Georgian Christianity

Transcription

1 CHAPTER 7 Georgian Christianity Stephen H. Rapp, Jr. Introduction Caucasia, the territory bounded by the Black and Caspian Seas and taking its name from the Caucasus Mountains, has been a vibrant centre of Christianity since late antiquity. By the reign of Constantine the Great, monarchs of the eastern Georgian district of K art li (Greek Iberia) and Armenia had already embraced the Christian God; soon afterwards Christianity also took root in nearby Lazika/Colchis and Caucasian Albania. As Cyril Toumanoff (1963) and others have demonstrated, in many respects early Christian Caucasia constituted a single historical and socio-cultural unit. However, divergent responses to the imperial contest for Caucasia and the processes leading to the establishment of separate Armenian and K art velian national churches ultimately led to a clear religious break, beginning in the early seventh century. Despite this ecclesiastical estrangement, Armeno Georgian relations have endured to the present day, not least because of the shared experience of invasion and conquest by foreign imperial powers as well as the persistence of the extensive, bicultural Armeno Georgian frontier zone. Any investigation of Christianity in Georgia must therefore take into consideration the history of neighbouring lands, especially Armenia. The Early Period The Georgian Orthodox Church is one of the several national churches of Eastern Christianity and officially traces its foundation to the alleged evangelization of western Georgia by the apostle Andrew and his companion Simon the Canaanite. But this is a late tradition. The Andrew legend began to take root in Byzantium only in the ninth century, largely in response to the special apostolic authority claimed by the papacy. Embellished stories about Andrew s travels quickly spread throughout eastern Christendom. Within a century or two they were embraced and further expanded

2 138 STEPHEN H. RAPP, JR. by Georgian monks working in places such as Mount Athos and St Catherine s monastery on Mount Sinai. Several lines of archaeological evidence, including burials, have shown beyond any doubt that a small Christian presence already existed in eastern Georgia in the third century. It is possible that some Jewish colonists in the K art velian cities of Urbnisi and Mc xet a (Mtskheta), the royal seat, were early Christian adherents. Although the Jewish presence in eastern Georgia goes back to a more ancient time, these colonies were enlarged by the exodus following the Jewish Wars in the first and second centuries. The Georgian written tradition, dating from the seventh century onwards, recalls this fact by identifying some of the earliest Christian converts in K art li as Jews and by advancing the spurious claim that two K art velian Jews witnessed the Crucifixion. Along with this Jewish influence, Christian ideas also were introduced to eastern Georgia by Manichaeans and, it would seem, Gnostics. Early Georgian Christianity is characterized by its tremendous diversity, inclusiveness, and syncretic quality. The cosmopolitanism of pre-modern Caucasia, not just in the religious sphere, owed much to the region s status as a major Eurasian crossroads and its proximity to the fabled Silk Roads. A sustained push to create a single, tightly controlled Georgian Christianity and a concomitant obsession with identifying and rooting out heresy commenced much later, in the ninth and tenth centuries, and especially so in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, under the Byzantine-oriented Bagratids. It is difficult to gauge the prevalence of Christianity among the eastern Georgians before the fourth century. This uncertainty changes with the conversion of King Mirian III (variants: Mirean/Mihran; r ) and his family, from whose reign Christianity acquired the protection of the monarchy; within a century or so it became the dominant faith of the realm. The earliest written story of Mirian s conversion, an event dated by many scholars to around 337, is preserved in Rufinus Ecclesiastical History, which was composed in Latin in the early fifth century. The oldest extant (written) Georgian account, The Conversion of K art li, is a product of the seventh century, while a considerably more elaborate version, The Life of Nino, derives from the ninth or tenth century. The interrelationship of these texts and the provenance of their traditions has inspired lively debate, though most specialists accept that the historical Mirian was converted through the intercession of the foreign, perhaps Cappadocian, holy woman Nino and that he consequently favoured the Church in K art li by offering royal protection, supporting its administration, and contributing to the building of churches. The chief prelate, sequentially styled bishop, archbishop, and then from the end of the fifth century catholicos (Georgian kat alikos), was resident at the royal city Mc xet a. Over the next two centuries a network of bishoprics was established under the watchful eye of the K art velian king. Eastern Georgia s landscape was predominantly non-urban and so the administrative model adopted by the Church in the Roman/Byzantine Empire was not appropriate. K art velian bishops tended to be headquartered at the estates of the most powerful aristocratic families (e.g., C urtavi in the Armeno Georgian frontier zone) and, after the sixth century, at important monasteries. Extremely little is known about the early ecclesiastical hierarchy except that the Archbishop of Mc xet a stood at its head. According to a later written tradition, Nino

