A Companion to Late Antique Literature

by Scott McGill

  6.2 Christian Kʻartʻli and the Iranian Commonwealth

  Early Georgian hagiographies communicate no systematic persecutions of Christians by Sasanian officials and Zoroastrian mowbeds. While Gwrobandak‐Evstatʻi’s death was ordered by the Sasanian marzbān headquartered in Tpʻilisi, this episode unfolded in the wake of lurid complaints registered by the local Iranian community. Despite the strong influence of Iran, escalating religious antagonism, and fierce imperial competition in strategic “borderlands” such as Caucasia, early Georgian hagiographies are remarkably ambivalent toward Iran and Zoroastrianism. Christian Kʻartʻvelians do not seem to have produced dedicated polemic against Zoroastrianism, as was the case in Armenia, e.g. Eznik Kołbacʻi’s On God.

  Critical readings of the three earliest Georgian hagiographies expose the tight interconnection of Iran and Caucasia, a situation extending in some respects back to Achaemenid rule. As it had in earlier centuries, the social structure of late antique Caucasia resembled that of Iran, with great aristocratic houses and their hereditary prerogatives dominating the social landscape. Élites favored Iranian and Iranic names, which often had Zoroastrian backgrounds. Among Kʻartʻvelian royalty we encounter, for example, Mirian (Mihrān), Bakʻar (Bahkar/Pakur), Trdat (Tīrdād), Pʻarsman (Farsamana), Mirdat (Miϑradāta), and Vaxtang (cf. Vahrām/Bahrām and Vərəϑraɣna). More broadly, the Georgian language along with Armenian and probably Caucasian Albanian were studded with Iranian and Iranic terminology (Gippert 1993). Some Georgian words commonly used in Christian ecclesiastical settings – including netari (blessed < MPers. nēttar), šaravandi (consecration < MPers. *šahrawand, cf. Arm. ašxarawand), and tażari (palace, temple < Parth. tažar) – were derived from Middle Iranian languages, sometimes via armeniaca, or developed in tandem with these tongues. Other manifestations of Caucasia’s profound association with Iran include synchronisms in the vitae of Šušanik and Evstatʻi pointing to the reigning šāhan šāh and not the Roman emperor. This convention is deployed in Georgian inscriptions – e.g. in the late fifth‐century foundational inscription of Bolnisi Sioni (Silogava 1994). It is also encountered in contemporaneous Armenian and Albanian sources as well.

  On the whole, the earliest Georgian hagiographies are silent on the Roman Empire, the Roman emperor, and other Roman luminaries, institutions, and events. Indeed, across late antiquity, Romano‐Byzantine influence and interventions in the inland Georgian districts were relatively minimal when compared to those emanating from Iran (cf. Furtwängler et al. 2008; Braund 1994). This is especially true before the reign of Heraclius and his march through Caucasia during his campaign against the Sasanians. At one point Heraclius stood before the citadel of Tpʻilisi. When the most ancient Georgian vitae evoke an imperial or large‐scale cultural (“civilizational”) context, they prioritized the familiar sociocultural world of Ērānšahr – what might be called the Iranian Commonwealth – to which peoples across the Caucasian isthmus had belonged since the Iron Age, including nomads such as the Alans/Ovsis in Northern Caucasia. The Irano‐Caucasian nexus did not vanish as a result of public, royally sanctioned Christianization. Except for the Roman annexation of Armenian territories in eastern Anatolia, which were restructured socially and administratively along Roman lines (Adontz 1970), other Caucasian lands, including eastern Georgia and Persarmenia, preserved their traditional Iranian and especially Iranic institutions throughout the premodern epoch. In many cases Christianity was tailored to the existing Iranian/Iranic sociocultural pattern more than the other way around.

  6.3 Conversion Stories and Acculturating Parthians

  Beyond the hagiographical texts already surveyed, the first phase of original Georgian literature comprehends the earliest known Georgian‐language account of the Christianization of Kʻartʻli: the seventh‐century Conversion of Kʻartʻli. Although a manuscript of the thirteenth/fourteenth century associates a deacon named Grigol with the text’s transmission (chapter 13, Abulaże, 8629–32), the identity of the original author remains a mystery. The brevity of The Conversion is disproportionate to its significance. While the story it relates is valuable for reconstructing the Christianization of the Kʻartʻvelian monarchy, especially the baptism of King Mirian in 326 (for the date, see Patariże 2000), of equal importance is the deliberate repackaging of these events in the seventh century. The underlying narrative of the received tale is quite old; its contours are delimited by Rufinus, who wrote his Ecclesiastical History in Latin back around the year 400. Rufinus – in this case probably via the lost church history of Gelasius of Caesarea – repeats the testimony of the well‐placed nobleman Bakur/Bacurius, heir to the independence‐minded bidaxšate of the Armeno‐Kʻartʻvelian marchlands. We possess no definitive evidence of the Kʻartʻvelian author of The Conversion having possessed direct knowledge of Rufinus and/or Gelasius. However, the same core story is found in both sources.

