics-and-metekhi.md The relic tradition: burial at Tsurtavi; the received account of translation to Tbilisi’s Metekhi church; the “578 / Kyrion I” problem; the schism-era logic of the translation; what is attested when, and what the pilgrim venerates today

Summary

Shushanik’s death did not end the affair. Her cult began at once — the Martyrdom itself is its first monument (Rayfield, The Literature of Georgia, 2010) — and within seven years her persecutor was dead at the hands of the king of Kartli: Łazar Pʿarpecʿi’s near-contemporary history opens its account of the great Caucasian revolt with Vakhtang Gorgasali’s killing of the apostate Vazgen/Varsken in 482 (Łazar Pʿarpecʿi, trans. Thomson, 1991, pt. III; see St. Vakhtang Gorgasali). The relics’ later history is thinner ice: the Georgian tradition venerates her tomb in the Metekhi church in Tbilisi, but the received translation date (578, under Kyrion I) cannot be right as stated, and the second file gives the tradition the honest §3.5 treatment — pinned, dated, and neither asserted nor dismissed.

See Also