The Lagami Church of Transfiguration in Svaneti

“When was the last time you were here?” the lean, gray-haired man asks as he opens the church door. “Five years ago… no, it was Covid then. Six years ago.” He nods approvingly. After all this time, he still remembered me, that half-hour visit, and he’s had quite a few visitors since then.

Rezo Khojeliani is the owner, restorer and key-keeper of one of the oldest and most interesting churches in Svaneti. The small medieval churches of Svaneti were owned by clans, which is why a small village can have as many as eight or ten medieval churches, most of them rich in frescoes and icons. The village of Lagami is today part of the city of Mestia, but the church bears the village’s name: the Lagami Church of the Transfiguration.

The upper church was built in the 14th century by a local landowner, Shalva Kirkishliani, and what is rare is that he himself painted it – just like the Church of St. George in Svipi –, and even painted himself on the right side of the sanctuary (to us, on the left side), in the usual place of the ktētor, the founder.

However, the Kirkishliani family died out without any descendants, and the care of the church was taken over by the Khojeliani, whose members made up the majority of the monks of the monastery still existing at that time. Thus, the caretakership passed to Rezo. And since he graduated as a restorer in Tbilisi, he considered it his duty to restore the frescoes of the family church. And when you find the church closed, you can call him to open it at +995 595691439, which is also written on the gate. And when he opens it, he also gives you a detailed tour in Georgian or Russian about the history of the church and of the frescoes.

The church is a squat rectangular building. It rises suddenly in front of us on a man-sized substructure, as the winding, narrow streets of the village finally open up to it. This tower-like structure is unusual for a church here in Svaneti, where the medieval family churches are small house-like buildings. But then we also see the reason for the unusual shape, which makes the building even more unusual. Namely, that it is a two-story church. The lower level, built in the 10th century, is a small building similar to other medieval churches in Svaneti. On the top of it, the aforementioned Shalva Kirkishliani built a second church in the 14th century.

On the external façade above the entrance, we see the trees of the Garden of Eden lined up like a frieze, one more beautiful and more fruitful than the other. Somewhere in the middle we also see Adam and Eve, as the angel drives them out.

In the double church, three layers of frescoes, representing three different iconographic concepts, follow each other:

• The first one in the lower church is from the end of the 10th century, when Svaneti, after the 7th-century Arab conquest, was isolated from the occupied central parts of Georgia. In fact, only this region and the southwestern Tao-Klarjeti – which now belongs to Turkey – remained Christian. The central church hierarchy ceased to exist here, and the organization of the church in Svaneti continued in clan churches. The iconography also reflects the pagan world view that was still dominant at that time: the Pantocrator enthroned in the apse is the equivalent of the pagan supreme god Morige, and the walls were filled with warrior saints and archangels, the equivalents of the pagan khati, protective spirits. This same time, the end of the 10th century is the period when the Georgian monasticism that emerged in Tao-Klarjeti, in the reform monasteries of St. Gregory of Khandzta, sends missions back to Georgian land, including to Svaneti. It is at this time that the monastery of Lagami is also founded, whose painters gave an Orthodox visual form to the locally dominant warrior saint and archangel cult.

• The second layer, also in the lower church, was created in the 12th century, after King David IV the Builder unified the country and brought Svaneti back into the country’s blood circulation. Svan soldiers played an important role in the armies of David and his successors, Demetrios, George III and Tamar. And the central church again sent priests and artists to the northern Georgian valleys, who transplanted there the architectural and pictorial iconography that had developed in the center. In the lower church, this phase is reflected in the second layer of frescoes, which overpaint the large archangel figures on the side walls with the cycle of great feasts that had already become established in Orthodox iconography.

• The third concept is seen in the upper church, built and painted in the 14th century in the last, most sophisticated style of the Byzantine court, the Palaiologos Renaissance. Almost the entire cycle of the 12 great feasts is depicted on the walls, with images of warrior saints and great martyr women inserted between them. Svaneti caught up with the forefront of Byzantine art, before the Ottoman and Persian occupation of the country would again isolate the northern valleys from the rest of the country and its political, religious, cultural and artistic development for centuries

The lower level is a very small room, barely a few square meters, with walls built of irregular broken stone. Its frescoes were made in two periods, in two layers. The first layer dates from the late 10th century, the second from the 12th century. The fragments of the former were revealed when some patches of the latter fell off.

The apse, where we see a huge Deesis scene, that is, Mary and St. John the Baptist praying to the enthroned Pantocrator, may originally have had a Pantocrator seated on a throne, whose right foot is revealed from under the 12th-century plaster.

An Annunciation was painted on the entrance wall in the 10th century. From this, only Gabriel’s foot and the inscription “Here is Gabriel” survive. The wall is now filled with the faded remains of a huge Nativity scene from the 12th century.

The north and south parts of the nave vault were originally decorated with a large archangel and an apostle on each side. On the south, the beautiful head of the archangel remains, with the name of St. Paul next to it. On the north, only small spots are visible under the 12th-century Crucifixion, and here the name of St. Peter can be read.

In the lower register of the south wall, half-length figures of warrior saints from the end of the 10th century have survived: Saint Theodore, Saint Artemios and Saint George. As the register turns over to the west wall, it depicts Saint Barbara – the patron saints of miners and metalworkers, a very important saint in the Svan highland making a living from this –, and Saint Catherine, also in half-length.

The 14th-century frescoes of the upper church depict the great feasts, from the Annunciation to the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, as well as the warrior saints in the two ribs of the vault, and the great martyr women in the lowest register of the walls. The scheme and order of the images can be seen in the sketch below, where I display the walls spread out, like a cut-out and foldable house.