3 GEORGIAN CHRISTIANITY 139 herself selected the first two leaders of the Church in K art li. Between the fourth and sixth centuries, from King Mirian to King P arsman VI (r. from 561), the chief prelates were foreigners; several were Greek, while others were Armenian, Syrian and Iranian ( Iranian in this context may denote Manichaean ). In fact, the initial phase of Christianization was very much a pan-caucasian phenomenon in which non- Caucasians assumed a prominent role. The Church in K art li was claimed by the Patriarchate of Antioch from an early time, although in practice Caucasia was often beyond Antioch s jurisdictional reach. Up to the Arab conquest in the seventh century, when regular communications between Caucasia and Syria were disrupted, the chief bishop of the Church in K art li received ordination from Antioch. There is a later, dubious tradition, probably originating in the eleventh century, that the exiled fourth-century Antiochene patriarch, Eustathius, made his way to eastern Georgia and was responsible for guiding the affairs of the local church. Similarly problematic is Elguja Xint ibidze s assertion (1996) that some of the early Cappadocian fathers, including Basil the Great, might actually have been Iberians, i.e., Georgians. Although there may in fact be a genealogical connection of some kind, there is no compelling reason to believe that Basil identified himself as a Georgian or that the alleged Georgian link was in some way instrumental to the formation of his ideas. In order to propagate the faith rapidly among Mirian s subjects, Christian leaders deliberately invented a script for the K art velian idiom of Georgian so that biblical and other religious texts could be translated into the local language. There is considerable controversy about the origins of the Georgian script. The c.800 Life of the Kings, the initial text of the corpus of medieval Georgian histories known as K art lis c xovreba (the so-called Georgian Royal Annals or Georgian Chronicles ), credits the first K art velian monarch P arnavaz (r bce) with the invention of Georgian writing in early Hellenistic times. There is, however, no direct evidence to support this fanciful claim. For its part, the medieval Armenian tradition gives the honour of creating scripts for Armenian, Georgian, and Caucasian Albanian to the Armenian cleric Mashtots, also known as Mesrop. However, surviving manuscripts of the vita of Mashtots, like those transmitting The Life of the Kings, postdate the schism between the Armenian and K art velian Churches, and it is altogether possible that both have been manipulated so as to give their respective parties precedence. In terms of chronology there can be no question, however, that all three Caucasian scripts were fashioned by a Christian impulse at about the same time, in the second half of the fourth century or early fifth century. Thus, while Mashtots might not have been involved personally with overseeing the creation of the Georgian script, there is every reason to think that a Christian pan-caucasian effort was afoot. Armenian clerics would have played a conspicuous role in the project since their Church established just a generation previously, after the conversion of King Trdat c.314 was the largest and organizationally the most developed among the embryonic Caucasian churches. Thus by the end of the fourth and certainly by the start of the fifth century, Christian clerics had equipped themselves with a Georgian script, called asomt avruli. The Gospels were probably the first to be rendered into Georgian. Translated ecclesiastical literature has remained important in Georgia ever since. None of these early translations have

4 140 STEPHEN H. RAPP, JR. survived intact; the oldest extant Georgian manuscripts are palimpsest fragments of translations deriving from the fifth to the eighth century. They are exclusively religious in nature and transmit texts from both the Old and New Testaments, as well as liturgical, homiletic, and even apocryphal works. It should be noted that some Byzantine sources that are otherwise lost are now preserved only in Georgian translations, including Hippolytus Commentary on the Song of Songs, Metrophanes of Smyrna s Commentary on Ecclesiastes, Eustratius of Nicaea s Brief Memorandum on When and Why the Romans and their Church Deviated from the Divine Eastern Church, and On Festivals, the last of which was fabulously attributed to Justinian I. Works originally composed in yet other languages are also uniquely preserved in Georgian, including The Passion of Michael of Mar Saba, which was translated from Arabic in the ninth or tenth century. At the end of the fifth century the first known example of original Georgian literature appeared: The Martyrdom of Shushaniki, composed by her confessor Iakob C urtaveli (Jacob of C urtavi). Like other specimens of early Georgian literature, it relates the deeds of a holy person. Original Georgian literary works are rather uncommon prior to the rise of the Bagratid dynasty in the ninth century, nevertheless hagiography appears to have been the genre of choice in the initial stage of local literature. These saintly biographies were written by Christians for the strengthening and defence of the faith of Christ, but they relate relatively few details about the condition and structure of the contemporary Church in K art li. However, the Georgian-language vitae of Shushaniki (fifth century), Evstat i (c.600), and Habo (variant Abo, eighth century) are testaments to the diverse, multicultural character of early Georgian Christianity. All three of these Christian heroes were non-k art velians who lived and were killed in eastern Georgia: Shushaniki was an Armenian princess; Evstat i, an Iranian and son of a Zoroastrian high priest; and Habo, an Arab. What was most important in these early hagiographies is a sense of Christian affiliation, not ethnicity. In the case of Evstat i and Habo, saintly biographies demonstrated that Christianity could overcome its enemies and doubters. Further, the physical location of the stories in eastern Georgia was of immense importance, for it showed that even in Caucasia, so far from the Holy Land, the Christian God could work miracles and guide local affairs. Biblical history was enlarged geographically and chronologically through such traditions. The originals of such vitae are lost, and the copies that we do have are typically found in collections of saints lives of the eleventh century onwards. Although all of this material is in Georgian, the vast majority of the vitae celebrate holy men and women from elsewhere in the Christian world. Other materials in the collections consist of ecumenical Christian patristic, homiletic, theological, and exegetical writings, these works having been translated into Georgian, often from Greek. For example, the eleventh-century Parxali mravalt avi (polycephalon) incorporates the Georgian vitae of Shushaniki and Habo as well as materials relating to Nino, but also well over a hundred items of an ecumenical nature. As a consequence of this structure, Georgian saints were made every bit as legitimate as saints recognized by the universal Church, and Georgian Christianity was made part of the larger Christian experience. The writing of saints lives in eastern Georgia constantly evolved to reflect changing local conditions. The most ancient Georgian hagiographies are passions and martyrdoms. Then, after the foundation of monasticism in K art li in the sixth century, the

