Anton of Martqopi and the Icon

St. Anton (Antony) of Martqopi, the pillar-dweller among the Thirteen Fathers, and the tradition that he brought to Georgia a copy of the not-made-by-hands (Acheiropoieton) icon of the Savior from Edessa. This file follows the tradition’s account of Anton the stylite and his icon, flags the icon-claim as a tradition of the medieval Lives, and draws out its bearing on the contested question of the Fathers’ theological allegiance.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox

The Stylite of the Thirteen

St. Anton of Martqopi is the Fathers’ clearest link to the specifically Syrian ascetic form of the stylite — the pillar-dweller who lives out his years standing or dwelling atop a column, the discipline made famous by St. Simeon the Stylite of fifth-century Syria. The tradition relates that Anton, sent in the dispersal into Kakheti, settled in the wilderness and eventually withdrew to the top of a mountain, where he spent the last years of his life — the tradition gives some fifteen — as a stylite, preaching from his pillar (Machitadze, Lives of the Georgian Saints, “Venerable Anton of Martqopi, the Stylite”). Because he lived so much alone, the tradition explains, he was called Martomqopeli (“the secluded one”), and from this the place and its monastery took the name Martqopi (ibid.). The “Pillar of Anton” is still shown at the site as the stylite’s hermitage (Loosley Leeming, Architecture and Asceticism, Brill, 2018, on the Martqopi site and the stylite tradition).

Anton’s stylitism is one of the strongest single pieces of evidence for the genuinely Syrian character of the Fathers’ asceticism. The pillar-saint is a distinctively Syro-Mesopotamian form, not a Georgian one, and its appearance among the Thirteen points to a real transmission of the Syrian ascetic repertoire into sixth-century Georgia — the same argument the ascetic forms of Shio and David support (Loosley Leeming, Architecture and Asceticism, 2018, ch. 1; Matitashvili, “The Monasteries Founded by the Thirteen Syrian Fathers in Iberia,” Studies in Late Antiquity 2.1 [2018]: 4–39). Whatever the historicity of the individual narrative, the form is Syrian, and that is not the kind of detail a later Georgian hagiographer would invent from nothing.

The Not-Made-by-Hands Icon

Anton’s most famous attribute is an icon. The tradition relates that he came to Georgia carrying a copy of the Acheiropoieton — the “not-made-by-hands” image of the Savior — associated with Edessa, and that he was inseparable from it, always bearing with him the icon of the Savior “Not-Made-By-Hands” (Machitadze, Lives of the Georgian Saints, “Anton of Martqopi”; the Martqopi icon-tradition). In the fuller devotional form, the tradition holds that Anton was from Edessa, that after the Persian shah Khosrow I’s unsuccessful siege of the city he left, taking from a church there a copy of the Not-Made-By-Hands image imprinted on a clay tablet (a keramion or tile-copy of the famous Edessa image), and carried it to Georgia with St. John of Zedazeni (the devotional tradition as transmitted in the Martqopi literature and Machitadze, Lives of the Georgian Saints).

[Apocryphal: the tradition that St. Anton brought to Georgia a copy of the not-made-by-hands icon of the Savior from Edessa. The claim belongs to the medieval and later devotional tradition of Martqopi, not to a securely dated contemporary source, and it participates in the wider medieval legend-cycle of the Edessa Image (the Mandylion and its tile-copy the Keramion); it is reported here as the tradition's account of the origin of the venerated Martqopi icon, not as a documented sixth-century event (Machitadze, *Lives of the Georgian Saints*, "Anton of Martqopi"; on the source-critical status of such claims, see [The Lives and Their Dating](../02-sources-and-attestation/the-lives-and-their-dating.md); on the Edessa Image tradition generally, cf. the standard literature on the Mandylion).]

The icon-tradition is more than a picturesque detail; it binds the Georgian foundation-story to one of the most famous relics of the Christian East and makes Anton a bearer of the Edessene inheritance into the Caucasus. The venerated Martqopi icon of the Savior became, and remains, a focus of the site’s cult, so that the monastery is at once the stylite’s pillar and the icon’s shrine (on the monasteries as reliquaries, see The Feast and the Cult).

The Icon, Edessa, and the Allegiance Debate

The Edessa detail carries an unexpected weight in the scholarly discussion of the Fathers’ theological allegiance. In the fuller tradition, the icon is said to have been taken specifically from a “Nestorian church” in Edessa — a detail that has been read by some as evidence for a Nestorian (Church of the East) connection among the Fathers, part of the wider debate over whether the Thirteen were Chalcedonian, miaphysite/anti-Chalcedonian, or Nestorian (the Nestorian-connection reading is among the range of scholarly positions; see History and Hagiography, and Loosley Leeming, Architecture and Asceticism, 2018, ch. 1, on the identity problem). The detail is a slender thread on which to hang a confessional identification, and it may reflect the situation of sixth-century Edessa — a city of mixed Christian allegiance — rather than Anton’s own faith. [Disputed: whether the "Nestorian church" of Edessa in the Anton tradition indicates a Nestorian allegiance among the Fathers. The detail is cited within the wider scholarly debate over the Fathers' theology (Chalcedonian / miaphysite / Nestorian), but is too slight and too late to settle the question and may reflect the mixed confessional landscape of sixth-century Edessa; the collection reports the reading among the range of positions without adjudicating it (see [History and Hagiography](../02-sources-and-attestation/history-and-hagiography.md); Loosley Leeming, *Architecture and Asceticism*, Brill, 2018, ch. 1).]

What is not disputed is the Georgian Church’s reception of Anton as one of its own founding saints, venerated as Orthodox — his stylite’s pillar and his icon of the Savior among the treasures of the Church that keeps his memory. The confessional puzzle belongs to the sixth-century question of provenance; the veneration belongs to the living tradition (see The Feast and the Cult). St. Anton is commemorated individually in the Georgian calendar (his memory kept in the tradition on 19 January / 1 February) as well as with the Thirteen Fathers on 7 May (Machitadze, Lives of the Georgian Saints, “Anton of Martqopi,” giving the individual commemoration).

Held to its sources, St. Anton of Martqopi is the stylite of the Thirteen and the bearer of the Edessa icon — the Father in whom the Syrian ascetic form and the Syrian relic-tradition are most vividly joined. His pillar attests the genuine Syrian pedigree of the movement; his icon-tradition, flagged as the medieval legend it is, ties Georgian monasticism to the great image of Edessa and supplies one of the threads in the still-unresolved debate over what, precisely, the Fathers’ faith had been before Georgia became firmly Chalcedonian.

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 Anton of Martqopi, the Stylite”: the seclusion and the name Martqopi; the pillar; the not-made-by-hands icon of the Savior; the individual commemoration.)
  • 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 Martqopi site and the stylite form; ch. 1 on the identity and allegiance problem.)
  • Matitashvili, Shota. “The Monasteries Founded by the Thirteen Syrian Fathers in Iberia: The Rise of Monasticism in Sixth-Century Georgia.” Studies in Late Antiquity 2, no. 1 (2018): 4–39. (The Syrian ascetic pattern, including stylitism, as evidence of transmission.)