08 — Sanctity and Kingship
The heart of the collection’s honesty: the tension and the union of holy kingship and hard statecraft in David IV — the warrior-king whom the Church venerates as a saint, and who also exiled and dispossessed great nobles, blinded a conspirator, waged long wars, and settled tens of thousands of steppe warriors in his realm; and his repose (1125), his humble burial at the Gelati gate, and his canonization and enduring veneration as Aghmashenebeli, the holy Builder.
Tradition: Georgian Orthodox
This section is written to the repository’s §4 both-sides standard. The first file confronts directly the question a warrior-king saint raises: how the Church venerates a man who was also a hard and sometimes ruthless ruler, and how the sanctity and the statecraft are to be held together — neither denying the hard measures nor letting them cancel the holiness. The second file treats David’s death, his burial in humility at the gate of his own great foundation, and the veneration by which the Georgian Church has honored him as a saint and Georgia as a national hero.
Both files name the harder facts plainly and report the differing readings of them without adjudicating, per the methodology.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| a-king-and-a-saint.md | The §4 both-sides treatment: the tension and union of holy kingship and hard statecraft — the Qipchaq wars, the exile of the Baghvashi, the blinding of a plotting noble, the storm of Tbilisi; how the Church venerates a warrior-king; and the differing readings held honestly. |
| his-repose-and-canonization.md | David’s death in 1125; his completed will and abdication; his burial in humility at the Gelati gate; his canonization and veneration as Aghmashenebeli and holy king; and his feast on 26 January (8 February N.S.). |
See Also
- The Battle of Didgori (1121) — the warrior-king in his supreme act
- The Piety of the King — the devotion that grounds the sanctity
- Assessment — the saint weighed against the national symbol
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).
- Ronald Grigor Suny, The Making of the Georgian Nation, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).
- Donald Rayfield, Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia (London: Reaktion Books, 2012).
- David Marshall Lang, Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints (London: Mowbrays, 1976).