India found relics of Georgian queen 400 years after her murder. Queen Ketevan Georgia

400 yrs later, Georgia saint-queen returns home — from Goa church

The first visit by an external affairs minister to Georgia, since the country’s independence, has already made headlines for a seemingly symbolic act.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Saturday handed over to the Georgian government and the Georgian Orthodox Church the relics of queen Ketevan, a 17th century saint, who was murdered by the Safavid empire .

At the handing over ceremony Saturday, Jaishankar said: “Today is a special day, not only for Georgia, but also for India. I have the honour to hand over the holy relics of St. Queen Ketevan to the people of Georgia. I consider myself blessed that the purpose of my first visit to Georgia is such an auspicious one.”

“The holy relics were preserved at the St. Augustine Church in Goa since the 17th century. Given the immense spiritual value that this relic holds for the people of Georgia, we had kept this sacred heritage as our own. Its return is a testimony to our warm and friendly relations. I particularly thank the good people of Goa who have been such reverential custodians of this holy treasure. They have done India proud by being true to our tradition of respecting faiths,” he said.

“The martyrdom of St. Queen Ketevan is a story of courage and sacrifice. Her relics were taken to India by two devoted Augustinian monks who witnessed the last years of her life. One part of the holy relics still remain in India as a reminder of our shared past. But the part which has now come back permanently to Georgia due to a decision made by Prime Minister Modi will surely inspire generations to come in this land,” he said.

“The presence of some of the relics in India and Georgia is a bridge of faith between our two countries. I hope that in the coming years, the people of both of our nations will traverse that bridge of spirituality as much as of friendship,” he said .

The holy Queen Ketevan was the daughter of Ashotan Mukhran-Batoni, a prominent ruler from the Bagrationi royal family. The clever and pious Ketevan was married to Prince David, heir to the throne of Kakheti. David’s father, King Alexander II (1574-1605), had two other sons, George and Constantine, but according to the law the throne belonged to David. Constantine was converted to Islam and raised in the court of the Persian shah Abbas I.Several years after David and Ketevan were married, King Alexander stepped down from the throne and was tonsured a monk at Alaverdi. But after four months, in the year 1602, the young king David died suddenly. He was survived by his wife, Ketevan, and two children—a son, Teimuraz, and a daughter, Elene—and his father ascended the throne once more.

Upon hearing of David’s death and Alexander’s return to the royal throne, Shah Abbas commanded Alexander’s youngest son, Constantine-Mirza, to travel to Kakheti, murder his father and the middle brother, George, and seize the throne of Kakheti. As instructed, Constantine-Mirza beheaded his father and brother, then sent their heads, like a precious gift, to Shah Abbas.

Their headless bodies he sent to Alaverdi. (Since the beginning of the 11th century, Alaverdi had been the resting place of the Kakhetian kings.) The widowed Queen Ketevan was left to bury her father-in-law and brother-in-law.But Constantine-Mirza was still unsatisfied, and he proposed to take Queen Ketevan as his wife.

Outraged at his proposition, the nobles of Kakheti rose up and killed the young man who had committed patricide and profaned his Faith and the throne. Having buried the wicked Constantine-Mirza with the honor befitting his royal ancestry, Ketevan sent generous gifts to Shah Abbas and requested that he proclaim her son, Teimuraz, the rightful heir to the throne.While she was awaiting his reply, Ketevan assumed personal responsibility for the rule of Kakheti. Concerned that, if he denied this request, Kakheti would forcibly separate from him and unite with Kartli, Shah Abbas hastily sent Prince Teimuraz to Georgia, laden with great wealth.

In 1614 Shah Abbas informed King Teimuraz that his son would be taken hostage, and Teimuraz was forced to send his young son Alexander and his mother Ketevan to Persia. As a final attempt to divide the royal family of Kakheti, Shah Abbas demanded that the eldest prince, Levan, be brought before him, and he finally summoned King Teimuraz himself. The shah’s intentions were clear: to hold all of the royal family in Persia and send his own viceroys to rule in Kakheti. He sought to eliminate King Luarsab II of Kartli as well, but Teimuraz and Luarsab agreed to attack the Persian army with joint forces and drive the enemy out of Georgia.

Shah Abbas sent his hostages, Queen Ketevan and her grandsons, deep into Persia, while he himself launched an attack on Kakheti. With fire and the sword the godless ruler plundered all of Georgia. The royal palace was razed, churches and monasteries were destroyed, and entire villages were abandoned. By order of the shah, more than three hundred thousand Georgians were exiled to Persia, and their homes were occupied by Turkic tribes from Central Asia. Hunger and violence reigned over Georgia.

The defeated Georgian kings Teimuraz and Luarsab sought refuge with King George III of Imereti.

After they had spent five years exiled in Shiraz (Persia), the princes Alexander and Levan were separated from Ketevan and castrated in Isfahan. Alexander could not endure the suffering and died, while Levan went mad.Saint Ketevan, meanwhile, remained a prisoner of the ruler of southeastern Persia, the ethnic Georgian imam Quli-Khan Undiladze, who regarded the widowed Queen of Kakheti with great respect. According to his command, Ketevan was not to discover the fate of her grandsons.

