Saint Iotam Zedgenidze (†1465) — October 30 / November 12 (Julian Calendar)

On this day, October 30 according to the Julian Calendar (November 12 civil calendar), the Georgian Orthodox Church commemorates Saint Iotam Zedgenidze.

Saint Iotam Zedgenidze was a nobleman renowned for his courage, his faith, and his loyalty to the king. Raised in piety, the saint understood well that faithfulness to the anointed king meant love for his country and for the Holy Church. In 1446 Giorgi VIII, son of King Alexander the Great, was anointed King of Georgia. “Perfected and adorned with every virtue, in things divine and military,” he devoted the twenty years of his reign to the struggle to preserve the unity of the country. During his reign “God was wroth with the Christians for our sins, and Sultan Mehmed took Constantinople.”

Meanwhile, the situation in Georgia grew tense once again. Qvarqvare, Atabeg of Samtskhe, rose up against the king, and in 1463, after the victory at Chikhori, Bagrat, the ruler of Kutaisi, proclaimed himself King of Imereti.

In 1465 King Giorgi set out for Samtskhe to make war on Atabeg Qvarqvare, “to take vengeance on the atabeg.” While Giorgi was encamped beside Lake Paravani, “traitors appeared from among the rebels, to kill him and his own household.” Iotam Zedgenidze, who was in the king’s retinue, learned of the dreadful conspiracy against the king and warned him. “The king did not believe it,” writes Vakhushti in Kartlis Tskhovreba, “for he could not imagine treachery against the king from them.” When the faithful courtier could not convince the righteous and guileless king of the treason of his deceitful subjects, he proposed: “If I am deceived and my word is not true, still I beg you not to lose your life in vain; rather, let me lie tonight in your bed, and if they kill me, thinking me the king, only do not forget my children.” The king agreed, though he was fully convinced that Iotam’s suspicion sprang from love and loyalty and that no danger threatened him. “That night the hired assassins came in and killed Iotam, and the king was saved from them.”

In the morning, when Giorgi entered the royal tent, his beloved courtier lay in a pool of blood. With grief he mourned Iotam; the enemies he seized and “put them all to death.” The grateful king showered favors upon the descendants of Saint Iotam Zedgenidze.

For laying down his life for the Lord’s anointed, the divinely appointed king, Iotam was numbered among the saints by the Church of Georgia.