04 — The Church and the Queen

Tamar’s relationship with the Church of Georgia: her building and endowment of churches and monasteries at home and in the holy places abroad, the councils she convened in the reforming spirit of Ruisi–Urbnisi, and the traditions of her personal devotion, humility, and care for the poor — reported as the sources attest them, pinned and not inflated.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox

Tamar’s sanctity, as the Church remembers it, is inseparable from her churchmanship: she was a patron of the Church on the grand scale and, in the traditions preserved by the “Histories” and the synaxarion, a woman of deep personal piety. This section reports both dimensions — the public patronage that is well attested in stone and endowment, and the personal devotion that reaches us chiefly through panegyric and hagiography — keeping the two on their proper evidentiary footings per the repository methodology (§3.5).

Files in This Section

File Description
the-patron-of-the-church.md Her church-building and monastic patronage at home and in the holy places abroad; the councils; the continuation of the Ruisi–Urbnisi reforming spirit.
piety-and-charity.md The traditions of her personal devotion, humility, and care for the poor — pinned to the sources that record them and reported as their testimony.

See Also