Tsotne Dadiani

Tsotne Dadiani was a Georgian nobleman of the thirteenth century and a member of the House of Dadiani, the princely dynasty that governed Odishi, the western Georgian region also known as Mingrelia or Samegrelo. He held the office of eristavi (duke) of Odishi when the Kingdom of Georgia had already been reduced to a Mongol vassal state. The Dadiani family ranked among the great feudal houses of western Georgia and retained substantial local authority even after the Bagrationi monarchs submitted to the Mongol Empire in the wake of the invasions of the 1230s and 1240s. Precise dates of Tsotne’s birth and death are not preserved in surviving chronicles or hagiographical texts; he is known only as a figure of that Mongol-dominated century.

His historical memory is inseparable from the years that followed the death of Queen Rusudan in 1245. Georgia was then split between rival Bagrationi kings who ruled as Mongol tributaries, and the country suffered heavy taxation, military levies, and political interference by Mongol officials. In that climate a conspiracy of Georgian nobles against Mongol rule was formed and subsequently uncovered. Numerous princes and nobles were arrested and taken to a Mongol camp, where they awaited judgment and probable execution. Tsotne, who had not been seized with the others, was then in western Georgia.

Rather than remain in safety, he went of his own will to the Mongol headquarters. Georgian historical tradition, including material associated with the Kartlis Tskhovreba (the Georgian Chronicles), relates that he discarded his princely garments, put on a hair shirt, and sat among the fettered nobles as if he himself were a condemned prisoner. When the Mongol commanders learned that a free and powerful eristavi had chosen to share the humiliation and danger of the captives, they were astonished. Interpreting the act as a sign of extraordinary loyalty and courage, they released Tsotne together with all the other Georgian prisoners. The episode became the central deed of his later cult.

The Georgian Orthodox Church venerates Tsotne Dadiani as a saint, honoring him as a righteous layman whose patriotism was bound up with Christian humility and self-sacrifice. His feast day is kept on 30 July. Surviving sources do not record a spouse, children, or place of burial, and they supply no year of birth or death. He remains known through the thirteenth-century political and religious tradition of Georgia and is remembered in Georgian national and ecclesiastical culture as an exemplar of fidelity to faith and homeland under foreign domination.