In the apse, the constant theme of the Orthodox sanctuary, the Deesis, is visible (1): on the right and left of Christ Pantocrator – the King of the Universe – seated on the throne, are his two closest human relatives, the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Baptist, begging him to be merciful to humanity.

On both sides of the apse, above the sanctuary chancel screen, are the busts of the two apostles who founded the Roman, and therefore also the Byzantine, church, Saint Paul (2) and Saint Peter, who also served as a visual abbreviation for the church hierarchy.

The chancel screen (3) was the solution of the Georgian (and some other early) churches to what the later Byzantine and Russian churches had the iconostasis, the Armenian church the curtain, or the Catholic church the whispered canon text. Namely, that the most sacred part of the Mass, the Transubstantiation, should be kept as far away from profane eyes and ears as possible, by retreating to the sanctuary and blocking it off with pictures or a curtain, or at least whispering the sacred text in a barely audible voice.

The Georgian chancel screen is a beam supported by three arches, on top of which icons are lined up, and the three arches are also covered with large icons hanging from the beam. Here, two archangels stand guard with drawn swords on the façade of the chancel, and instead of the suspended images, candlesticks hang, but on the lower ledge of the chancel precious icons hammered out of silver are lined up. The icon of the Virgin is mentioned as dating from the 12th-13th centuries in Chubinashvili’s great monograph on medieval Georgian metal art. The church also has an icon of Saint George from the same period, but not the one that stands here, because it, together with the icon of the Pantocrator, looks much more like it dates from the 15th-16th centuries.

To the right of the chancel, that is, to our left, on the wall, we can see the portrait (or even self-portrait) of the founder, Shalva Kirkishliani (4).

The series of great feasts begins on the vault closest to the right (to us, left) side of the chancel, and then, going around the other three vault sections and then the foud middle wall sections, descends in a spiral line to the same side of the chancel. The first feast is the Annunciation (5), the last one the Dormition of the Virgin (15). Of the twelve great feasts, only the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is missing:

(5) Annunciation. Above the image, in the middle of the vault, the remains of a former Christ medallion can be seen. There was a similiar one on the second vault section, too, with the image of God the Father (or, more precisely, the Ancient of Days from Daniel 7:9). Similar medallions can be seen in several Georgian churches of the same period, e.g. in the Svipi Church of St George in Pari in Svaneti, which was painted by the same donor, or in the church of Ubisi in Imereti, painted in a similar style.

(6) The Birth of Christ, with the remains of the Christ medallion above it

(7) Presentation in the Temple

(8) The Baptism of Christ in the Jordan

(9) After the four vault sections, the cycle continues in the lunette above the door with the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor, which is the give-naming main feast of the church of Lagami

(10) The Raising of Lazarus. In the lower part of the image, Lazarus’ two sisters, Mary and Martha, fall to their knees at the signt of the miracle. Next to them, a person holding his nose illustrates Martha’s statement: “But Lord, by now he smells!”

(11) Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on a donkey. Above, children climb a tree to see Him better, others spread their clothes before him

(12) The Crucifixion. The skull under the cross refers to Adam, whose sin Christ is washing away with His own blood. According to tradition, Adam was buried in the same place – on the Hill of Skulls – where the cross was erected. Rezo also presents his own theological twist: “This image shows that God and man are closely connected. Just as man would be nothing without God, so God would be nothing without man who believes in Him.”

(13) The women at the empty tomb. An angel sits on the empty tomb of Christ, telling them that the one they are looking for is no longer there, because He has risen. In the tomb is Christ’s shroud, and in front of the tomb the sleeping Roman soldiers

(14) Christ’s Descent into Hell, in the three days between His death and resurrection. From here He brings out the believers and forefathers who had died without serious sin, but were not allowed into heaven until the Redeption, starting with the completely white-haired Adam and Eve with her adoring gaze. Behind Christ, Kings David and Solomon, particularly popular in Georgian art, await their turn. In this scene, Christ usually stomps on the gates of hell, but here He tramples Satan with a cross, surrounded by the broken ironwork of the gate.

(15) The Dormition of the Virgin, that is, her death and the assumption of her soul into heaven

On the rib separating the two vault sections are the figures of two warrior saints, Saint Demetrios (16) and, opposite him, Saint George (18), with two prophets above them (17, 19).

Below the festive row, on the plinth are half-length images of holy women (20-25): Thecla, Catherine, Barbara, Elena, Julitta.

Saint Julitta is particularly important here in Svaneti. She and her son, Saint Quiricus, were Roman martyrs,and their cult was widespread there. However, as the boy’s name resembled the name of Kviria, the chief spirit of the pagan Georgian pantheon, so the latter and his shrines were renamed after Quiricus, in the line of pagan spirits that were made acceptable and continue to live with Christian names. Their church in Kala – probably on the site of a former Kviria sanctuary – is still the most important Svan festival on July 28, where thousands of Svans come even from abroad to participate in a Christian and a pagan ceremony celebrated parallelly inside and outside the church, which we will write about later.

And on the lunette of the door, where in Georgia there is usually the image of Christ not made by human hands, or the Holy Cross, here, curiously, we see two goats facing each other.

We leave the church under the goats. We say goodbye to Rezo, who thanks me especially for coming again to his church. And we thank him for taking such good care of this treasure. We have seen enough ruined medieval churches in Svaneti to know that it is thanks to such local guardian angels that about a hundred of them have survived intact.

Shalva Kirkishliani must have been such a guardian angel in his time. He not only enlarged the church that somehow came into his care, and not only painted it in the most modern style of the time, but at the same time he also painted another church in Svaneti, which, as far as we know, did not even belong to him. This church is the Svipi St. George in the village of Pari, at the entrance to the valley of Svaneti. So we are going to visit it next.