Today the Church honors St. Dositheus, Martyr.
Orate pro nobis
The Christian country of Georgia came under Muslim Persian vassalage beginning in AD 1502, and under intermittent Muslim rule and suzerainty since 1555, and had become de facto independent after the disintegration of the Iranian Afsharid dynasty in 1796. In this brief interval of self-rule, the Georgian king Erakle II (1762-1798) made a peace agreement with Russia. The new ruler of Persia, Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar (14 March 1742 – 17 June 1797), also known by his regnal name of Agha Mohammad Shah, was the founder of the new Qajar dynasty of Persia, ruling from AD 1789 to 1797 as Shah.
For Agha Mohammad Khan, the resubjugation and reintegration of Georgia into the Muslim Persian Empire was part of the same process that had brought other territories, such as Shiraz, Isfahan, and Tabriz, back under his rule. Finding an interval of peace amid their own internal quarrels and with northern, western, and central Persia secure, the Persians demanded the Georgian monarch Erakle II renounce his treaty with Russia and re-accept Muslim Persian suzerainty, in return for peace and the security of his kingdom. The Ottomans, Persia's neighboring rival, recognized Persia's rights over Kartli and Kakheti for the first time in four centuries. King Erakle II appealed then to his theoretical protector, Empress Catherine II of Russia, pleading for at least 3,000 Russian troops, but he was not listened to, leaving Georgia to fend off the Persian threat alone. Nevertheless, Erakle II still rejected the Khan's ultimatum.
Thirty-five thousand Persian soldiers marched toward Georgia in the year 1795. Erekle II and his two thousand soldiers declared war on the invaders as they were approaching the capital city of Tbilisi. The Georgians offered a desperate resistance and succeeded in rolling back a series of Iranian attacks on 9 and 10 September, but most perished in the fighting. The enemy was shaken and was preparing to flee the battleground, when several traitors reported to Aqa Muhammed Khan that King Erekle had lost nearly his entire army. This betrayal decided the fate of the battle: the one hundred fifty soldiers who remained in the Georgian army barely succeeded in saving the life of King Erekle, who had willed to perish on the battlefield with his soldiers.
All of Tbilisi was engulfed in flames. The plunderers murdered the people, set fire to the libraries, and vandalized the churches and the king’s palace. They slaughtered the clergy in an especially cruel manner. The Iranian army marched back laden with spoil and carrying off some 15,000 captives.
Unfortunately, history has not preserved the names of all those martyrs who perished in this tragedy, but we do know that a certain Metropolitan Bishop Dositheus of Tbilisi was killed because he would not abandon his flock. While the invaders simply killed most of the clergymen, from Saint Dositheus they demanded a renunciation of the Christian Faith. In the aftermath of the battle, a group of Qajar soldiers found the elderly Dositheus at the Sioni Cathedral kneeling before the icon of Virgin Mary. They commanded him to defile the True and Life-giving Cross of our Lord. But the holy hieromartyr Dositheus endured the greatest torments without yielding to the enemy, and he joyfully accepted death for Christ’s sake. The invaders slaughtered Christ’s devoted servant with their swords and threw his body into the Kira River.
Saint Dositheus was martyred on September 12 in the year AD 1795.
Almighty God, by whose grace and power your holy martyr Dositheus triumphed over suffering and was faithful even to death: Grant us, who now remember him in thanksgiving, to be so faithful in our witness to you in this world, that we may receive with him the crown of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.
Amen.