Queen Ketevan spent ten years in prison, praying for her motherland and loved ones with all her might and adhering to a strict ascetic regime. Constant fasting, prayer and a stone bed exhausted her previously pampered body, but in spirit she was courageous and full of vitality. She looked after those assigned to her care and instructed them in the spiritual life. After some time Abbas resolved to convert Ketevan to Islam, and he announced his intention to marry her. He asked that his proposal be conveyed to her the same day she was informed of the fate of her grandsons. As a condition of their marriage, Abbas insisted that Ketevan renounce the Christian Faith and convert to Islam. In the case of her acquiescence, Imam Quli-Khan was to respect and honor her as a queen, and in the case of her refusal, to subject her to public torture.

The alarmed imam begged the queen to submit to the shah’s will and save herself, but the queen firmly refused and began to prepare for her martyrdom. (According to one foreign observer, her steadfastness delayed the Islamization of the Georgians in Persia: “In the course of a conversation at the court of Shah Abbas, where a young and recently converted Georgian was present, the question arose as to why it was that, while all young Georgians were forced to embrace Islam, their mothers were not. The explanation given by one of those present was that since the Queen would not change her faith Georgian mothers likewise refused.” (Z. Avalishvili, “Teimuraz I and His Poem ‘The Martyrdom of Queen Ketevan,’” Georgica [vol I, no. 4/5, 1937] pp. 22.)

Queen Ketevan was robed in festive attire and led out to a crowded square. Her persecutors subjected her to indescribable torment: they placed a red-hot copper cauldron on her head, tore at her chest with heated tongs, pierced her body with glowing spears, tore off her fingernails, nailed a board to her spine, and finally split her forehead with a red-hot spade.

Saint Ketevan’s soul departed from her body, and the executioners cast her mutilated body to the beasts. But the Lord God sent a miracle: her holy relics were illumined with a radiant light.A group of French Augustinian missionary fathers, who had witnessed the inhuman tortures, wrapped Queen Ketevan’s body in linens scented with myrrh and incense and buried it in a Catholic monastery.Some time later the holy relics of Great-martyr Ketevan were delivered to her son, Teimuraz, King of Kakheti.

Teimuraz wept bitterly for his mother and sons and buried the relics with great honor in the Alaverdi Cathedral of Saint George.

Four hundred years after she was killed in Safavid Iran for refusing to give up her Christian faith and convert to Islam, St. Queen Ketevan returned home to Georgia Saturday.

The relics of Queen Ketevan, revered as Ketevan the Martyr, had been taken to Goa where they remained hidden in a church complex until their discovery in 2005.

In Georgia’s capital Tbilisi Saturday, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar handed over part of the relics to its government and the people at an emotional ceremony in the presence of His Holiness and Beatitude Ilia II, Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, and Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili.

It was the culmination of years of diplomatic requests and hard work to establish the identity of Queen Ketevan.

From Kakheti, a kingdom in eastern Georgia, she was tortured and killed in 1624 in Shiraz during the rule of the Safavid dynasty. Portuguese missionaries were said to have carried the relics to Goa in 1627 . In 2005, after years of research and study of medieval Portuguese records, the relics were found at the St. Augustine Church in Old Goa.

At the instance of the Archaeological Survey of India, the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, carried out DNA analysis that confirmed its authenticity .

The importance of Queen Ketevan for the Georgian people has led to a relic "hunt" during the last decades, notably in Goa. Since 1989, various delegations coming from Georgia have worked together with the Archaeological Survey of India to try to locate Ketevan's grave within the ruins of the Augustinian convent of Our Lady of Grace, at Old Goa, Goa. These efforts were thwarted because the teams were unable to correctly interpret the Portuguese documents that provided clues as to Ketevan's burial place.

These historical sources stated that Ketevan's palm and arm bone fragments were kept inside a stone urn beneath a specific window within the Chapter Chapel of the Augustinian convent. In May 2004, the Chapter Chapel and window mentioned in the sources were found during a collaboration work between Portuguese and Overseas Citizen of India architect Sidh Losa Mendiratta and the Archaeological Survey of India, Goa-circle (at the time when Nizammudin Taher was superintendent archaeologist). Although the stone urn itself was missing, its coping stone and a number of bone fragments were found close to the window mentioned in the Portuguese sources . Ketevan Relics were bought in Goa by the Portuguese monks in 1627 .

St. Augustine convent in old goa is one of the most spectacular monuments in Goa. It reproduces numerous travellers. St. Augustine convent was completed in 1602 and is included in world heritage, churches and convents in old Goa. St. Augustine convent was built on the top of Monte Santo between 1597 and 1602 by the Augustinian Friars who came to Goa in 1587. The church was vacated in 1835. The subsequent negligence caused the church vault to collapse in 1842. The body of the church collapsed after 1871. The bell was removed and was shifted to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception Church in Panjim, where it remains till now. The half tower of the church collapsed in 1938, and currently, only half of the tower remains. The Church had four towers from which only one remains to date. The remaining tower has a four-storied structure. After the excavations were done, they showed that the complex had eight chapels, four altars and a convent .

In 2017, at the request of the Georgian government, India sent the relics to Georgia for exhibition for six months. The relics were personally greeted by His Holiness and Beatitude Ilia II. This loan of relics was extended for another six months. The relics returned to India on September 30, 2018.

A government official told The Sunday Express that “considering the persistent request from the Georgian side for permanent transfer of the holy relics and also taking into account the historical, religious and spiritual sentiments that are attached to the St. Queen Ketevan by the Georgian people, the Indian government decided to gift one part of the holy relics to the government and people of Georgia.”