5 GEORGIAN CHRISTIANITY 141 lives and activities of other holy men (and, rarely, women), especially monks, were composed. In the seventh century a narrative of Nino s travails was put into writing. Out of this hagiographical context was produced the first written Georgian-language historiographical texts in the early ninth century. It is worth noting that medieval Georgian histories tend to focus narrowly on kings and kingship and offer relatively few clues about the state of the local church. Original and translated Georgian literature alike reveals the southerly orientation of early Georgian Christianity, towards Jerusalem, Syria and Armenia. The earliest written versions of Nino s biography exude the eastern Georgians deep admiration for Jerusalem. Among other things, Nino was given a direct but possibly fabulous connection with that city and its patriarch, and holy sites in Mc xet a were named in honour of its most important Christian places. A number of scholars have shown the preservation of the Jerusalem rite in original and translated Georgian sources of the pre-bagratid period (i.e., especially before the tenth century). Of special importance are the medieval Georgian iadgaris, roughly the equivalent of Byzantine tropologia. In the words of musicologist Peter Jeffery, Though the original Greek manuscripts are lost, the medieval Georgian translations permit us to know what [the early Jerusalem repertories] contained, to trace their historical development, and to document the influence Jerusalem asserted on other Eastern and Western centers of liturgical chant... Georgian chant is in some respects our most direct witness to the period and processes in which all medieval Christian liturgical chant was formed. T amila Mgaloblishvili s splendid investigation (1991) of the Klarjet ian mravalt avi has substantiated the importance of the era of King Vaxtang I Gorgasali (r ) in the translation and adaptation of liturgical and other ecclesiastical materials into Georgian. Indeed, the reign of Vaxtang has traditionally been portrayed as a period of tremendous growth for Georgian Christianity. There can be no question of the extension of bishoprics in this era as well as the translating, writing, and copying of texts both at home and by K art velian monks resident abroad, especially in Levantine monasteries such as Mar Sabas. The pattern of foreign monasteries as the central sites of Georgian literary production was thus established back in the fifth century. It was also at this time that we observe the eastern Georgians being drawn into the theological disputes of the larger Church. In an attempt to secure K art velian support and to acknowledge local support of the empire, the Byzantine government recognized and perhaps itself instigated the change in status of the K art velian chief prelate from archbishop to catholicos, around the year 480. Fully-fledged autocephaly would not be achieved, however, until the Arab conquest or later. In the sixth century eastern Georgian bishops attended ecclesiastical councils hosted by the Armenians and together with other Caucasian religious leaders voiced their opposition to Chalcedon. However, eastern Georgia s geopolitical situation and especially the increasing weakness of its monarchy compelled the K art velian secular and religious elite to seek aid from Constantinople. The growing Iranian menace forced Vaxtang to seek refuge

6 142 STEPHEN H. RAPP, JR. in Byzantine-controlled eastern Anatolia on at least two occasions. Sassanid influence steadily expanded in eastern Georgia: an Iranian marzbān was established in the recently-(re)founded city of T bilisi (older orthography Tp ilisi, Russian Tiflis) in 523, and according to the careful research of Toumanoff (1963), K art velian kingship was completely extinguished by Iran several decades later, around the year 580. Within a decade the political vacuum was filled by a series of presiding princes, which lasted down to the re-establishment of local kingship by the Bagratid dynasty in 888. The Long Sixth Century is perhaps the single most developmentally significant period of Georgian Christianity. Though the K art velian political situation plunged deeper and deeper into crisis, the Church in K art li was strengthened and remade itself into a national organization. During the reign of P arsman VI (561 to 579 at latest), the so-called Thirteen Syrian Fathers under the leadership of the Iovane Zedazadneli (John of Zedazadeni ) entered eastern Georgia and acquired the king s permission to establish a series of monasteries. Among them were Davit Garesjeli (David of Garesja ), founder of the monastic complex in the Garesja (variant Gareji) desert in the eastern region of Kaxet i, and Shio Mghwmeli, who established a monastery at the Mghwme (Mghvime) caves just upriver from Mc xet a. The Thirteen Syrian Fathers attracted a considerable body of local pupils and this increased the demand for books throughout the land. It is worth recalling that while these men are credited with the implantation of monasticism in eastern Georgia, the K art velians had previously been acquainted with it; a considerable number of K art velians, like the famous anti-chalcedonian Peter the Iberian, had journeyed abroad, especially to Jerusalem. The Syrian monks were likely anti-chalcedonians (modern observers have variously identified them as Miaphysites and Nestorians), although our relatively late sources do not indicate how or whether this affiliation affected their labours in eastern Georgia. However, at the time of their arrival, the Church in K art li remained in the non-chalcedonian camp with the Armenians and Caucasian Albanians. Yet the anti-chalcedonian union among Caucasian Christians was becoming increasingly fragile. P arsman VI s reign witnessed not only the implantation of monasticism in eastern Georgia but also the nativization of the K art velian ecclesiastical hierarchy. A dramatic shift in self-consciousness resulted in the struggle waged by the inflexible catholicoi of K art li and Armenia. According to the later sources for the episode preserved in the Armenian Book of Letters (Girk T ght ots ), at first the dispute centred on the Armenian allegation that the K art velian Catholicos Kwrion had not dedicated his full energies to the war against Nestorianism. At the heart of the struggle were three issues. First, what was the proper relationship of Christian Caucasia with the Byzantine Empire? Second, was the diversity of Christianity as practised in the eastern Georgian domains appropriate? Finally, who, if anyone, should have the right to make decisions affecting the Christians of greater Caucasia, including the definition of what constituted Orthodoxy? In other words, who, if anyone, held ultimate ecclesiastical authority in Christian Caucasia and what was the structure of the regional church hierarchy? The Armenians believed themselves, or at least local ecclesiastical councils held under the presidency of the Armenian catholicos, to possess that ultimate, pan-

