Accounts of Insight

The attested accounts of St. Gabriel’s spiritual insight and wonderworking, reported here as what their witnesses say and pinned to each witness by name — never asserted as fact. The first-hand memoir of his cell-attendant Nun Parasceva (Rostiashvili) carries most of the lifetime accounts; the St. Anthony of Martqopi drive comes first-hand from the driver Otar Nikolaishvili; prophecies and folly are attested by Metropolitan Seraphim and Abbess Ketevan; the famous “incorrupt blood” reaches us second-hand through a named chain; and the posthumous healings range from named recipients to anonymous notebook self-reports. The attribution is the whole point of the file, per METHODOLOGY §3.5.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox (canonized 2012)

How to Read This File

Everything below is testimony. None of it is offered as adjudicated history. The Orthodox Church reports the wonders of its saints as the deposit of those who knew them; it does not certify the supernatural as a coroner certifies a death. This file therefore keeps a strict order of distance: it separates first-hand witnesses (people who say they saw the thing themselves), from second-hand chains (where a named witness reports what another named person told him), from self-reported lay testimony (where the only source for a healing is the person healed, often anonymized). The reader is asked to hold those distinctions in mind, because they are the difference between what the tradition firmly attests and what it merely circulates. The corrective to reading this file as a miracle-catalogue is its companion, Sober Discernment — including the saint’s own warnings against the very appetite such a list can feed.

The First-Hand Memoir: Nun Parasceva (Rostiashvili)

The single richest first-hand source for St. Gabriel’s lifetime wonders is the memoir of his cell-attendant, Nun Parasceva (Rostiashvili) — also called Mother Paraskeva, the same person — who served at his side in his last years and published her reminiscences (OrthoChristian.com, art. 173714). Because she writes as an eyewitness of what she claims to have seen, her testimony is the firmest class of evidence the wonder-tradition offers; and because she writes as a devoted disciple of a man she venerated, it is testimony, reported here as hers and not as established fact.

Nun Parasceva attests, in her own memoir and in the first person, that she saw Gabriel conversing with angels in his cell, and that on occasion she saw his face shining “like the sun” — the luminous countenance that the hagiographic tradition, from the face of Moses (Exodus 34:29–30) to the Conversation with Motovilov of St. Seraphim of Sarov, reads as the visible trace of grace (Nun Parasceva, OrthoChristian art. 173714). She reports these not as things she was told but as things she witnessed; that is what gives them their weight, and that is also the limit of what can be said about them.

She further attests a case of bilocation: that Gabriel was seen at the same time both at Samtavro and at the monastery of Shavnabada, being in two places at once (Nun Parasceva, art. 173714). The motif is a standing one in the lives of the elders — it is told of St. Paisios and others — and it is reported here exactly as she reports it, as her testimony to having known of the elder appearing where his body was not.

Among the insight-accounts she preserves, two concern knowledge no natural means could supply. She attests Gabriel’s foreknowledge of his own mother’s death — that he knew of it before word could have reached him — and his reading of the heart of a young man in such a way as to turn him from a course that would have destroyed him, the saving of a soul by the naming of what was hidden in it (Nun Parasceva, art. 173714). The reading-of-hearts (Greek kardiognosia, the discernment of thoughts) is the classic gift ascribed to the great spiritual fathers, and the file The Elder of Georgia treats how it functioned in his daily counsel.

Finally, Nun Parasceva attests that Gabriel foretold his own death (art. 173714) — the foreknowledge of one’s repose that the tradition reads as a sign of a life lived toward God. The repose itself, with its dates and the sources that disagree about them, belongs to Section 08; here only the foretelling is in view, and only as she reports it.

The Drive to Martqopi: Otar Nikolaishvili

A second first-hand account comes from Otar Nikolaishvili, a spiritual child of the elder who was, in this instance, his driver — and who is himself the compiler of a collection of accounts, Miracles and Healings Given by God. The narrative is preserved in Larisa Khrustalyeva’s life of the elder (OrthoChristian art. 65883) and is told on Nikolaishvili’s own testimony.

