The Defense of Christian Iberia

The documented core of Vakhtang’s wars for the faith: his resistance to Sasanian Zoroastrian domination and, above all, his part in the great anti-Persian revolt of 482–484 alongside the Armenian rising of Vahan Mamikonian — the single episode of his reign attested outside the Georgian tradition, in the near-contemporary Armenian historian Łazar Pʿarpecʿi. This file sets out what can be firmly said about Vakhtang the defender of Christian Iberia, and pins it to its sources.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox

The Firmest Ground in the Reign

Almost everything about Vakhtang reaches us through the later, semi-epic Life; but at one point his story touches independent, near-contemporary evidence, and that point is the anti-Sasanian revolt of the early 480s. The Armenian historian Łazar Pʿarpecʿi (Ghazar Parpetsi), writing at the end of the fifth century or the very beginning of the sixth, within living memory of the events and with close ties to the Mamikonian family that led the Armenian rising, records that the Iberians rose against Persia at the same time as the Armenians, and names the Iberian king who led them (Thomson, The History of Łazar Pʿarpecʿi, 1991; the significance of Łazar for dating Vakhtang is the subject of specialized study, e.g. the discussion in the Ilia University Medieval Studies literature). This is the anchor of the whole Vakhtang chronology and the one war of his that stands on more than the Georgian tradition alone (Toumanoff, “Chronology of the Early Kings of Iberia,” Traditio 25, 1969; Rapp, The Sasanian World through Georgian Eyes, 2014).

The revolt itself belongs to the great crisis of Caucasian Christianity under the Sasanian great king Peroz (r. 459–484). Persian pressure on the faith of Armenia and Iberia — the promotion of Zoroastrianism, the demands of the imperial administration — provoked, in 481–482, a rebellion in Armenia led by Vahan Mamikonian, nephew of the Vardan who had fallen at Avarayr a generation before; and the Iberians, under their king, joined it (Thomson, The History of Łazar Pʿarpecʿi, 1991; Suny, The Making of the Georgian Nation, 1994, 25). The Caucasian Christian kingdoms rose together against the fire-worshipping empire, and Vakhtang was, on the external evidence, the Iberian leader of that rising. Here the tradition’s portrait of him as the defender of Christian Iberia against Zoroastrian Persia rests on solid, non-Georgian ground.

The Killing of Varsken and the Shushanik Affair

The revolt did not come from nowhere; the tradition and the sources connect it to an act of Vakhtang that is itself unusually well anchored — the killing of the apostate Varsken. Varsken was the pitiakhsh (viceroy/margrave) of Gugark, a great Iberian border-lord who, seeking advancement at the Persian court, apostatized from Christianity to Zoroastrianism and, when his Christian wife Shushanik refused to follow him, imprisoned, tortured, and ultimately killed her (Lang, Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints, 1976, on Shushanik; Rayfield, Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia, 2012, ch. 2). Shushanik’s martyrdom is recorded in The Martyrdom of Shushanik (Tsamebay Shushanikisi) by Iakob Tsurtaveli — the oldest surviving work of Georgian literature, written by an eyewitness within a few years of her death (traditionally c. 476–483) and thus from within Vakhtang’s own reign (Lang, Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints, 1976; Rayfield, The Literature of Georgia, 2010, on the Martyrdom as the earliest Georgian text).

The Georgian tradition holds that Vakhtang, as king, put the apostate and wife-killer Varsken to death — an act at once of justice, of Christian zeal against apostasy, and of open defiance of the Persian court that had rewarded Varsken (Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012, ch. 2; the connection is drawn in the standard accounts). [Disputed: the exact relation of the killing of Varsken to the outbreak of the revolt. That Varsken apostatized and martyred Shushanik is attested by the near-contemporary Martyrdom of Shushanik (Iakob Tsurtaveli, c. 476–483; trans. in Lang, 1976); that Vakhtang executed him is the Georgian tradition. Whether the execution was the trigger of the anti-Persian revolt or an episode within the same crisis is variously reconstructed; the sources place both in the same years and the same conflict between Christian Iberia and Zoroastrian Persia.] The Shushanik affair is precious to the historian because it gives a securely dated, eyewitness window onto Vakhtang’s Iberia — a world in which apostasy to Zoroastrianism was a live temptation for ambitious lords, martyrdom for the faith a present reality, and the king the defender of the Christians against the Persian party.

What “Defense of the Faith” Meant

Set against these anchors, the tradition’s picture of Vakhtang as the defender of Christian Iberia can be given a sober content. It did not mean a war of religion in the abstract; it meant the concrete resistance of a Christian kingdom to a Zoroastrian empire’s effort to absorb it — resistance expressed in the punishment of apostate collaborators like Varsken, in the protection of the Church and its structures (see The Reorganization of the Georgian Church), and in armed revolt when the pressure became intolerable, in concert with the Armenians (Thomson, The History of Łazar Pʿarpecʿi, 1991; Suny, The Making of the Georgian Nation, 1994, 25). The stakes were real: the same Sasanian program that Vakhtang resisted would, within two generations of his death, suppress the Iberian kingship altogether and rule Kartli through a Persian marzpan (Toumanoff, Studies in Christian Caucasian History, 1963). Vakhtang held that outcome off for a reign; the tradition remembers him as the king who did.

The Cost and the End

The revolt of 482–484 succeeded, in the end, for the Armenians: the death of the great king Peroz in 484 (in his disastrous war against the Hephthalites) forced Persia to terms, and the Treaty of Nvarsak (484) granted the Armenians toleration of their faith and made Vahan Mamikonian marzpan of Persian Armenia (Thomson, The History of Łazar Pʿarpecʿi, 1991; the Nvarsak settlement is standard in the Armenian historiography). For Iberia the settlement was more ambiguous, and Vakhtang’s own resistance to Persia did not end there but ran on, in the tradition, to his final war and his death in battle against the great king’s forces (see The Last Battle). The defense of Christian Iberia was, for Vakhtang, a lifelong and ultimately fatal commitment — which is why the Church remembers him not only as a defender of the faith but as a martyr-king (see The Confession and the Martyric Death).

References

Thomson, Robert W., trans. The History of Łazar Pʿarpecʿi. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991. (The near-contemporary Armenian attestation of the Iberian king in the anti-Sasanian revolt of 482–484; the Nvarsak settlement.)
Lang, David Marshall. Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints. London: Mowbrays, 1976. (St. Shushanik and the Martyrdom of Iakob Tsurtaveli; the apostasy of Varsken.)
Rayfield, Donald. The Literature of Georgia: A History. 3rd ed. London: Garnett Press, 2010. (The Martyrdom of Shushanik as the earliest surviving Georgian literary work.)
Rayfield, Donald. Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia. London: Reaktion, 2012. (Varsken, Shushanik, and Vakhtang; the revolt.)
Toumanoff, Cyril. “Chronology of the Early Kings of Iberia.” Traditio 25 (1969): 1–33. (The use of the Armenian evidence to date Vakhtang; the later marzpanate.)
Toumanoff, Cyril. Studies in Christian Caucasian History. Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1963.
Suny, Ronald Grigor. The Making of the Georgian Nation. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. (The Caucasian resistance to Sasanian religious pressure.)
Rapp, Stephen H., Jr. The Sasanian World through Georgian Eyes: Caucasia and the Iranian Commonwealth in Late Antique Georgian Literature. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.