Paper abstract:

Iacob the Priest tells that before her death St Shushanik “summoned the bishop attached to her household, Aphots, and thanked him for his kindness, which equaled that of a father and a foster-parent. She called for me, sinner and wretch that I am, and committed to us the relics of her bones, commanding us to bury them in that place from which she was first dragged forth” (Lang 56).

When Shushanik died John and Apoth the bishops as the “yoked bulls carrying heavenly treasure” took her holy bones, the parish with candles and perfumed incense followed them. They brought them to the church in the indicated place. The parish with the bishops spent all night chanting psalms of David as the angels and praised God.

I have to dwell on the image of “yoked bulls” that has a very interesting meaning in Christian culture in general and especially in Georgian Christianity. The images of bulls are curved on the relief of Georgian temples. Bull in Christianity is a symbol of the loyalty to Christian faith. The Georgian folklore contains a lot of songs and poems about the yoked bull that is very faithful to the farmer.

From the “Martyrdom of St Shushanik” we learn that there were a lot of martyriums at that time in Kartli. St Shushanik addresses to her husband: “Your father raised up sepulchers for the martyrs and built churches, and you have ruined the deeds of your father and destroyed his good works” (Lang 48). So in Georgia Christianity was very strong in the 5th century (the hagiographic work is written in 476-482 years) because a lot of churches were built and the sepulchers for the martyrs were made.

As we can see, some very special Christian rites are mentioned in the “Martyrdom of St Shushanik’’. It is known that the Christian Church paintings of early time depicted only few topics from the Bible. They were: Birth of Christ, regret about the mankind’s sins, Easter, and waiting for the Second Coming of Christ. But these scenes were only painted on the inner walls of church or on the altar. We encounter some of such topics in the “Martyrdom of St Shushanik,’’ for example, regret about the sins of humankind (when Iacob of Tsurtavi cries about the sins), waiting for the Second Coming of Jesus etc.