The Holy Brothers David and Tarichan (693)
Saints David and Tarichan came of a well-known family of eristavis. Their parents, Vardan and Tagine, who were close to the court of the Georgian kings and related to it by marriage, brought up their sons in the fear of God. The eristavi Vardan died while David and Tarichan were children. His estate was seized by force by Tagine’s pagan brother Theodosius, who moreover resolved to bend the holy family to lawlessness: “Leave this faith of the Crucified and take my faith, thou and thy children, and I will bring up these boys as my own sons, and bring them up in comfort and great joy.” Tagine firmly withstood her brother’s evil design: “Let this inheritance of my children and all that their father acquired suffice thee; but the treasure that cannot be stolen and the inheritance that cannot be taken away, which is from the Father in heaven and from God, you cannot take from me.”
When he saw his sister’s steadfastness, the wicked Theodosius secretly called his nephews, kissed them, entertained them well and said to them: “You are now my sons; I am now as your father, and what is mine is now yours too. Only do this for me, and heed what I tell you, as obedient and beloved sons. Leave that faith which your father held, and I will give you a better faith.” The holy boys, after a short silence, answered their uncle firmly: “The faith which our father held is enough for us, and we abide in it as long as this soul is still in our bodies. But in all else save leaving the faith, for the love and patience of God, we are ready to obey thee as our father.”
The enraged Theodosius, for fear of the Christians, did not dare to kill the boys and let them go in peace, but in his heart he resolved to put them to death secretly.
Tagine sensed the misfortune that was coming and moved with her sons to Tao, to a kinsman.
Wrath and hatred gnawed at Theodosius’s heart. He sent out spies, learned that the brothers were grazing sheep on a high mountain, took soldiers and lay in ambush for the saints in the forest.
The brothers, playing on the mountaintop, heard a noise, then saw armed soldiers, and terror fell upon them. Blessed David recognised his uncle and ran joyfully towards him. Instead of a kiss the wicked Theodosius ran his nephew through with the sword and killed him. “Swiftly he found the heavenly road and won the crown of martyrdom.” The cudgel that fell from the holy martyr’s hand dropped to the ground and became a huge tree. Two hundred years later pilgrims divided that tree among themselves as holy relics.
Tarichan fled towards the village of Divri, but the pursuers caught up with him and killed him too. The villagers, who had seen the band of soldiers coming towards them and then turning back, went to the place from which the soldiers had turned back and found the slain boy.
Tarichan’s killers returned to the mountain and saw Theodosius struck blind. Amazement seized the soldiers. They could neither utter a sound nor leave the place where this miracle and punishment had come to pass. God’s punishment converted Theodosius: he was filled with repentance and sobbed bitterly: “Have I not done a lawless thing, in cutting down my sister’s sons?”
Tagine, weeping and lamenting, rebuked her brother: “Why hast thou taken from me the light of my eyes? Was not this widowhood of mine enough for my mourning? Was not the inheritance of my children enough for thee, and my dwelling in this gloomy land? Was not the inheritance of my husband enough for thee? Why hast thou darkened my sun in the very first hour of the day? How long wilt thou not cease to persecute me? Didst thou not remember the womb of thy mother and mine, and the breasts that nursed thee and me? Why hast thou put out these lamps of mine, O lawless one?” The people listened in silence to the heartbroken mother and wept bitter tears for the innocent boys. Theodosius too wept bitterly with the others.
When the mother had caressed her sons’ bodies, Theodosius said to Tagine: “A light has shone forth for thee from the incomprehensible Light, from that Light unfading and true and without end… Entreat the holy martyrs to show me mercy, that I, the unworthy, may be made worthy of the seal of Christ, the merciful God, who came for sinners. I believe in the true God.”
At these words Tagine came to herself; she understood that God had accepted as a sacrifice “fair offerings”, her sons, and she said to her brother: “May God forgive thee, and may the merciful Lord not lay to thy charge the death of my children and thy sister’s sons, as once He did not to Paul the death of his sister’s son Stephen, the first deacon and first martyr.” Then she prayed to the Lord to grant healing to Theodosius, took earth soaked with the blood of Saint David, anointed her brother’s eyes, and at once his eyes were opened. And the people gazed in astonishment at the miracle wrought beside the body of the holy martyr David.
God, the lover of mankind, was pleased to make known to all the holiness and martyrdom of the brothers: at night a light stood over their bodies.
Theodosius asked the catholicos for forgiveness, repented with tears of the murder of his nephews, was baptised, and built a church in the name of David whom he had killed. The lord of Divri took away the relics of Saint Tarichan and built a church in his name.