7 GEORGIAN CHRISTIANITY 143 Caucasian authority. Kwrion dissented, an action not unexpected in light of the great energy and newfound boldness displayed by K art velian church officials. Finally, at their Third Council of Dvin, held in 607, the Armenians condemned Kwrion and his adherents, and a schism between the two Caucasian churches was set into motion. It would be another century before this break would become permanent. Though Armenian polemical works were directed against the eastern Georgians not long after Dvin III (this occurring within the larger context of the separation of the imperial and Armenian churches studied by Nina Garsoïan, 1999), the K art velians would seem to have returned fire only much later. The earliest known such work was penned by the eleventh-century Catholicos Arsen Sap areli ( of Sap ara ). Kwrion s Christological orientation has proven a bone of contention: was he a Diophysite, a Miaphysite or a Monothelite? There is some evidence suggesting the last, but what is certain is that this public dispute with the Armenians brought theology squarely into the K art velian foreground. And to the eastern Georgians, the theological issue was inseparable from the question of relations with Byzantium. Over the course of the sixth century, the eastern Georgian elite pinned its protection and fate more and more on Constantinople, and the Armenians had objected to this and resented its possible implications. From Constantinople s perspective, such alliances required what amounted to a declaration of faith: for the K art velians to receive Byzantine support and assistance, they would have to embrace the imperial form of Christianity. Kwrion seems to have put his church on that path. But in the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (610 41), a great many K art velian churchmen abandoned their non- Chalcedonian position. Heraclius very appearance in K art li, as he was en route to Sassanid Iran, and his promotion of Byzantine Christianity, was unprecedented in Georgian history. So great was the impact that the episode is uniquely reported in three separate medieval Georgian-language histories. The excitement stemming from Heraclius defeat of the Iranian army and his sacking of Seleucia-Ctesiphon was short-lived. Iran and Byzantium had been exhausted from the prolonged war, and both were susceptible to the new, well-organized opponent from the south, the Arabs. Sassanid Iran was an initial target, the Arabs managing to kill the last Sassanid king in 651. Byzantine possessions in Mesopotamia were also coveted by the Arabs. The routing of a Byzantine army at Yarmuk in August 636 opened the door to Syria; by 638 Syria and Palestine, including the patriarchates at Jerusalem and Antioch, were in Muslim hands. The invasion of Christian Caucasia commenced by 640 and five years later Arab troops had penetrated eastern Georgia. In the city of T bilisi surrendered and eastern Georgia was occupied. As was the case in neighbouring Armenia, a major component of the Arabs approach was the colonization of Christian Caucasia. In the meantime, Byzantine Egypt also succumbed to the Arabs, in September 642. Egypt is mentioned here because of the infamous Patriarch Cyrus of Alexandria. It was Cyrus, a favourite of Heraclius and a staunch advocate of Monothelitism, who surrendered Egypt. This Cyrus may have a direct connection to Georgia. Zaza Alek sidze (1968) has advanced the provocative argument that Cyrus is none other than the Catholicos Kwrion. That Cyrus was deemed personally responsible for the dramatic loss of Egypt to the infidels, and that he and his Monothelite partners were singled out and

8 144 STEPHEN H. RAPP, JR. excommunicated at the Sixth Ecumenical Council in 681, may explain why Kwrion s memory was expunged from medieval Georgian sources. By the end of the seventh or start of the eighth century, Christianity in eastern Georgia had been radically transformed. For the first time in its history, a distinct tradition of the foundation of K art velian Christianity was put into writing. In its original form, the succinct Conversion of K art li was produced sometime in the seventh century, presumably within a few decades of the events of 607 (Rapp and Crego 2006). Although The Conversion undoubtedly preserves many older, accurate memories of how Christianity triumphed in the time of Nino and Mirian, the work as a whole must also be seen in large measure as a seventh-century declaration of autonomy: the K art velian Church was an independent organization and, significantly, connections to the contemporaneous conversions of Armenia and Albania have for the most part been expunged. Indeed, it was in this period that the Church in K art li was transformed into the ethnically focused K art velian Church. Though observers of the time did not explicitly note the change or apply new terminology to the local church, the K art velian Church was strikingly different in its organization and mission. Its hierarchy, including the office of catholicos, was now monopolized by eastern Georgians, especially K art velians. What is more, it had now become a national church, an organization by and for the dominant K art velian ethnie. This is reflected in contemporary Georgianlanguage vitae, such as the eighth-century Martyrdom of Habo by Iovane Sabanis-dze. In the case of Habo, an Arab migrant to the Georgian territories, conversion to Christianity was not enough: he had to embrace the local, K art velian, form of Christianity which entailed, inter alia, learning the Georgian language and converting to K art velian culture. After Habo the heroes of original hagiographies tend to be K art velians or other Georgians; the cosmopolitanism of early K art velian Christianity was thus curtailed, though by virtue of Georgia s location in a prominent Eurasian crossroads this condition never completely disappeared. K art velian political authority remained feeble throughout the ninth century, and as it had in previous times the local church postured to fill the void. But the Arab conquest brought changes to the K art velian Church. As a result of the occupation, what may have been thousands of religious and secular elites evacuated the region. Some travelled east into the mountainous far eastern regions of Kaxet i, while many others sought refuge in the Georgian south-west, in regions such as Tao (the Armenian Tayk ), Klarjet i and Shavshet i, where the Arabs had been unable to extend their dominion. Over the next two centuries a K art li-in-exile was created, which I call neo-k art li. This area was instrumental in the later re-conquest of eastern Georgia. Georgian Christianity not only survived, it flourished. From the south-western domains, it gained unprecedented access to Byzantium and the imperial church, and by the tenth century this influx of Byzantine forms and ideas led to a reorientation of the local church away from the south and towards the Byzantine Empire. A prime example of this shift in Christian orientation is the deliberate substitution of the Jerusalemite liturgy with the Constantinopolitan. At the same time, monastic institutions thrived as never before. A number of enormous, often autonomous monastic foundations were established throughout the south western domains. The chief figure associated with this development is the monk Grigol Xandzt eli (George

