08 — Hagiography vs. History

The source-critical reckoning: the sources through which Ilia Chavchavadze is known — his own vast corpus, the contemporary press, and the sharply divergent Soviet and post-Soviet historiographies — and the discipline of separating the saint the Church venerates from the national symbol and from the Soviet secular icon.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox

Unlike most saints in this repository, Ilia is superabundantly documented — he was a modern public man who wrote for forty years — yet the meaning of his life has been fought over by Church, nation, and Soviet state, each constructing its own Ilia. This section handles the sources and the competing portraits. Two files:

  • The Sources — the documentary base: Ilia’s own writings and letters, the contemporary Georgian and imperial press, the memoirs and the investigation files, and the Soviet and post-Soviet scholarship — what each can and cannot bear.
  • Saint and Symbol — the three Ilias: the ecclesial saint, the national symbol, and the Soviet secular enlightener; keeping them distinct and naming the Soviet secularization as a distorting pole.

Files

File Description
the-sources.md The corpus, the press, the archives, and the historiographies — a source inventory
saint-and-symbol.md The saint, the national symbol, and the Soviet secular icon held distinct

See Also