La legittimazione cristiana dello Stato georgiano

This essay illustrates the Christian ideology used to legitimate the kingdom of Georgia over many centuries. The Conversion of Kartli (9th cent.) is the main history of the development of Christianity as the state religion in Georgia. Unlike any other sources about the Christianisation of different peoples, it recovers the pagan heritage of the kingdom by discovering its particular predestination through Jews who voluntarily surrender their prerogative as God’s chosen people to Kartli. A complex ideology elaborated on this foundation could be summarised as follows : 1) Kartli is the new Promised Land through which Heaven is realised on earth. The backbone of the cathedral in Mtskheta, capital of Kartli, is carved from the world tree that is planted on the burial place of the Saviour’s tunic. This transforms Mtskheta into the new Jerusalem. It is also the land chosen by the Mother of God and illuminated by the Saviour’s light through Nino, who is considered to be the thirteenth apostle “equal to the apostles”. 2) The Kingdom of Kartli is the true legitimate heir to David’s kingdom through the Bagrationi dynasty, which claims descent from the God-anointed Psalmist and therefore kinship with Christ in the flesh. Surrounded by infidels on the borders of the Christian oikoumene, the country defends its faith in the dead and risen God and boasts an impeccable Orthodox Christian tradition dating back to sub-Apostolic times that is witnessed by the blood of martyrs. The kingdom speaks a language that can reveal “every mystery” and so is destined to become the universal language of the Christian world. The progressive economic, political and military growth of the Georgian kingdom made it possible to turn this ideology into a reality. Among those who fought against the Islamic world, the Georgian monarchs were the only Christian rulers to humiliate and subdue it. They were therefore able to assume the title “King of Kings – Sword of the Messiah” for over a century. Similarly, they boasted the title “Autocrat of East and West” for centuries as well, although, with the onset of a long and irreversible decline in Georgia, this title no longer corresponded to reality. The ideology that had given Georgia the strength to safeguard its statehood in the long struggle against the Islamic empires died out with the annexation of the country to the Russian Empire between 1801 and 1811.