9 GEORGIAN CHRISTIANITY 145 of Xandzt a/khandzt a ). Xandzt eli s biography, composed by his pupil Giorgi Merch ule, is not only an extensive record of the growth and development of K art velian monasticism, but it also supplies rare glimpses into the political and everyday life of contemporary neo-k art li. This vita also expresses the idea of a K art velian national church in so far as it makes the Georgian language (i.e., the K art velian dialect) not only a legitimate sacred language but also an essential component of Georgian Christianity. Neo-K art li s prosperity contributed to the rejuvenation of K art velian political life under the Bagratids. Ironically, the Bagratids were originally an Armenian family; there is evidence that in Vaxtang s time some of them had already entered the service of the K art velian monarchy. But it is in the years immediately following the crushing of a disastrous uprising by Armenian noble families against the Arabs in 772 that a branch of the family migrated to neo-k art li, where they permanently settled and were rapidly acculturated. In 813 the Bagratid prince Ashot I seized the presiding principate and three-quarters of a century later, in 888, his relative Adarnase II restored local kingship. Great though his achievement was, Adarnase could not have guessed that the Bagratid line of kings would monopolize political power in much of Georgia for the next thousand years, up until the Russian conquest of the nineteenth century. The greatest and most enduring achievement of the Georgian Bagratids, who had risen to power under Byzantine tutelage, was the political unification of lands on both the eastern and western sides of the Surami mountains, beginning with the union of part of K art li, neo-k art li, and the western region of Ap xazet i (Russian Abkhazia); this was engineered by Bagrat III in It is worth emphasizing that, up to the start of the Bagratid era, the historical and ecclesiastical experiences of eastern and western Georgia often diverged. Western territories including Ap xazet i, and before it Lazika and Egrisi/Colchis, fell more under the influence (and sometimes direct control) of the Roman and then the Byzantine Empire. Consequently, western Georgian Christianity developed along different lines from that in eastern territories such as K art li (it should be noted that labelling the western regions as Georgian in this early period is extremely misleading and projects back later realities and perceptions; L. G. Khrushkova s use of Eastern Black Sea (2002) in this context is more historically accurate). Although the beginning of the conversion of western Georgia may also be traced to the fourth century, the Christianity introduced and fostered there tended to be more in line with that sanctioned by Constantinople. Bishops sitting in the western regions took part in the first and fifth ecumenical councils. Once the Bagratids took the reins of power in Ap xazet i, the church of western Georgia was merged with that of the East. That having been said, however, the K art velian Church, especially as it existed in neo-k art li, often exerted influence over other regions, including western Georgia, long before the Bagratids assumed control of these places. Thus religious uniformity often preceded political unity. By the eleventh century, the Bagratids had realigned local royal imagery both in art and in the historical texts they sponsored from its traditional southern-facing, Iranian orientation to one more attuned to Christian Byzantium. In this development, too, we must acknowledge the influence of the eastern Georgian Church and its similar reorientation from the south (in this case, Palestine, Syria and Armenia) to the west, towards the Byzantine Commonwealth. In other

10 146 STEPHEN H. RAPP, JR. words, the local church s intensive adoption and adaptation of Byzantine models from the ninth and especially tenth century preceded and stimulated a similar reorientation by the political elite in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The Medieval Bagratid Period With the definite expansion of the K art velian Church beyond lands inhabited primarily by K art velians in the tenth and eleventh centuries, we can begin to speak properly of the Georgian Church. The growing prestige of the Church attracted the Bagratids constant attention. Potentially, the Georgian Church was as much a powerful ally as it was a dangerous rival. When the Catholicos Melk isedek petitioned for tax immunity around the year 1031, King Bagrat IV (r ) had little choice but to comply, for he relied heavily on the support of the local church in his obstacleladen quest for political consolidation and unification. A number of royal charters acknowledging such immunities along with property rights have come down to us. As early as Bagrat s time the crown sometimes attempted to restrict the powers of and even subordinate the ecclesiastical hierarchy, but these attempts, led by the Georgian Athonite Giorgi Mt acmideli (variant Mtatsmindeli, of the Holy Mountain ), failed. A reflection of the increasing power and prestige of the Georgian Church is the assumption of the title patriarch (patriark i) by its chief prelate at some point in the eleventh century. Who authorized this alteration of status is unknown; it may very well have been self-generated, without the endorsement or even knowledge of Byzantine officials. King Davit II, nicknamed Aghmashenebeli ( the [Re-]Builder, r ), manipulated church affairs to an unprecedented degree. During his reign the first attested all-georgian ecclesiastical councils took place, the most famous of which occurred in 1103 at the neighbouring Ruisi and Urbnisi churches not far from the city of Gori. These assemblies mimicked the Ecumenical Councils, albeit on a smaller, Caucasian scale. At least one council examined Miaphysitism, a burning issue owing to the Georgian annexation of much of Caucasian Armenia. Indeed, it was in the second half of the eleventh century that the Georgian Catholicos Arseni Sap areli wrote a tract censuring the anti-chalcedonian Armenians for the schism. It was in this time, under the Bagratid regime, that the Georgian Church embarked on an unprecedented programme to define, unmask and combat heresy. At the Ruisi-Urbnisi council Davit succeeded in appointing supporters and close associates to many of the highest ecclesiastical positions. He also created a new official, the mcignobart -uxucesi chqondideli, which combined a major secular position with the bishopric of Chqondidi, one of the most important episcopal sees in western Georgia. After the patriarchate, the See of Chqondidi was now the second highest position in the Georgian Church. The king s intention was to control appointments to this office in order to manipulate church affairs as part of his larger project to expand and centralize state control. However, a headstrong mcignobart -uxucesi chqondideli might also turn the institution on its head by giving the Church a clear path to interfere in secular matters. This tension is evident throughout the golden age of the Bagratids that ended with the Mongol conquest.

