The Monastery of Gelati

David IV’s foundation of the Monastery of Gelati near Kutaisi, begun in 1106, with its great church of the Theotokos (completed under his successor Demetre I in 1130) and its celebrated apse mosaic of the Virgin; Gelati as royal monastery, necropolis, and spiritual and cultural center; David’s own tomb set at the monastery gate; and its inscription as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1994.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox

The Foundation of 1106

Amid the wars of reconquest and the labor of reform, David undertook the greatest of his building works. In 1106 he began the construction of the Monastery of Gelati (Georgian: გელათი), in the hills near Kutaisi, then the royal capital in western Georgia (en.wikipedia.org, “Gelati Monastery,” dating the start of construction to 1106; Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012). Gelati was conceived from the first on a grand scale — not a modest retreat but a royal monastery meant to be the spiritual, intellectual, and dynastic center of the restored kingdom: a house of monks, a school of learning (see The Gelati Academy), a burial-place for kings, and a monument to the Christian monarchy David was building (Eastmond, Royal Imagery in Medieval Georgia, 1998, on Gelati as a royal foundation; Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012).

The Church of the Theotokos

The principal church of the monastery is the great Church of the Nativity of the Theotokos (the Virgin), the cathedral around which the complex is built. Begun under David, it was completed under his son and successor Demetre I and is generally dated to 1130, five years after David’s death (en.wikipedia.org, “Gelati Monastery,” on the completion of the Church of the Blessed Virgin under Demetre I in 1130). It is a large cross-in-square church of finely dressed stone, and it stands among the masterpieces of medieval Georgian architecture (Eastmond, Royal Imagery in Medieval Georgia, 1998).

The church is famous above all for its apse mosaic of the Theotokos — a monumental twelfth-century mosaic of the Virgin (in some accounts flanked by archangels), one of the great surviving monumental mosaics of the medieval Christian East and a work of the first cultural importance in Georgia (en.wikipedia.org, “Gelati Monastery,” on the twelfth-century apse mosaic of the Virgin). Together with its later medieval frescoes — including dynastic portraits of the Georgian kings — the decoration of Gelati makes the church a monument of Georgian royal and sacred art as well as of architecture (Eastmond, Royal Imagery in Medieval Georgia, 1998, on the royal portraits at Gelati).

Royal Monastery and Necropolis

Gelati was the dynastic monastery of the Bagrationi and the burial-place of kings. David himself was buried there (see below and His Repose and Canonization), and later Georgian monarchs were interred within the complex, making Gelati the royal necropolis of the Golden Age (Eastmond, Royal Imagery in Medieval Georgia, 1998; Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012). It was also a repository of trophies and treasures: among the objects preserved there is the great iron gate of Ganja (Gandzak), taken as a war-trophy by David’s son Demetre I during a campaign against Ganja and hung at Gelati as a monument of Georgian victory (en.wikipedia.org, “Gelati Monastery,” on the Ganja gate taken by Demetre I).

David’s Tomb at the Gate

The most-remembered feature of Gelati for the piety of the faithful is David’s own tomb, which — according to his express wish, recorded in the tradition — was placed not in a place of honor within the church but at the main southern gate of the monastery, in the entrance passage, so that everyone entering his beloved Gelati would first have to tread upon the king’s grave. His tombstone bears an inscription taken from the Psalms — in the traditional rendering, “This is my resting place forever; here I will dwell, for I have desired it” (cf. Psalm 131:14 LXX / 132:14) — and the stone is set in the threshold so that those coming in step over it, a placement the tradition explains as David’s chosen act of humility, that the proud king who had raised Georgia should lie beneath the feet of all who came to pray (armazi.uni-frankfurt.de and the Gelati site traditions, reporting the gate-tomb, the inscription, and the humility motif; and see His Repose and Canonization). [Disputed: the gate-tomb and the humility motif are firmly established in tradition and on the surviving stone, but the attribution of the placement to David’s own express command comes through the tradition rather than an unambiguous contemporary document; the stone and its Psalm-inscription are, however, a real and ancient feature of the site.] The gate-tomb has become the single most eloquent image of David’s sanctity: the Aghmashenebeli, the Builder, choosing to be trodden underfoot at the door of his own greatest work (Lang, Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints, 1976, on the humility of the burial; and the site tradition).

Gelati Through the Centuries

Gelati survived as a monastery and a center of learning and art through the whole of the Georgian Middle Ages and beyond, accumulating frescoes, manuscripts, and treasures across the centuries. For a time it was also the seat of a bishopric (the “Gelati” or Genati see). It endured invasions, decline, and the Soviet closure of Georgian monastic life, and was restored to the Church and to worship in the modern period; it remains an active monastery and one of the supreme monuments of Georgian Christian civilization (Rayfield, Edge of Empires, 2012; en.wikipedia.org, “Gelati Monastery”).

UNESCO World Heritage

In 1994 Gelati was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, originally jointly with the nearby Bagrati Cathedral in Kutaisi as “Bagrati Cathedral and Gelati Monastery.” (Bagrati Cathedral was later delisted following a controversial reconstruction, and the property was redefined as “Gelati Monastery,” which retains its World Heritage status; in 2017 it was removed from the List of World Heritage in Danger.) The inscription recognizes Gelati as a masterpiece of the architecture and monumental art of the Georgian “golden age” and as a leading center of medieval Christian culture (en.wikipedia.org, “Gelati Monastery,” on the 1994 UNESCO inscription and the later history of the listing). Gelati is today among the most visited pilgrimage and heritage sites in Georgia, and David’s gate-tomb is a principal object of veneration (see Legacy).

See Also

References

  • “Gelati Monastery.” Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelati_Monastery. (Foundation 1106; the Church of the Virgin completed under Demetre I, 1130; the apse mosaic; the Ganja gate; the 1994 UNESCO inscription and the later listing history.)
  • Eastmond, Antony. Royal Imagery in Medieval Georgia. University Park: Penn State University Press, 1998. (Gelati as royal foundation and necropolis; the dynastic portraits.)
  • Rayfield, Donald. Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia. London: Reaktion Books, 2012. (Gelati’s foundation and later history.)
  • Lang, David Marshall. Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints. London: Mowbrays, 1976. (The humility of David’s burial.)
  • The Gelati site traditions, as reported at armazi.uni-frankfurt.de (Armazi Project, Gelati) and in the site’s documentation. (The gate-tomb, the Psalm-inscription, and the humility motif — reported as tradition.)