Dawit Gareja
| Dawit Gareja | ||
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.jpg) In Dawit Gareja monastery |
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| place | Kakheti ( Georgia ) | |
| Coordinates | 41 ° 26 '51.2 " N , 45 ° 22' 34.9" E | |
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Dawit Gareja ( Georgian დავითგარეჯა ; Azerbaijani Keshish Dagh , also David Gareja / Gareji ) is a Georgian Orthodox monastery in eastern Georgia . It is located on Mount Udabno in the Kakheti region , right on the border with Azerbaijan . The oldest monastery in Georgia is on the list of proposals for UNESCO World Heritage .
Surname
The name of Lavra St. David is explained by the fact that David, one of the "Thirteen Syrian Fathers", settled in the Gareja desert in the 6th century and founded the first monastery. The Lavra was later named after him and formed the central monastery.
Other related parts include a. Bertubani (now in Azerbaijan), Zamebuli, Dodorka, Natlismzemeli, Udabno and Tschitschchituri. They are not far from Dawit Gareja and in a mountain range to the north near the open settlement of Udabno. There are at least 13 archaeological sites in total.
Natural situation of the monastery complex
The monastery of Dawit Gareja nestles against a slightly wedge-shaped mountain flank that cuts across the Udabno ridge in the east Georgian steppe , which runs in a west-east direction . The oldest rooms consist of cave-like openings that are covered by the natural features of the sloping sandstone layers. The hermitic chambers are located in two opposing rock walls, which are arranged in a tiered sequence due to the inclination of the natural rock layers.
The lower part of the wedge-shaped widening is blocked by an old wall that protects the inner monastery complex. A second wall includes the Lavra in the upper part.
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The peculiarity for the survivability of this hermitage is the shady and therefore also oasis-like terrain with some trees and other plants. This enables a modest and carefully managed livestock industry for the monastery. The water supply plays a special role in the life of the monks and is based on an unusual old system. The little precipitation in the form of rain and mist droplets is collected starting in the summit region of the ridge of the Udabno ridge (g. Udabno 878 m ) with a partially hidden system of ditches and intermediate cisterns, as well as via a few main moats carved into the sloping rock surface to a central point in a rock niche guided. The already ascetic life in the monastery is not unaffected by the annual rainfall.
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In the vicinity of the monastery, undulating and parallel ridges sweep in the direction NW-SE. In the south the terrain drops steeply into a gently undulating plain of neighboring Azerbaijan. The landscape is arid and the few, mostly arid steppe vegetation alternates with dry, even more saline soils further north. To the east the landscape changes into a semi-desert zone.
geology
The surroundings of the Dawit Gareja monastery complex stand out due to their unusual surface structure, especially due to the striking image of inclined layers of rock. This landscape belongs to the Sagaredsho-Shirak-Adshinaur zone tectonic unit . It consists of sedimentary layers from the Miocene and Pliocene , that is, formed by marine deposits between 23 and 1.8 million years ago.
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These sediment deposits grow up to a thickness of 1000 meters. In regional geology, they are called the Iori structures after a nearby river and are the middle part of the Rioni - Kura depression. This inter- mountain depression forms the connection between the systems of the Greater and Lesser Caucasus . On a larger scale, they are part of the Grusin-Azerbaijani clod .
In the region you can mainly find sandstones, marls and clays.
History and historical environment
Archaeological excavations have discovered three fortified urban-type settlements from the Late Bronze Age and the subsequent Iron Age , which date back to the 11th and 10th centuries BC, in the nearby Udabno . To be dated.
Dawit Gareja monastery was built in the middle of the 6th century. In quick succession, further monasteries were founded in his vicinity and in eastern Georgia, largely based on the model of Davit Gareja. These monasteries were founded at a time after which Georgian bishops no longer took part in the synods of the Armenian Church in Dvin (552) and turned away from the Monophysite doctrine, which from this time on became a binding teaching for the Armenian Church.
The group of Thirteen Syrian Fathers , who immigrated from Syrian monasteries, were the initiators of monastic life in Georgia at the time and completed the Christian missionary work in Georgia under King Parsman VI. (542-557). In the course of this Christianization, the "eternal fire" of Zoroastrianism was extinguished by the Bishop of Nekresi , whereupon the governor of the Persian occupation forces had him stone.
Georgia regained its full political autonomy in 591 during the reign of Prince Stephan I (590-607), as the Persian Great King Chosrau II had to cede Armenia and today's Eastern Georgia to the Eastern Roman Empire and thus lost access to Georgia (see also Roman-Persian Wars ). After the Eastern Roman Emperor Maurikios forced a union with Constantinople on the Armenian Church, the Armenians split off in 610 after the occupation by Persian troops in the last Roman-Persian War (603–628). This amounted to a final separation between the Armenian and Georgian Churches , since the Church in Georgia remained oriented towards Orthodoxy .