By that account, Gabriel one day insisted, with sudden urgency, that they drive at once to the monastery of St. Anthony of Martqopi (Martkopi). In the car he said, of the back seat, “St. Anthony Martkopsky himself is sitting in the back seat — don’t turn around” (Nikolaishvili, in Khrustalyeva, art. 65883). The car, which had been failing and stalling, surged forward and carried them there; and they arrived in time to deter armed intruders who had come against the monastery, Gabriel placing himself before them with the words “Shoot me” (same source). Reported as Nikolaishvili’s first-hand testimony, the account fuses three wonder-motifs at once — the foreknowledge of danger, the unseen saintly companion, and the elder’s bodily fearlessness before armed men — and is given here as his, not as a documented event.

Prophecy and Folly: Metropolitan Seraphim and Abbess Ketevan

Two ecclesiastical witnesses of standing attest, first-hand, to Gabriel’s prophetic insight and to the foolishness under which he carried it. Metropolitan Seraphim and Abbess Ketevan (Tochilashvili) both gave accounts recorded at pravoslavie.ru (art. 87682). Metropolitan Seraphim attests prophecies fulfilled and folly-episodes he witnessed; Abbess Ketevan, likewise, attests to his foreknowledge and to the deliberate buffoonery — the public absurdities, the somersaults turned in church — under which the elder hid the seriousness of what he saw (Metropolitan Seraphim and Abbess Ketevan, pravoslavie.ru art. 87682). That the gift and the folly are attested together by the same witnesses is significant: the foolishness was not a separate eccentricity but the very veil over the insight, a point developed in Folly that Reveals and in Sober Discernment.

The Incorrupt Blood — a Second-Hand Chain, Reported Honestly

The most-repeated devotional wonder of the present cult is the account of Gabriel’s incorrupt blood, and it must be reported with its chain of transmission laid bare, because it is not a first-hand account in the English source. As Larisa Khrustalyeva gives it (OrthoChristian art. 65883), a surgeon, Dr. Zurab (Zurabi) Varazi, drew roughly ten milliliters of Gabriel’s blood shortly before the elder’s repose in 1995. The tube was knocked over and uncorked, so that only about two milliliters remained, and that remnant was lost during a renovation of the laboratory. Some four years later it was rediscovered — and was found, the account runs, uncoagulated and undecomposed, testing as fresh blood (Khrustalyeva, art. 65883).

The attribution must be stated exactly. Khrustalyeva did not witness this; she reports that she heard it at the elder’s grave from Archpriest David, a priest of Svetitskhoveli Cathedral (his surname is not given in the source), who in turn had it from Dr. Varazi (Khrustalyeva, art. 65883). The chain is therefore: Dr. Varazi → Archpriest David → Larisa Khrustalyeva, heard at the grave. This is second-hand at best for the author, and the file says so rather than smoothing it into a flat assertion. The blood is now kept in a test tube at his grave at Samtavro, and Nun Parasceva (Mother Paraskeva) anoints pilgrims with oil associated with it (Khrustalyeva, art. 65883; Nun Parasceva, art. 173714).

One distinction must be kept clear, because the cult tends to blur it: the recurring incorrupt-relic claim attaches to the blood, not the body. The contemporaneous 2014 reportage of the uncovering of his relics does not describe the body itself as incorrupt; that distinction, and the sources for it, belong to Canonization and Relics. The “incorrupt St. Gabriel” of popular devotion is, in the careful telling, the incorrupt blood of the second-hand Varazi account — venerated, widely retold, and reported here as what its named chain attests, not as certified fact.

Posthumous Healings: Named Recipients and Anonymous Notebooks

Around the grave at Samtavro and far beyond it, a large corpus of posthumous healing testimony has gathered. Its evidential value varies sharply with its attribution, and the file grades it accordingly: a healing reported under a full name by a traceable person is comparatively stronger testimony than one signed only “a servant of God.”

Among the named accounts: Elena Getsadze reports that her son’s brain tumor vanished after she heard in a dream the words “I am waiting for you at Samtavro” (OrthoChristian art. 96107); Ekaterina Khudyakova, a television anchor in Kursk, reports a car lifted back from the edge of a precipice (art. 127057); and Maria Pukhova reports a healing through a dream-vision (art. 119200). These are reported as the testimony of the named persons who give them — comparatively stronger for being named, but self-reported, and reported here as such.