11 GEORGIAN CHRISTIANITY 147 The ninth to thirteenth century witnessed an unprecedented blossoming of ecclesiastical culture. Stone churches were constructed throughout the Georgian domains, and they were decorated with beautiful frescoes. This was also a period of intensive literary output. In 897 the oldest complete copy of the Georgian Gospels was made, the so-called Adyshi variant, named for the city in the northern region of Svanet i in which it was discovered. In the tenth century a number of Gospels appear: Urbnisi (906), Opiza (913), K sani (early tenth century), Jruchi (936), Mount Sinai (two variants, midcentury and 978), Parxali (973), Bert ay (988), and Tbet i (995). As the extensive studies by Ilia Abuladze show (1944), the ninth and tenth centuries, especially the period 840 to 960, witnessed the translation of many Armenian hagiographies and other ecclesiastical texts into Georgian and vice versa. This was an attempt of the two peoples to understand one another at a time when large numbers of Armenians were subjected to Georgian political authority. In the twelfth century, the Georgian Royal Annals, K art lis c xovreba, were translated and adapted into Armenian. Starting in the early eleventh century we possess several royal charters granting ecclesiastical tax immunity and the like; such documents become especially plentiful in the second half of the century. The original ecclesiastical-historical compilation known as Mok c evay k art lisay, with its core component The Conversion of K art li (initially composed back in the seventh century), took shape in early Bagratid times. Its oldest surviving manuscripts were copied in the tenth century, and include the famous Shatberdi Codex (named for the neo-k art velian monastery by the same name founded by Grigol Xandzt eli) and the N/Sin.-50 manuscript from St Catherine s monastery on Mount Sinai. Mok c evay k art lisay includes The Life of Nino, an enlarged, reworked version of The Conversion, which itself was written in the ninth or early tenth century. The role of monasteries in the production and safeguarding of such texts should not be underestimated. Shatberdi in neo-k art li was a particularly important literary centre. Of even greater significance in this regard were Georgian monks and monastic foundations abroad. The monastic diaspora, especially in the Holy Land and Syria, played a decisive role in medieval Georgian Christianity. In the ninth to thirteenth centuries Georgian monks were resident throughout the Eastern Christian world. Monasteries dominated by Georgians or having large Georgian constituencies were also widespread. The most famous of these were Iveron (Greek for of the Iberians/Georgians ; the Georgians sometimes referred to it as the k art velt a monastiri, or Monastery of the Georgians ) on Mount Athos, St Catherine s on Mount Sinai, the Monastery of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem (rebuilt by Proxore/Prochoros of Shavshet i in the eleventh century), the Monastery of the Black Mountain near Antioch in Syria, and Petricioni near Bachkovo in Bulgaria. A large number of original Georgian compositions, especially of a theological nature, were produced in these places, and copies were sent back to Georgia. Many translations of ecclesiastical literature were also made into Georgian, especially from Greek. The eleventh century saw the formation of distinct literary schools among Georgian monks. Some advocated a free-form translation from Greek while others, including Ep rem Mcire (Ephrem the Lesser ), promoted translations that slavishly reproduced the Greek even at the risk of clouding comprehension of the translated text.