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A change in the monastic life in Dawit Gareja is connected with the work of Hillarion von Karthweli. He was one of the exponents in the monastery movement and came to this place in 837. In the following ten years he enlarged the monastery area, made the Church of the Transfiguration of Christ the main church, and built new cells and dining rooms for the monks. This development set in motion the transformation of the hermit life into an organized monastic community. As a result, the monastery complex steadily gained in importance up to the 13th century and probably reached its greatest heyday during this period.
This development was interrupted by the massive impact of foreign rule in Georgia. The Mongol storm (1265), the incursion of Timur (around 1394) and the conquest of Georgia by the Persian Shah Abbas in 1616-17 had a particularly negative effect . Some monastic communities were lost and the organizational structure in the monastery complex was damaged. Further occupation conditions due to the Turkish invasions in the 18th and 19th centuries led to the further disintegration of the monastic movement in the whole of eastern Georgia.
Several Georgian kings tried to get monastic life going again at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century. When Onuphrius Machutadze was appointed abbot in 1690 , there was a temporary revival. Under his leadership, the monastery community tried to obtain old lands and rights. New fortifications were even built. Nevertheless, the 18th century brought a decline in communities and in the 19th century only the Natlismtsemeli monastery was inhabited by a few monks. As a result of this situation, most of the buildings fell into disrepair.
In the time of the Soviet Union and after its collapse, conservation and renovation measures were carried out at longer intervals and to different degrees, mostly on the basis of simple means. Since the area is partly on Georgian and partly on Azerbaijani territory, there have been disputes since 1991 that have not led to an amicable solution to this day.
Today a small monastery community lives again in Dawit Gareja, which strives to preserve the cultural, religious and architectural heritage. The monastery is now a tourist destination, there is a modern visitor center with toilets, a souvenir shop and bus parking, but Georgian pilgrims also visit the monastery. There are footpaths from the monastery into the mountains and to the numerous cells and chapels carved into the mountain. Some of these cells are on the opposite side of the mountain on the other side of the border in Asserbaijani territory. Azerbaijan tolerates these visitors without controls as long as they stay in the area of the monastery. At the top of the mountain there is a Georgian military post that is responsible for border surveillance and does not interact with visitors.
Architecture and art
There are significant frescoes in Dawit Gareja, Udabno, Natlismtsemeli and Bertubani . In Udabno there is a fresco “The Entry into Jerusalem” and other icon images .
The few buildings of the Lavra in Dawit Gareja, including the bell tower, are made of hewn irregular blocks and reading stones. For decoration they are supplemented by a portal with fired bricks. The roof is made of fired bricks. In the western part of the monastery area, a watchtower on a rock spur dominates the entire complex. The most important sculptural achievement consists in a portal shaped by round profiles , which houses a Georgian inscription in its tympanum field .
The entire monastery complex developed very strongly from the 11th to the 13th centuries, when the old areas (Dawit Gareja, Natlismzemeli, Dodorka) enlarged and new ones such as Udabno, Tschitschchituri and Bertubani emerged. Archaeological research has found around 5000 monk cells in the entire monastery complex.
For the functional structure to be created, they oriented the new facilities in their construction work to Dawit Gareja. Common dining rooms and church rooms were created in all sub-monasteries, attention was paid to better lighting and the rooms were decorated with frescoes. As a result of this development, these monasteries took on a central role in the religious and national spiritual life in Eastern Georgia. They even gained a certain economic position and influenced the arts, especially painting. Here they exerted a formative influence through their typical color scheme. The traditional frescoes have entered the literature as the school of Gareja and are regarded as the most important works of medieval painting in Georgia.
With the surviving portraits of the frescoes, important people from Georgian history have been preserved, such as Dawit IV the builder , Queen Tamara , Demetre I, Georgi III. and other. In some cases, these are the only surviving portraits of Georgian rulers.
literature
- Nodar Janberidze, Irakli Tsitsishwili: Architectural monuments of Georgia . Moscow (Stroyizdat) 1996 ISBN 5-274-02223-5
- Tinatin Khoshtaria: The Wall Painting of the Chapel-martyrium Motsameta in the Rock-cut Monastery Complex of Udabno David-Gareji. In: Inferno: Journal of Art History, Vol. 9, Article 2, 2004, pp. 1-6
- Konstantin N. Paffengolz et al .: Geological survey of the Caucasus . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1963
- Ilma Reissner: Georgia. History, art, culture . Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1989 ISBN 3-451-21454-7
- Г. Н. Чубинашвили: Пещерные монастыри Давид-Гареджи . Тбилиси, 1948
- Lavra, Udabno = ლავრა, უდაბნო. Tbilisi, 2008. (Davit'gareǰis monastrebi = დავითგარეჯის მონასტრები) ISBN 978-9941-0-0268-7 English / Georgian
- Nat'lismc'emeli, Bert'ubani = ნათლისმცემელი ბერთუბანი. Tbilisi, 2010. (Davit'gareǰis monastrebi = დავითგარეჯის მონასტრები) ISBN 978-9941-0-0942-6 English / Georgian
Web links
- UNESCO World Heritage Site
- Article Dawit Gareja in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)