  None of the earliest traditions of Kʻartʻli’s conversion expressly mention Christianity’s competition with specific faiths. The details of the story featuring a menacing and well‐organized idolatry, first encountered in the longer Life of Nino of the ninth/tenth century, belong to a medieval effort to demonstrate the inherent autocephaly of the Kʻartʻvelian Church and the viability of a distinctive eastern Georgian society and monarchy. Accordingly, an autonomous Kʻartʻvelian Christianity had supplanted an autonomous Kʻartʻvelian polytheism.

  Although it employs Iranic vocabulary and imagery akin to earlier Georgian hagiographies, The Conversion of Kʻartʻli represents a marked literary evolution. This is exemplified by the synchronism in its initial passage referring not only to “the days of King Constantine” but also to the Ascension of Christ (Conversion of Kʻartʻli, chapter 1). Iran and Iranians are afforded no role in this later textual monument to eastern Georgia’s Christianization. The Conversion’s narrative purpose is to celebrate the good deeds of the holy woman Nino. Having migrated to Caucasia from Roman domains (Cappadocia in medieval traditions) with a group of female ascetics, Nino secured the conversion of Queen Nana and eventually of her reluctant husband, Mirian. (Foreigners are conspicuous in the history of early Christian Caucasia; King Mirian, Šušanik, Gwrobandak‐Evstatʻi, and the later Thirteen Syrian Fathers and Habo were non‐Georgians.) The chief function of the text is to establish the autonomous Christianization of the Kʻartʻvelians back in the early fourth century by creatively exploiting the cross‐cultural traditions circulating in seventh‐century Caucasia. As it happens, Nino’s supposed companions, the holy women Hr͘ipʻsimē and Gaianē, are central characters in the conversion story of the Armenian King Trdat as conveyed by a cycle of texts associated with a fifth‐century Armenian author called Agatʻangełos (< Gk. Agathangelos). While the historical Nino’s attachment to this company of women cannot be authenticated, The Conversion’s author – or authors – certainly capitalized upon the regional popularity of Agatʻangełos. Simultaneously, the later Kʻartʻvelian writer was cautious to avoid any impression of the subordination of his church to its neighbors, especially the Armenians.

  The timing of The Conversion of Kʻartʻli was not fortuitous. At the dawn of the seventh century, Heraclius’s passage through eastern Georgia, the destabilization of the Sasanian Empire, and the Kʻartʻvelian Church’s repudiation of the regional protectorate asserted by its Armenian counterpart contributed to a formal schism between the two ecclesiastical organizations. Following the condemnation of the Kʻartʻvelian Katholikos Kwrion at the Armenians’ Third Council of Duin in 607, eastern Georgian prelates aligned themselves with the imperial Roman church to an unprecedented degree as they declared autocephaly. This entailed inter alia the silencing of lingering objections to the diophysite christology adopted at the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon back in 451; the yet unrivaled, selective influx of Romano‐Byzantine art and architecture; and the eventual replacement of the liturgy of Jerusalem with that of Constantinople. As the sun set on late antiquity, eastern Georgian Christianity’s customary orient
ation toward Syria and the Holy Land, as well as toward Armenia and eastern Anatolia, was yielding to one looking toward Constantinople to an unprecedented degree.

  The Conversion of Kʻartʻli is the first Georgian religious text to feature a dynastic monarch. It is true that Varskʻen the bidaxš of Somxitʻi/Gugarkʻ is a central character in The Passion of Šušanik and that he imagined himself to wield royal authority (Rapp 2014a). But Varskʻen’s literary role is to refute Christ and to inflict the brutalities leading to the martyrdom of his pious wife. Mirian (r. 284–361) at first resisted Nino’s God; however, the king eventually entered the Christian fold after a miracle that transpired during an ill‐fated royal hunt. Following Mirian’s baptism and the alleged dispatch of “Greek” priests by none other than Constantine the Great, the swift conversion of his realm to Christianity is reported. By the end of the fourth century, Christianity was unquestionably achieving dominance with royal and aristocratic support throughout southern Caucasia. However, several written sources, including the vita of Abibos Nekreseli (one of the Thirteen Syrian Fathers credited with establishing monasticism in eastern Georgia in the sixth century), attest the tenacity of Caucasia’s indigenous Zoroastrianisms and newly imported Sasanian variants. Material evidence includes the foundations of an impressive Zoroastrian temple at Nekresi below the monastic complex founded by Abibos. This site was still active in the fourth century. Accordingly, Christianization was a long‐term, cross‐cultural process. Moreover, local and newly reinvigorated Sasanian strains of Zoroastrianism did not suddenly vanish. Some Zoroastrian elements were Christianized, including sacral models of royal authority.

