Holy Martyr King Mirdat (+410)

The holy martyr King Mirdat was the son of Varaz-Bakur, king of Kartli. He was brought up by his maternal grandfather, King Trdat. His believing, wise and prudent grandfather taught the future sovereign love for God and for the nation and planted it in him. And Mirdat from boyhood was distinguished by royal qualities. Stature, vigour and fearlessness went with the Georgian prince from childhood. Nor did he lack valour and good sense. His overflowing strength led the king, trusting in his own manhood and vigour, to set himself a great aim: the full liberation and strengthening of the kingdom of Kartli. King Mirdat “became an enemy to the Greeks and the Persians”. The sovereign, burning with love for his homeland, strove to win back Tao-Klarjeti, conquered by Byzantium — “he sought Klarjeti, the borders of Kartli, from the Greeks” — while to Persia he gave no right to interfere in the country’s internal affairs and coldly refused to pay it tribute. In short, King Mirdat set himself against the mightiest states of the world of that day, which bordered on Georgia, both at once, and laboured unceasingly to win full independence for his country and to strengthen it. Naturally, neither Byzantium nor Persia would long accept the loss of Georgia and the weakening of their influence over it, and the king of the Persians sent a strong army to punish the king of the Georgians. Mirdat “did not shrink from the multitude of the Persians”; with a small force he met the aggressors at Gardabani and fought a fierce battle with them, but the bare courage of the devoted Georgians was not enough to defeat the enemy’s countless and well-armed horde. The Georgian host lost the battle, and King Mirdat himself was taken captive by the enemy and at once carried off to Baghdad, to the court of the Persian sovereign. The king of the Persians at once demanded that the captive Georgian crowned king change his faith, but received a cold refusal. The Persians tormented and tortured Mirdat much, and promised him generous favours and glory, but in vain: the unbroken sovereign of the Georgians preferred to remain a captive rather than betray Christianity. The Persians threw the fettered and tortured Mirdat into the prison of Baghdad, where he died a little while later (410). So ended the life of yet another Georgian crowned king, martyred for Christianity and for Georgia. Mirdat, who loved his nation boundlessly, did not manage in his lifetime to build churches and monasteries, for, being constantly engaged in battles, he probably meant to see to the spiritual and moral needs of the nation after the liberation of the homeland. The Chronicler even reproaches him: “he neither built a church nor added to those already built”; but God revealed his boundless love for Christ, and the king who gave himself built for us, at the price of his own death, a church not made with hands in heaven, from where he prays for us as fervently as he fought against the enemies of our country.