The Living Pillar: Svetitskhoveli

The miracle of the column that would not be raised, and the cathedral that took its name from it. In Rufinus’s early account, a column of the first Iberian church cannot be set upright until the captive’s night of prayer raises it of itself. The developed Georgian Life makes it the seventh pillar, cut from the great cedar that grew over Sidonia’s grave; when Nino keeps vigil, an angel raises the pillar into the air, it descends onto its base, and from it flows a healing myrrh — whence the cathedral at Mtskheta is called Svetitskhoveli, “the Life-Giving Pillar.” This file tells both layers and explains the name.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox / Pan-Orthodox

The Miracle in Its Earliest Form

The pillar miracle is, with the king’s deliverance from darkness, one of the two miracles that Rufinus’s earliest account already contains. When the first church was being built and the columns set in place, one column — Rufinus specifies the one to be raised after the others — could not be stood upright on its base, though hauled by machines and by the strength of all. The captive remained alone in the church through the night in prayer, and at dawn the column was found upright: not set by human effort but raised of itself, hanging poised a little above its pedestal in the air, then settling exactly onto its base (Rufinus, HE 10.11; see Rufinus and the Captive Woman). This miracle, Rufinus says, convinced the whole people. In the earliest layer the column is just a column; there is no cedar, no Robe, no myrrh. The kernel is the immovable pillar raised by the saint’s prayer.

The Developed Georgian Account

The Georgian Life elaborates the column into the founding miracle of Georgia’s mother church. After Mirian’s conversion, the king builds the first (wooden) church at Mtskheta. A great tree growing in the royal garden — the cedar that had grown over the grave of Sidonia, who died clutching the Robe of Christ (see The Robe of Christ Tradition) — is felled for the columns. Seven columns are made; the seventh, the great pillar cut from the sacred trunk, cannot be raised: the builders’ efforts fail and it hangs, refusing its base (Life of St. Nino, in Lerner, Wellspring, 2004; Wardrop, “Life of St. Nino,” Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica V, 1900).

Nino keeps an all-night vigil of prayer. Then, in the developed narrative, an angel — “a youth encompassed by brilliant light” — raises the pillar; it rises shining into the air, hovers above its place “like a rootless tree,” and descends of itself onto its base. From the pillar, or from its base, there flows a fragrant, miraculous myrrh that heals the sick who touch it (Life of St. Nino, in Lerner, Wellspring, 2004). It is from this living, myrrh-flowing pillar that the cathedral takes its name.

The Name: “Life-Giving Pillar”

The name Svetitskhoveli (სვეტიცხოველი) is formed from Georgian sveti, “pillar,” and tskhoveli, “life-giving” — “the Life-Giving Pillar.” The cathedral at Mtskheta, built over the site of the first church and over Sidonia’s grave with the buried Robe of Christ beneath, is named for the miraculous column at its heart. The present cruciform stone cathedral is an eleventh-century structure (built 1010–1029 under the architect Arsukisdze, replacing earlier churches on the site) and remains the patriarchal cathedral of the Georgian Orthodox Church and one of its holiest places — the burial place of Georgian kings and, by tradition, the resting place of the Robe of Christ. It is inscribed, with the wider monuments of Mtskheta, on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

A variant worth flagging concerns the tree: most of the Svetitskhoveli tradition calls it a cedar, but some sources give a cypress, and the precise count and identity of the columns differs across recensions (Life of St. Nino, in Lerner, Wellspring, 2004; cf. the variant in some devotional accounts). The variation is a normal feature of the developed tradition and does not touch the kernel.

[Disputed: The developed Georgian Life makes the immovable column the seventh pillar, cut from the cedar (some sources: cypress) grown over Sidonia’s grave, raised by an angel and flowing with healing myrrh — the origin of the name Svetitskhoveli, “the Life-Giving Pillar” (in Lerner, Wellspring, 2004). Rufinus’s earliest account (HE 10.11) has only a single column raised of itself by the captive’s prayer, with no cedar, Robe, or myrrh. The cedar/cypress identification and the column count vary across the recensions. The myrrh-flowing pillar belongs to the later layer and is reported as the Georgian tradition attests it.]

The Theology of the Pillar

The living pillar carries a theology that the Georgian tradition has always drawn out, and it is worth stating because it explains why this miracle, rather than the healings, became the heart of the Mtskheta cult. The pillar that cannot be raised by human effort, but rises of itself at the saint’s prayer, is an image of the Church itself: founded not by human strength or technique but by grace answered to prayer. That the pillar is cut from the cedar grown over the buried Robe of Christ binds the new church to the Passion — the foundation of the Iberian church grows, literally in the tradition’s image, from the garment of the crucified Lord (see The Robe of Christ Tradition). And that healing myrrh flows from the pillar makes the mother church a perpetual source of grace, the life-giving pillar of its name. The whole complex is a meditation, in narrative form, on what a church is and on how the Church of Georgia came to be: raised by prayer, rooted in the Passion, flowing with healing. The developed Life has taken Rufinus’s bare wonder — a column that stood up by itself — and made it the theological cornerstone of a nation’s Christianity.

The Cathedral Through the Centuries

The wooden church of Mirian’s day did not survive, and the present Svetitskhoveli is the third or fourth structure on the site. The first stone cathedral is attributed to the era of King Vakhtang Gorgasali in the fifth century; the great cruciform cathedral that stands today was built in 1010–1029 under the Catholicos-Patriarch Melchisedek I and the architect Arsukisdze, whose name and an inscription are preserved on the building. Through the centuries it served as the coronation and burial church of the Georgian kings, several of whom lie within it; it was fortified with a defensive wall in the later Middle Ages against the recurrent invasions; and it remains the patriarchal cathedral of the Georgian Orthodox Church and, with the other historical monuments of Mtskheta, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The continuity is itself a kind of testimony: for some seventeen centuries, by the tradition, the church on the spot of Nino’s living pillar has stood at the center of Georgian Christianity, rebuilt but never abandoned (standard architectural and heritage references on Svetitskhoveli; see also Georgian Christianity After Nino).

From Column to Cathedral

The trajectory from Rufinus’s bare immovable column to the great cathedral of Svetitskhoveli is the trajectory of the whole Nino tradition in miniature: an early, spare miracle of prayer, elaborated over centuries into a rich theological complex that binds together the Robe of Christ, the grave of Sidonia, the cedar, the living pillar, and the mother church of a nation. The repository’s discipline is to honor the developed Svetitskhoveli tradition as the heart of Georgian devotion while keeping clear that its earliest written form is Rufinus’s simple raised column, and that the cedar-Robe-myrrh complex is the contribution of the later Georgian Life (METHODOLOGY §3.5). The Robe tradition itself, and its careful pinning to source, is the subject of the companion file.

See Also

References

  • Rufinus of Aquileia. Historia Ecclesiastica 10.11. Trans. Amidon, Oxford 1997.
  • The Life of St. Nino, in Constantine B. Lerner, The Wellspring of Georgian Historiography. London: Bennett & Bloom, 2004.
  • Wardrop, Marjory. “Life of St. Nino.” Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica V. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900.
  • On Svetitskhoveli Cathedral (11th-century structure, architect Arsukisdze; UNESCO World Heritage, Historical Monuments of Mtskheta): standard architectural and heritage references.