Martyr Ilia Chavchavadze of Georgia

Commemorated on July 20.

This great philosopher, writer, and historian often repeated the statement “A nation whose language is corrupted can no longer exist as a nation.” He cared deeply about the Georgian language and fought to ensure that it remained the primary language taught in schools. Ilia inspired many with his patriotic zeal, and he founded the Society for the Propagation of Literacy among the Georgians. He established a depository of Georgian manuscripts and antiquities. In addition he initiated a movement to document oral folk traditions and helped to found the Georgian Agrarian Bank. Ilia the Righteous was often heard declaring, “We, the Georgian people, have inherited three divine gifts from our ancestors: our motherland, our language and our faith. If we fail to protect these gifts, what merit will we have as men?” But Ilia’s righteous deeds were an affront and threat to those who adhered to the new atheist ideology, so they plotted to kill him. On August 30, 1907, Ilia Chavchavadze and his wife, Olga (Guramishvili), had just set off from Tbilisi for Saguramo when their carriage stopped abruptly outside of Mtskheta, near Tsitsamuri Forest. They were awaited by a band of militant social democrats who attacked them and shot Ilia to death. The Military Court of the Caucasus sentenced Ilia Chavchavadze’s murderers to death by hanging. But Ilia’s wife Olga requested that the governor-general pardon her husband’s murderers. She asserted that, if Ilia had survived, he would have done the same, since the killers were simply his “unlucky brothers gone astray.” Indeed, Ilia had forgiven his murderers’ offense long before, in his prophetic poem “Prayer”: Our Father Who art in Heaven! With tenderness I stand before Thee on my knees; I ask for neither wealth nor glory; I won’t debase my holy prayer with earthly matters. I would wish for my soul to rest in heaven, My heart to be radiant with love heralded by Thee, I would wish to be able to ask forgiveness of mine enemies, Even if they pierce me in the heart: Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do! In 1987 the Holy Synod of the Georgian Orthodox Church considered the deeds of Ilia Chavchavadze before God and his country and decreed him worthy to be numbered among the saints. He was joyously canonized as Saint Ilia “the Righteous.”