01 — Foundations
The world into which Vakhtang was born and the beginnings of his reign: the Kingdom of Kartli (Iberia) in the fifth century, a Christian land under Sasanian Persian suzerainty, ruled by the Chosroid dynasty a century and a half after St. Nina’s conversion of the Georgians, and pressed hard by Zoroastrian Persia; and the child who came to the throne amid that pressure, ruled at first under a regency, and carried through his life the epithet Gorgasali, “Wolf’s Head.” These two files set the political and dynastic stage and introduce the boy-king and his name.
Tradition: Georgian Orthodox
Vakhtang cannot be read apart from the pincer in which fifth-century Iberia lived. St. Nina had brought the Georgians to Christ in the fourth century, and King Mirian III had made Kartli a Christian kingdom; but Iberia lay within the Sasanian sphere, and the Zoroastrian great kings of Persia — above all after the disasters that Christian Armenia suffered at Avarayr in 451 — pressed their faith and their administration on the Caucasian Christian kingdoms (Suny, The Making of the Georgian Nation, 1994, ch. 2; Rapp, The Sasanian World through Georgian Eyes, 2014). This section establishes that setting and then turns to the Life‘s account of Vakhtang’s accession as a child and the origin of the name by which history knows him.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Iberia in the Fifth Century | The Kingdom of Kartli/Iberia under Sasanian suzerainty; the Chosroid dynasty descended from Mirian III; the pressures of Zoroastrianism on the Christian Caucasus after St. Nina’s conversion of Georgia and after the Armenian catastrophe at Avarayr (451). |
| The Child King | Vakhtang’s accession as a child (traditionally at seven) and the regency of his mother and the nobility as the Life presents them; the origin of the epithet “Gorgasali” from the wolf-head device on his helmet, and the source-critical caution the name and its story require. |
See Also
- Warrior and Statesman — the man the child became, as the Life narrates it
- Methodology — how the later, semi-epic Life is handled as a source
- St. Nina of Georgia — the enlightener whose mission Vakhtang inherited
References
- Suny, Ronald Grigor. The Making of the Georgian Nation. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
- Rapp, Stephen H., Jr. The Sasanian World through Georgian Eyes: Caucasia and the Iranian Commonwealth in Late Antique Georgian Literature. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.
- Thomson, Robert W. Rewriting Caucasian History: The Medieval Armenian Adaptation of the Georgian Chronicles. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
- Toumanoff, Cyril. Studies in Christian Caucasian History. Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1963.