12 148 STEPHEN H. RAPP, JR. The energetic golden age of the medieval Georgian monarchy of the Bagratids came to an end in the thirteenth century as a consequence of the overextension of resources on the part of the Crown, the inept rule of Giorgi IV Lasha (r ) and the casting of Mongol hegemony over much of the Caucasian isthmus. Mongol rule had several consequences. Political power was fragmented, although a shadow of royal authority endured. At times, the Mongols recognized more than one Bagratid as king simultaneously. Bagratid power within Georgia was sometimes questioned, but the Bagratids entered the post-mongol era with their monopoly over royal authority intact. The Georgian Church also survived the Mongol onslaught, although its special position had in some ways been contested. In Ap xazet i, during Mongol times, a separate, rival patriarchate was established (or re-established; there is a divergence of opinion over when a patriarchate in Ap xazet i was first created). As early as 1224, in a response to a letter announcing the enthronement of Queen Rusudan (r ) the previous year, Pope Honorius III had invited the Georgians to join a new crusade against the Muslims. The exchange of letters continued under the pontificate of Gregory IX, and in 1240 Rusudan begged him for assistance, as the Mongol invasion was unleashed upon her country. Though the Pope could do little more than offer encouragement to the Christians of distant Caucasia, he urged the Georgians to enter formal communion with the Catholic Church. In the first half of the thirteenth century the Georgian Church was drifting into schism with the Byzantine Church, and Rusudan seems to have attempted to counterbalance Byzantine influence with that of the papacy. This is reminiscent of an earlier period, the fourth century, when King Mirian had sought to restrict the influence of Sassanid Iran by accepting the new religion of Constantine the Great. In the reign of Rusudan and continuing throughout the thirteenth century, Franciscan and Dominican friars established a foothold in Georgia. In 1328 Pope John XXII established a see in the city of T bilisi and in the following year appointed the Dominican John of Florence as the first Catholic bishop in Georgia. This see existed down to the early sixteenth century. Despite these inroads, Orthodox Georgians never accepted formal reunion with the Roman Church. From the late 1380s to about 1400 the Georgian lands were invaded by the armies of Timur (Tamerlane). Many places were devastated; churches and monasteries were singled out for plunder. Local Bagratid kings were in no position to defend the embattled Church. Starting under the Mongols, autonomous non-bagratid principalities had been established in the west and south-west, including in Samc xe, Samegrelo (Mengrelia), and Ap xazet i. Though a united Georgian kingdom was reassembled by the Bagratid Alek sandre I (r ), political union did not extend past his death; Georgia would not again be united until the establishment of Russian control in the nineteenth century. In the thirteenth to early fifteenth century, the authority of the Georgian Church was diminished. Existing churches fell into disrepair and many were destroyed. The state of deterioration persisted for the next two centuries. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 deprived the Bagratids and the Georgian Church of potential Byzantine aid, but the psychological impact was more important than loss of material support, which for a long time had been meagre. The re-emergence of a strong Iranian state under the Safavids and the rising fortunes of the Ottomans had dramatic consequences

13 GEORGIAN CHRISTIANITY 149 for Georgia. The intense rivalry of these two Islamic enterprises was often played out in the Caucasian arena, a situation not unlike the earlier imperial contests fought in the isthmus by Rome and Byzantium and Iran and Islam. The Georgian political elite attempted once more to play the great powers off one another, but ultimately their Christian affiliation was a hindrance as both the Ottomans and Safavids were Islamic (compare the situation under Mirian III with Christian Byzantium and Zoroastrian Iran). Some Georgian princes and kings converted to Islam and the Georgian Church fell upon even harder times. After their occupation of south-western Georgia in the sixteenth century, the Ottomans actively established mosques throughout the region. There were some opportunities to repair existing church buildings, as was the case with the restoration of the Sioni cathedral in T bilisi and Sueti-c xoveli (modern Svetic xoveli, i.e., Church of the Life-Giving Pillar ) in Mc xet a by King Vaxtang VI, but this was the exception rather than the norm. This was also a renewed period of Georgian martyrs. In September 1624 the queen of Kaxet i K et evan was put to death by order of Shah Abbas I (r ). Her martyrdom was reported to the pope by Augustinian fathers, who were then resident in Iran. The Modern Period The fact that Catholic monks reported K et evan s murder reflects the renewed influence of Catholicism in the seventeenth century. This influence was made possible largely through French relations with the Ottomans and Iranians. In 1626 Theatine missionaries first visited western Georgia. One of their number, Cristoforo Castelli, produced many detailed drawings of the region and its leaders, which remain a valuable and unique source of information. From 1661 until their expulsion by the Russians in 1845 Capuchins were established in eastern Georgia, at T bilisi. Several Bagratid princes and kings and even Georgian patriarchs flirted with Catholicism and many more were sympathetic to it. The famous scholar Vaxushti Bagrationi, a son of Vaxtang VI and author of a famous history and geography of all Georgia, was educated by Catholics based in T bilisi. Vaxtang s uncle and adviser, Sulxan-Saba Orbeliani, actually converted to Catholicism. Orbeliani was author of several books, including the first lexicon of the Georgian language and memoirs of his travels to western Europe, which had begun in This journey was undertaken so as to solicit aid for the embattled Vaxtang VI from Pope Clement IX and the French King Louis XIV. The resurgence of Catholicism in Georgia had other important literary consequences. In 1629 the first Georgian printing press was set up in Rome through the collaboration of the Georgian envoy Prince-Monk Nikephoros Irbak idze and Italian scholars. Yet again we observe the importance of the tiny Georgian diaspora in the history of Georgian literature and Christianity. The first printed books in Georgian were intended to aid Catholic missionary endeavours among the Georgians and included a 3,000-word Georgian-Italian vocabulary. The first printing press in Georgia was established by Vaxtang VI in T bilisi in 1709 and was active until Early publications were religious, and included the Four Gospels (1709) and a book of liturgies (1710). However,

