Giorgoba

To Gyuri

Saint George is the patron saint of Georgia. What’s more, Georgia got its name from him. Or more exactly: the Persian exonym Gorgân used for Georgia – which meant “land of wolves” – was adapted in this form by the Frankish crusaders who arrived in the Middle East in 1096, precisely because the patron saint of the brave and fierce Christian people was Saint George. As the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Jacques de Vitry wrotes in his Historia Hierosolymitana of 1225:

“There is also in the East another Christian people, who are very warlike, and valiant in battle, being strong in body, and powerful in the countless number of their warriors. … These men are called Georgians, because they especially revere and worship St. George, whom they make their patron and standard-bearer in their fights with the infidels, and honour him above all other saints.”

And, what’s more, it is likely that the figure and cult of the knight St. George the dragon-slayer also arose in Georgia sometime in the 9th or 10th centuries, as we have already written about and will write about even more.

It is no wonder, then, that St. George has not one, but two holidays in Georgia. One is St. George’s birthday on November 23, which is celebrated only here, at the birthplace of St. George the dragon-slayer. The other, the day of his martyrdom, is on April 23, just like in the Catholic church. But since the Orthodox count the feasts according to the Julian calendar, this falls on our May 6, just as the day of the Great October Socialist Revolution falls on november 7, and the Orthodox Christmas, December 25 falls on our January 7.

We arrive at the Kutaisi airport at night. We pick up the rental car and immediately head up to the Greater Caucasus, one of the rooftops of the world, to the region of Svaneti. At sunrise we reach Jvari Pass. From here, the road rises steeply. Clouds float by and below us, and a river rushes deep in the canyon, as we dodge boulders that fell on the road at dawn.

We arrive just in time for the biggest event of the day, the bull sacrifice. Mists still float above the towers of Mestia and the mountain chain of Svaneti, but Tetnuldi mountain to the east of the city, from whence the weather comes to Svaneti, already sparkles a diamond white. If it is clear in the morning, the day will be clear and bright.

We cut the wood and make a fire in the big iron stove. The women form fist-sized ritual loaves from the dough kneaded last night and bake them on the top of the stove.

The participants of the ceremony, the cousins and brother-in-law of our host Paata, four of them in total, arrive slowly. The fourth leads the young bull calf on a rope. They line up next to him and light candles. Paata puts the small loaves on a tray, sticks a candles in the middle of each one, and, turning to the rising sun, says a prayer to Saint George. Meanwhile, he slowly turns around three times. Then the eldest cousin takes over the ceremony. With the candle, he gently singes the calf’s hair on the front, sides and back, preparing it for the sacrifice. Paata offers the loaves around, everyone takes one. Giorgi pours vodka for everyone. He raises his glass and recites what a great day today is, St. George’s Day. Everyone drinks from their glass. Then the bull sacrifice begins.

The first 5 minutes of the video are the ceremony. The following 5 minutes are the tying up of the bull. The bloody part starts from the 10th minute

The liturgy officially begins at nine o’clock in the church of St. George in Mestia. But at that time, people are still only gathering. They first greet their dead in the cemetery around the church, then enter the church, kiss the icons one by one, light candles and pray before of them, talk to each other. The altar boys arrive, they get dressed in the sanctuary, walk in and out, aware of their importance. Then a quiet murmur is heard from the sanctuary, as if the ceremony had been going on for a long time. The priest steps out, and one by one, bows and mutters a short prayer before each icon. The liturgy proper does not start until around ten o’clock, but it will go on for hours anyway.

If this church had any medieval antecedents, they have been largely restored and rebuilt, probably after the long neglect of Communism. However, it has two original and very valuable icons, just as each of the hundred or so small churches in Svaneti keep several thousand-year-old icons. Judging from the age of similar icons in the Svaneti museum, the two icons here date from the 11th century. They are made of embossed repoussé silver, like most of the old Svaneti icons. Both are highly respected, many candles are lit in front of them, which is why they are difficult to photograph, as the light is reflected on their protective glass. One is an icon of St. George, on which the holy knight, in accordance with the early phase of his iconography, kills a man instead of a dragon, the emperor Diocletian who persecuted the Christians. On the upper part of the icon’s frame, the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist plead with Christ in a standard Deesis scene, while on either side, we see two other knightly saints – perhaps St. Theodore and St. Demeter – from the front. The icon is covered in several layers with votive chains, coins and crosses affixed to it.

