Venerable Ekvtime Aghmsarebeli

Euthymius, born Estat Kereselidze (died 1944 at Zedazeni Monastery), was an Orthodox monk and saint. He came from the village of Sadmeli. After completing primary school, he went to work in Kutaisi and later Tbilisi. There, he met Maxim Sharadze, a collaborator of Ilia Chavchavadze, who encouraged Kereselidze to work in a Georgian literature reading room and subsequently in a printing house. The institution aimed to promote Georgian religious literature and to research and disseminate Georgian folk songs. Over the next 25 years, Sharadze and Kereselidze printed more than 4,000 books. In 1891, they were joined by Filimon Koridze, a musician and singer who collected Georgian folk and church music. At Koridze's request, Kereselidze began transcribing and preparing for print the works Koridze recorded during his travels to villages. Following the deaths of Koridze and Sharadze from tuberculosis in 1907, Kereselidze became the sole owner of the manuscripts, which preserved many nearly forgotten songs (Georgian church music had been forcibly replaced by Russian-origin music following the establishment of the Exarchate of Georgia in place of the autocephalous Church). On December 23, 1912, Estat Kereselidze took his perpetual monastic vows at Gelati Monastery and received the name Euthymius. He was ordained a deacon in May 1913. For the next four years, he combined his duties as the monastery's chief deacon with the work of transcribing and organizing the song manuscripts in his possession. He was ordained a priest in 1917 and became the monastery's bursar in 1918. After the Red Army occupied the Kutaisi region in 1921, he was briefly arrested and then released. Despite the Soviet authorities' persecution of the clergy, he continued his work on the collected church music.