The life of St Ketevan of Georgia
In 1614, hoping to protect Kakheti, Ketevan surrendered herself to Abbas as a hostage in Persia, along with two of her grandsons. She was held for a decade in the city of Shiraz. When the shah at last demanded that she renounce Christ, convert to Islam, and marry him, she refused, even knowing what refusal would cost her. She was tortured to death for her steadfastness, a death witnessed and later recorded in detail by Portuguese missionaries then living in Persia. Her body was divided in the years afterward, part of it carried back to Georgia and buried at the Alaverdi Monastery, part carried to Goa in India, where Augustinian friars had labored. Centuries later, in 2021, a portion of these relics was finally returned home to Georgia, received with reverence by the people whose faith she had refused to abandon.