The other early icon is a large cross covered with scenes on riveted gilded silver sheets. But not with the scenes of the life or passion of Christ, as is customary, but the episodes of the legend of St. George. After all, the legend itself was formed here, in Georgia, around the 10th century. At the base of the cross stands an archangel with a stern look.

The scenes remind me of the frescoes in the church of the nearby village of Nakipari. There, in 1130, the local nobles commissioned the “royal painter” Tevdore to paint the Passion of St. George. It is as if the small images of the cross in Mestia were emblematic abbreviations of the huge, colorful frescoes there.

And then I recall that the church of Nakipari is also dedicated to Saint George. Apparently there will be a festive liturgy there later in the morning. We get in the car and go there.

And indeed, around the church there are men dressed for a celebration. Bull meat is cooked in a large cauldron. The head placed next to it shows that it must have been a much larger animal than our bull calf. We enter the church. In the foreground, older men perform a lay ceremony, offering bread and wine to the spirits. Meanwhile, the liturgy is going on in the church with the participation of several priests. A young priest makes a video of them from the door. Around him, children rush around with small candles. They light them and poke them with great pleasure into the sand of the candle stand.

The scenes of St. George’s Georgian Passion are difficult for today’s reader to understand. A 17th-century illustrated Georgian St. George’s Passion, the manuscript of which was published online by the Georgian Academy, helps in their interpretation. The original source of the text is a 5th-century Passion of St. George, attributed to a certain Passicras, which was declared apocryphal in the 6th century, and thus it only spread, in various translations, in the peripheral regions of Christianity, which included the Caucasus. The 10th-century Georgian version adds to it the miracles of Saint George performed after his death.

The passion begins with the braided ornate colophon, typical of Middle Eastern manuscripts. George, born in Cappadocia, commanded many soldiers

Emperor Datianus (in other versions, Diocletianus) calls together his vassal kings and orders that whoever speaks against the pagan gods should be cruelly tortured to death. Before the emperor, George speaks against the gods and glorifies Christ

George is tied to a stake and tortured, his body is clawed with iron claws, but he is not harmed at all

The emperor locks George in an iron chest with spikes on the inside and places heavy weights on it, but that does not hurt him either

George is tied to a wheel and turned between iron swords to split him, but that does not hurt him either. This is the most spectacular of the tortures and is therefore the most depicted on the icons and frescoes of Svaneti. After that, the magician Athanasius tries to poison him, but the poison does not harm him either. Therefore, Athanasius also converts to Christianity, so the emperor beheads him

George apparently agrees to sacrifice in front of the statue of Apollo, but when he reaches the door of his temple, he calls him out, and makes him confess that he is Satan himself. Then he commands him into the depths of the earth

George converts the emperor’s wife Alexandra, who is too beheaded by the emperor

George is stripped of his weapons. He is executed three times in three different ways, but each time he resurrects from death

St. George frees the boy who was kidnapped by the Turks from Mytilene and served as a coffee-filler for a pasha. I have written about this episode before

George resurrects Jovis, a pagan who has been dead for 460 years, and he bears witness to Christ

The beheading of George

Saint George and the dragon. This episode, the most well-known motif of the legend of St. George, is not yet included in the original Saint George’s Passion, it was only included later in 10th-century Georgia. As I wrote, Saint George still kills a person in his earliest depictions, mostly Emperor Diocletian himself as a form of otherwordly justice. It is only in Georgia that his story is contamnated with St. Theodore’s, and they are mostly depicted as a pair (as in the Nakipari fresco), and usually kill a dragon. This motif is gradually taken over by St. George

The final page of the manuscript, as if inspired by the dragon, shows Jonah swallowed by a whale-dragon

For dinner, we eat bull veal cooked in the spicy juices. On St. George’s Day, the toasts are to the ancestors “who died so that Georgia could live free”. And during dinner, our friends, the choir of the old boys from Mestia on their way to their evening performance in Batumi, come in to sing us the Svanetian hymn of Saint George.