The Hermit of the Desert

St. David of Gareji, the disciple of St. John of Zedazeni who settled in the arid semi-desert of Gareji southeast of Tbilisi and became the great desert-father of Georgian monasticism. This file follows the tradition’s account of his eremitic life — the wilderness, the disciples Lukiane and Dodo, the deer that supplied their food, and the aborted pilgrimage to Jerusalem with its three stones — pinning the sixth-century particulars to the later Life.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox

The Desert-Dweller

Among the Thirteen Fathers, St. David is the type of the pure desert-hermit — the anchorite who sought the harshest wilderness and there founded the most austere of the Fathers’ monastic traditions. He is remembered as a disciple of St. John of Zedazeni who, in the dispersal, was directed to the barren, waterless hill-country of Gareji, southeast of the later royal city of Tbilisi, and settled in its caves to lead the eremitic life (Machitadze, Lives of the Georgian Saints, “Venerable David of the Gareji Monastery”; David of Gareji’s Life is among those the modern reference and devotional literature transmits, drawing on the Georgian hagiographic cycle). The Davit-Gareji wilderness takes its name from him — “the area takes its name from one of the Thirteen Syrian Fathers, St. Davit of Gareji, who settled there” (as noted in the translator’s material to Machitadze, Lives of the Georgian Saints; cf. Lang, Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints, London: Allen & Unwin, 1956, which discusses the Gareji foundation).

As throughout the cycle, David’s Life is a hagiographic composition of the medieval Georgian tradition, its earliest layer lost and its surviving forms centuries later than the events; the particulars are reported here as the tradition’s, pinned to the Life, per METHODOLOGY §3.5 (see The Lives and Their Dating). What the Life fixes is David’s identity as Georgia’s desert-father — the Anthony of the Georgian wilderness, whose withdrawal into the eremos founded a monastic landscape that endures to this day.

Gareji and the Disciples

The Life relates that David did not remain wholly alone: he was joined by disciples, chief among them Lukiane, and later the monastery drew others, including the monk Dodo, who founded a second house on the eastern side of the Gareji hills (Machitadze, Lives of the Georgian Saints, “David of Gareji”; on Dodo’s foundation, the Gareji tradition). The harshness of the site is central to the Life’s meaning: Gareji is a genuine semi-desert, arid and treeless, and the ascetic feat is precisely the making of a life of prayer possible in a land that seems to forbid it — the Syrian desert-ideal realized in a Caucasian wilderness (Loosley Leeming, Architecture and Asceticism, Brill, 2018, on the eremitic forms and the Gareji landscape).

The best-loved of David’s stories belongs to this desert setting: the tradition of the deer. The Life relates that a herd of wild deer came to the hermits — every day, in the devotional telling, except Wednesdays and Fridays, the fast-days — and that David’s disciple Lukiane milked them, and when St. David made the sign of the Cross over the milk, it was transformed into cheese (Machitadze, Lives of the Georgian Saints, “David of Gareji”). Like St. Shio’s dove and wolf, this is a hagiographic miracle of the tamed and provident wilderness — the desert itself feeding the holy man, the wild beasts serving him, the fast-days honored even by the deer — and it is received as the tradition’s witness to David’s sanctity rather than as documented event (METHODOLOGY §3.5; on the parallel with Shio, see The Cave-Dweller of Mgvime).

The Pilgrimage and the Three Stones

The Life’s most theologically resonant episode is David’s pilgrimage toward Jerusalem. The tradition relates that David set out with disciples to venerate the Holy City, but that, on reaching the hills overlooking Jerusalem, he judged himself too great a sinner to enter its gates. He climbed a hill, venerated the city from afar, and took only three stones from the ground as his blessing, then turned back for Iberia (Machitadze, Lives of the Georgian Saints, “David of Gareji”; the episode is among the best-known in the Georgian hagiographic tradition). The tradition continues that an angel appeared to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, telling him that a holy elder had carried away “all the grace of Jerusalem” in the stones; the Patriarch sent messengers who overtook David and recovered two of the three, leaving him one (ibid.).

That single stone became a treasure of Gareji, and from it grew one of the most striking devotions of the Georgian Church: because David brought the grace of the Holy City to Gareji, the faithful hold that three pilgrimages to David Gareji count as a pilgrimage to Jerusalem itself (Machitadze, Lives of the Georgian Saints, “David of Gareji”). [Apocryphal: the episode of the three stones, the angel's word to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the recovery of two stones is a hagiographic tradition preserved in the medieval Georgian Life; it is reported here as the tradition's account, not as a documented event, and it is the origin of the devotional equivalence of three Gareji pilgrimages with a pilgrimage to Jerusalem (Machitadze, *Lives of the Georgian Saints*; on the source-critical status of such episodes, see [The Lives and Their Dating](../02-sources-and-attestation/the-lives-and-their-dating.md)).] The episode’s theological point is legible whatever its historicity: the desert of Gareji is made a second Holy Land, sanctity carried from Jerusalem to the Caucasus, humility (David judging himself unworthy to enter) rewarded with grace.

Repose and the Founding of the Desert

The Life places David’s repose in the second half of the sixth century, and his burial in the David Gareji lavra he had founded, where his relics became the heart of the complex’s cult (the tradition’s dating; on its imprecision, see The Lives and Their Dating; on the burial, Machitadze, Lives of the Georgian Saints, “David of Gareji”). His memory is kept, with that of the other Fathers, on the common feast of 7 May (20 May, new style), and David of Gareji is among the most beloved of all Georgian saints (Machitadze, Lives of the Georgian Saints; on the feast, see The Feast and the Cult). What his solitude founded — the whole monastic desert of Gareji — is the subject of The Gareji Monastic Desert.

Held to its sources, the Life of St. David is the Georgian tradition’s supreme portrait of the desert-father: the hermit who chose the barren place and made it fruitful, whom the wilderness fed and the deer served, who carried the grace of Jerusalem to the Caucasus and judged himself unworthy of the city he blessed from afar. Its miracles are hagiography; the desert monasticism it founded is one of the most tangible and enduring facts of the Georgian Church.

See Also

References

  • Machitadze, Archpriest Zakaria. Lives of the Georgian Saints. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2006 (also at OrthoChristian.com / Pravoslavie.ru). (“Venerable David of the Gareji Monastery”: the Gareji wilderness; Lukiane and Dodo; the deer and the cheese-miracle; the pilgrimage and the three stones; the burial in the lavra; the 7 May feast.)
  • Lang, David Marshall. Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1956; 2nd ed. SVS Press, 1976. (The Gareji foundation and the character of the Georgian Lives.)
  • Loosley Leeming, Emma. Architecture and Asceticism: Cultural Interaction between Syria and Georgia in Late Antiquity. Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity 13. Leiden: Brill, 2018. (The Syrian eremitic forms; the Gareji landscape.)
  • Matitashvili, Shota. “The Monasteries Founded by the Thirteen Syrian Fathers in Iberia.” Studies in Late Antiquity 2, no. 1 (2018): 4–39. (The Gareji foundation within the sixth-century monastic movement.)