A representative few of the anointing-with-his-oil testimonies gathered by Khrustalyeva (art. 65883) may stand for the genre: Daria, a child healed of head trauma; Lela Tsirekidze, of cancer; Pelagea Tamarashvili, of speech loss; Mariam Kvitsiani, in pregnancy; Suliko Gvinjilia, of cirrhosis; Nana Siradze, of a cervical tumor; and the prisoners Vasiliy Narindoshvili and David Chitaya. Each is named, and each is reported here as testimony recorded by Khrustalyeva, not as certified fact (Khrustalyeva, art. 65883).

The weakest attribution-class is the largest: the many healings drawn from the miracle-notebook of Novice Nun Maria (Glushchenko) of Kemerovo, and similar compilations, which are self-reported by laypeople and typically anonymized as “the Servant of God [first name].” These are reported, where reported at all, explicitly as anonymous lay self-report — the loosest end of the testimonial spectrum, and named as such so that the reader does not mistake volume for verification.

What the File Does and Does Not Claim

Laid out together, these accounts are not a dossier of proven miracles but the deposit of a living and very recent cult, recorded by witnesses who range from an eyewitness cell-attendant to anonymous notebook entries. The file has reported each at its true distance from the event. It certifies none of them. It reports the tradition — that this is what Nun Parasceva, Otar Nikolaishvili, Metropolitan Seraphim, Abbess Ketevan, Dr. Varazi (through Archpriest David and Khrustalyeva), and the named and unnamed recipients attest — and it leaves the wonders themselves where the Church leaves them: with God, and with the witnesses who swore to them. The discipline behind that restraint, and the saint’s own sharp warnings against making a hunger of it, are the subject of Sober Discernment.

See Also

• Sober Discernment — his own warnings against seeking wonders, and the theology of discernment that governs this file
• The Elder of Georgia — the reading of hearts as it functioned in daily counsel
• Folly that Reveals — the foolishness under which the gifts were hidden
• Canonization and Relics — the relics, the 2014 uncovering, and the blood-reliquary
• Sources and Scholarship — how much we actually know, and how the sources diverge
• Methodology — §3.5, the named-witness discipline this file enacts

References

• Khrustalyeva, Larisa. Elder Gabriel (Urgebadze): His Life, Miracles, and Service after his Death. Trans. Dimitra Dwelley. OrthoChristian.com, art. 65883. The St. Anthony of Martqopi drive (on Otar Nikolaishvili’s testimony); the incorrupt-blood account (heard at the grave from Archpriest David of Svetitskhoveli, on the testimony of Dr. Zurab Varazi); the named anointing-with-oil healings (Daria, Lela Tsirekidze, Pelagea Tamarashvili, Mariam Kvitsiani, Suliko Gvinjilia, Nana Siradze, and the prisoners Narindoshvili and Chitaya).
• Nun Parasceva (Rostiashvili) [Mother Paraskeva]. Cell-attendant memoir. OrthoChristian.com, art. 173714. First-hand: the angels, the shining face, the Shavnabada bilocation, the foreknowledge of his mother’s death, the reading of the young man’s heart, the foretelling of his own death, and the anointing of pilgrims with oil from the blood.
• Metropolitan Seraphim; Abbess Ketevan (Tochilashvili). Accounts of the elder’s prophecies and foolishness. Pravoslavie.ru, art. 87682.
• [Posthumous healing testimonies.] OrthoChristian.com, arts. 96107 (Elena Getsadze), 127057 (Ekaterina Khudyakova), 119200 (Maria Pukhova); and the miracle-notebook of Novice Nun Maria (Glushchenko) of Kemerovo (self-reported lay testimony, largely anonymized).
• Nikolaishvili, Otar. Miracles and Healings Given by God [compiled collection]. The driver’s own first-hand account of the Martqopi episode, preserved in Khrustalyeva (art. 65883).
• Ivanov, Sergey A. Holy Fools in Byzantium and Beyond. Trans. Simon Franklin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. For the wonder-motifs of the yurodstvo tradition into which these accounts are read.