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Biography

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Eustathius of Mtskheta, known in Georgian as Evstati Mtskheteli, was a sixth-century Christian martyr of the Church of Iberia (Kartli) and is venerated by the Georgian Orthodox Church. The principal source for his life is the Georgian passion narrative often titled the Martyrdom of Eustathius of Mtskheta, one of the earliest surviving original works of Georgian prose, generally dated to the late sixth or early seventh century. According to that account he was a Persian by birth, originally named Gvirobandak, and a cobbler by trade. He was raised in the Zoroastrian religion of the Sasanian Empire and later settled in Mtskheta, the ancient royal and ecclesiastical centre of eastern Georgia, at a time when Kartli lay under strong Sasanian political influence.

In Mtskheta he came into contact with the local Christian community, received instruction in the faith, and was baptized by a priest named Samuel, taking the Christian name Eustathius. The passion states that he then married a Christian woman of the city and continued to work as a lay artisan while practising Christianity openly. His conversion and his refusal to join other Persians in Zoroastrian observances led fellow Persians in the region to denounce him to the authorities. He was arrested in Mtskheta and sent for judgment to the Sasanian marzban residing at Tbilisi.

Brought before the marzban, Eustathius was interrogated and urged to abandon Christianity and resume Zoroastrian practice. The hagiographical text presents him as remaining steadfast and offering a lengthy defence of Christian belief. After imprisonment he was condemned and beheaded in Tbilisi. Traditional ecclesiastical chronology places the execution in 589, during the reign of the Sasanian king Hormizd IV, though some modern summaries give only a mid-sixth-century date. Christian believers recovered his body and buried it at Mtskheta.

Eustathius was a layman, not a monk or a member of the hierarchy, and he held no episcopal or patriarchal office. He is commemorated on 29 July. The passion is valued by historians as evidence for the life of the Christian community in Iberia under Sasanian rule and for early Georgian literary culture. His exact birthplace within Persia, the name of his wife, and whether he had children are not securely recorded beyond the general statements of the martyrdom narrative.

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