14 150 STEPHEN H. RAPP, JR. the first edition of the great Georgian epic, the Vep xistqaosani (The Knight in the Panther s Skin), by the thirteenth-century poet Shot a Rust aveli, appeared in The next great centre of Georgian printing was Moscow, where from 1737 books were published by members of the exiled Georgian royal family. Chief among the early Moscow publications is the first complete printed edition of the Georgian Bible, dated That Moscow (and St Petersburg) was a centre of early Georgian printing was hardly accidental. The crushing psychological blow resulting from the destruction of Christian Byzantium by the Ottomans and the bloody conflict waged in Georgia and throughout Caucasia by the Ottomans and Iranians compelled many Georgian elites to look northwards to Orthodox Russia, for support and protection. From the late fifteenth century, several embassies were exchanged between eastern Georgia and the Russian Empire. The Orthodox Christianity shared by the Georgians and Russians was crucial in the growing dialogue. And, as Kenneth Church (2001) has cogently argued, both peoples contributed to and accepted an extermination thesis whereby Christian Georgian society would be wiped out in the absence of full-scale Russian intervention. In 1783 the Bagratid king of eastern Georgia, Erekle II (r ), and the Russian Empress Catherine the Great (r ) agreed to make Georgia a protectorate of the empire. Among other things, the Treaty of Georgievisk guaranteed the sovereignty of the Georgian monarchy and Church. After the devastating Iranian attack upon eastern Georgia and especially T bilisi by Agha Muhammad Khan in 1795 the Georgians were unable to mount serious opposition to further Russian encroachments, and in 1801 the empire annexed eastern Georgia, in part using the extermination thesis to justify its unilateral action. The remaining Georgian lands were gathered under Russian hegemony over the course of the eighteenth century. The implications of Russian rule for the Georgian Church were numerous. The patriarchate of Ap xazet i had already disappeared in 1795; with the establishment of their direct control over the eastern regions of K art li and Kaxet i, Russia sought to curb Georgian institutions that might challenge their authority. The Georgian Church was specially targeted and its patriarchate was abolished in 1811, when Antoni II, son of King Erekle II, was forced into exile. Disenfranchised remnants of the church hierarchy were absorbed into the Russian Holy Synod. The first exarch, Metropolitan Varlaam, belonged to the Georgian nobility. But once Varlaam s tenure ended in spring 1817, his successors, starting with Feofilakt Rusanov, were ethnic Russians whose knowledge of Georgia and its culture was extremely limited. Georgian Christianity was now subjected to the Russification sweeping across the empire. The Russian liturgy replaced the Georgian. Episcopal sees in Georgia were reorganized so as to tighten the exarch s control. Frescoes in churches were systematically whitewashed. Over the next century, church buildings were poorly maintained and by the 1860s and 1870s corruption within the exarchate was rampant. But although under attack, Georgian ecclesiastical culture was by no means forced into extinction. For example, some religious books were published in the Georgian language. In 1882 Mixail Sabinin s Sak art ūēlos samot xe (The Paradise of Georgia), a collection of hagiographical texts celebrating the holy men and women of Georgian Christianity, was published in St Petersburg (a Russian translation also appeared). And

15 GEORGIAN CHRISTIANITY 151 especially from second half of the nineteenth century, Georgian academics such as Ivane Javaxishvili (Dzhavakhishvili, Dzhavakhov) embarked on the scholarly study of Georgian Christianity; their works were published in Russian and Georgian. In May 1905 Georgian priests and bishops convened in T bilisi (Russian Tiflis) to discuss the critical situation and to issue a call for the restoration of autocephaly. The Russians could not tolerate this bold defiance and dispatched troops to break up the meeting. Meanwhile, charges of corruption grew louder with stories of the exarchate selling icons and other ecclesiastical treasures while at the same time the physical condition of church buildings worsened. Some twenty episcopal sees were unoccupied and well over 700 parishes were without pastors. Few Georgians attended services. In spring of 1908 the Russian exarch Nikon, who was widely regarded as a Georgian sympathizer, was assassinated. These events attracted the attention of Christians abroad, including the papacy. In 1910 the Georgian Catholic priest Michel Tamarati (T amarashvili) published in Rome his L Église géorgienne des origines jusqu a nos jours. Though it is now outdated, this book remains the most comprehensive history of Christianity in Georgia. But it also had a decidedly political purpose. Tamarati not only painted Catholicism in Georgia in the best possible light, but he also criticized the illegal abrogation of the centuries-old autocephaly of the Georgian Church and the heavy-handed policies of the Russian Empire. Indeed, Georgian Christianity had become central to the Georgian national struggle against Russian rule. The question of Georgian autocephaly resurfaced during the revolutions of After the March uprising, a group of Georgian clerics and bishops forced their way into the offices of the exarchate and installed Georgians to replace the exarch and his staff. All-Georgian ecclesiastical councils were held in T bilisi in September 1917 and at the Gelat i monastery near K ut aisi in western Georgia in The 1917 council elected Kwrion II (Kyrion) as the catholicos-patriarch of the all-georgian Church, and with this act full autocephaly was reclaimed. The name of the new chief prelate was an auspicious one, for it should be recalled that the first Kwrion had presided over the K art velian Church during its estrangement from the Armenian Church at the start of the seventh century. Needless to say, the Russian Holy Synod vehemently opposed these actions and deemed them illicit. Until the Second World War, dialogue between the two Churches virtually disappeared. Out of the revolutions of 1917 was born the Georgian Democratic Republic. When it was established in May 1918 its Menshevik leaders tended to see no formal place for religion in the state government. Their attitudes towards religion, and the Georgian Church in particular, ranged from indifferent to hostile. However, the local church was now free from the suppression it had experienced under Russian rule. Freedom of religion was guaranteed by the new constitution, but here the Georgian Church was not specially singled out. At the same time, many political figures advocated a legal separation of Church and state; the debate over this issue continued until 22 February 1921, when such a clause was introduced into the constitution. Chapter 1, article 31 guaranteed the full liberty of conscience for each citizen: Everyone has the right to profess his/her own religion, to change the same, or not to have any religious belief. However, the promulgation of this Act was mostly symbolic for it occurred as Soviet troops were advancing on eastern Georgia. Later that month, independent Georgia fell to the Bolsheviks and Soviet rule was extended over the Georgian lands.