King and Catholicos

David IV’s reordering of the Georgian Church and its relation to the crown: the fusion of the office of chancellor (mtsignobartukhutsesi) with the bishopric of Chqondidi to create the great composite dignity of the mtsignobartukhutsesi-chqondideli, the chancellor-bishop who was the king’s chief minister and stood second only to the sovereign; his great minister George of Chqondidi; and the throne-and-altar model of Georgian sacred kingship.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox

The Throne-and-Altar System

The Council of Ruisi–Urbnisi (see The Council of Ruisi–Urbnisi (1103)) purified the Georgian Church and bound it to the crown. The institutional keystone of that binding was David’s reorganization of the summit of the hierarchy so that a single trusted churchman would serve simultaneously as the head of the royal administration and as one of the great bishops of the realm — uniting in one person the highest civil and a high ecclesiastical authority, both dependent on the king (Suny, The Making of the Georgian Nation, 1994, ch. 4; Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012).

This is the classic pattern of medieval sacred kingship, and David built the Georgian version of it deliberately. The reformed Church sanctified and legitimized his rule — the anointed king as the Lord’s servant, the new David; and in return the crown protected, endowed, reformed, and directed the Church. The system rested on a purified and loyal hierarchy, which Ruisi–Urbnisi had provided, and on a single great office linking the two spheres, which David now created (Suny, Making of the Georgian Nation, 1994, ch. 4).

The Mtsignobartukhutsesi-Chqondideli

The office David created — or brought to its developed form — was the mtsignobartukhutsesi-chqondideli. The Georgian mtsignobartukhutsesi means, literally, “chief of the scribes/secretaries,” the head of the royal chancery and effectively the chancellor or first minister of the kingdom. The chqondideli is the bishop of Chqondidi (in Samegrelo/Mingrelia, western Georgia), a senior see. David fused the two offices, so that his chief minister was at the same time a bishop, and his bishop of Chqondidi was at the same time the head of his government. The holder of this composite dignity became, after the king himself, the most powerful person in the kingdom — the chief officer of state clothed in episcopal authority (en.wikipedia.org, “David IV,” on the creation of the combined Mtsignobartukhutsesi-Chqondideli office as the second power in the realm; Suny, Making of the Georgian Nation, 1994, ch. 4; Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012).

The fusion was a masterstroke of the throne-and-altar system. It placed the government of the kingdom in the hands of a churchman who owed his ecclesiastical eminence to the king and his civil eminence to the same king, and who therefore had every reason for loyalty; it gave royal policy the sanction of a bishop’s authority; and it kept the most powerful ministerial office out of the hands of the great secular noble houses whose independent power David had spent his reign breaking (Suny, Making of the Georgian Nation, 1994, ch. 4). The office endured as one of the central institutions of the Georgian monarchy through the Golden Age.

George of Chqondidi

The man most associated with the office in David’s reign is George of Chqondidi (Giorgi Chqondideli), David’s tutor, counselor, and chief minister, whom tradition credits with a formative influence on the king from his youth — some accounts assign him a hand in the very transfer of the crown to the young David in 1089 (see The Young King (1089)) — and with a leading role in the reforms and the government throughout the reign (Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012, on George of Chqondidi as David’s minister; Suny, Making of the Georgian Nation, 1994, ch. 4). In George, the near-contemporary sources present the ideal of the office: a learned and holy bishop who was also the loyal and capable first minister of a reforming king, the human embodiment of the throne-and-altar alliance. His memory is honored in the Georgian Church alongside David’s.

The King and the Catholicos-Patriarch

Above the bishops stood the Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia (Catholicos of Mtskheta), the head of the autocephalous Georgian Church. David’s reforms did not abolish or subordinate the patriarchate but worked with and through it: Ruisi–Urbnisi was a synod of the Georgian Church under its own authority, and the reformed hierarchy remained the Church’s hierarchy, not a department of state (en.wikipedia.org, “Council of Ruisi-Urbnisi,” on David’s respect for the Church’s autonomy in the conciliar deliberations). Yet the practical effect of the reforms — the purge of noble control, the fusion of the chief ministry with a bishopric, the elevation of loyal reformers — was to make the king the decisive force in the Church’s life, the reformer and protector to whom the reformed hierarchy looked. The Georgian model was neither caesaropapism nor a Western-style contest of regnum and sacerdotium, but a close and, in David’s hands, harmonious partnership in which the pious king led and the Church sanctified (Suny, Making of the Georgian Nation, 1994, ch. 4; Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012).

The Meaning of the Model

The throne-and-altar system David built is inseparable from his sanctity as the Church remembers it. He is venerated not as a private ascetic who happened to be king but precisely as a holy king — one whose kingship was itself an ecclesial vocation, exercised in reforming and building the Church, in devotion and repentance (see The Piety of the King), and in the defense of the Christian people. The office of the chancellor-bishop, the reformed hierarchy, and the great foundation of Gelati (see The Monastery of Gelati) are the institutional body of that vocation. And they are also, seen from another angle, the instruments of a formidable centralizing monarchy — the same duality that runs through all of David’s work and that Section 08 weighs (see A King and a Saint) (Suny, Making of the Georgian Nation, 1994, ch. 4).

See Also

References

  • The Life of the King of Kings David (Cxovreba mepet-mepisa Davitisi), in Kartlis Tskhovreba: A History of Georgia, ed. Roin Metreveli, trans. Dmitri Gamq’relidze et al. (Tbilisi: Artanuji, 2014). (George of Chqondidi; the king and the Church.)
  • Suny, Ronald Grigor. The Making of the Georgian Nation. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. (The throne-and-altar system; the chancellor-bishop; the king and the patriarchate.)
  • Rayfield, Donald. Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia. London: Reaktion Books, 2012. (George of Chqondidi; the composite office.)
  • “David IV.” Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_IV. (The creation of the Mtsignobartukhutsesi-Chqondideli as the second power in the realm — cross-checked against Suny and Rayfield.)
  • “Council of Ruisi-Urbnisi.” Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Ruisi-Urbnisi. (David’s respect for the Church’s conciliar autonomy.)