  It soon became evident that the succinct Conversion could not compete with more sophisticated traditions, foreign and perhaps domestic. Some noble houses, including the bidaxšes of the Armeno‐Kʻartʻvelian marchlands, may once have brandished their own oral and written conversion tales. Under two Byzantinizing forces, the Georgian Church and the royal Bagratid dynasty, The Conversion was superseded in the ninth/tenth century by the expanded Life of Nino. This latter work has remained the standard account of eastern Georgia’s conversion to the present day.

  The Conversion of Kʻartʻli might seem an important literary step toward the articulation of Georgian historiography. However, a new interpretation of early Georgian literature repositions the primary links of this literary chain to a lost historiographical tradition that was put into writing in the sixth century (Rapp 2014a). At the heart of this development are expatriate Parthian families who assimilated into the Caucasian aristocracy. The process commenced during Arsacid rule over the Parthian Empire and continued into the fourth century when Mirian, a young Parthian aristocrat, migrated to Kʻartʻli. There Mirian assumed royal authority and inaugurated the Xosroiani/Chosroid dynasty. Parthian migrants wove themselves inextricably into the social fabric of Caucasia. Several Parthian aristocratic branches acculturated, including Arsacids who sat on the thrones of Caucasia’s three kingdoms. Significantly, the first monarchs of Armenia Major, Kʻartʻli, and Albania to embrace Christianity were acculturated or acculturating Parthians at the time the Sasanians governed Iran. Some Christian holy men and women also had Parthian backgrounds, including Gregory the Illuminator whose activities won the conversion of King Trdat, an Armenian Arsacid. The Parthian contribution to Caucasian history (and Caucasia’s contribution to Parthian history!) was considerable and helps to account for the timing of Caucasia’s royal conversions. With regards to the highest social stratae, women and men with Parthian backgrounds frequently stood at the vanguard of public conversion to Christianity in late antiquity.

  6.4 The Dawn of Georgian Historiography: Hambavi mepʻet ʻa

  The Parthian presence throughout Caucasia had many long‐term consequences. In early phases of late antiquity, prior to royal Christianization, Caucasia’s Zoroastrianisms underwent momentous change. Acculturated Parthians were an energetic conduit for renewed linguistic dialogue between Caucasia and Iran. The period is characterized by an upsurge of Middle Iranian terminology. The invention of the three Caucasian scripts may have been inspired by scripts created for local languages in Iran toward the end of the Parthian Arsacid regime (Häberl 2006 for Mandaic). In addition, there was a literary dimension. Later Sasanians and their allies sponsored a self‐promoting historiography. Eventually acquiring written form, the lost Xwadāy‐nāmag is known principally through Islamic‐era narratives such as Ferdowsī’s eleventh‐century Šāhnāma. Xwadāy‐nāmag blended epic and history into a single story that presented the Sasanian dynasty as uniquely legitimate through its possession of royal xwarrah, its unparalleled magnanimity, and its station as the exclusive source of hero‐kings. Originally intended to glorify the Sasanian family, the Xwadāy‐nāmag was a living tradition to which others contributed, including the Parthian aristocracy clustered in Iran’s northern districts.

  Caucasia’s Parthians contributed to the Xwadāy‐nāmag, though in an unconventional way. Acculturated Parthians in eastern Georgia, along with other noble elements likewise embedded in Iranian culture, created their own epic‐history paralleling the Xwadāy‐nāmag. Although its oldest form is lost, the sixth‐century Hambavi mepʻetʻa profoundly influenced Georgian historical literature between the eighth and tenth centuries (Rapp 2014a). At the beginning of this period, whole passages from Hambavi mepʻetʻa were absorbed into historiographical texts. It should be stressed that Hambavi mepʻetʻa is not a Georgian translation or close adaptation of the Iranian Xwadāy‐nāmag. Although it incorporates personalities and events of the Xwadāy‐nāmag (especially for remote eras, such as Farīdūn, Īrāj, Key Kāvus, Farīburz, Siyāwaxš, and Key Xusrō), Hambavi mepʻetʻa is an original Georgian composition paralleling the structure and purpose of its Iranian analogue. For instance, the first monarch of the Kʻartʻvelians, Pʻarnavaz (r. 299–234 BCE), is presented as a foundational king akin to the primordial Iranian monarchs acclaimed in the Šāhnāma and its antecedents. As the royal architect of his society, Pʻarnavaz is imputed with the establishment of the dynastic monarchy, an administrative apparatus based on officials called eristʻavis, and the invention of the Georgian script (or at least the introduction of literacy). The Greco‐Roman Mediterranean plays a far less important political and cultural role than the Iranian Commonwealth in late antique historiography, in terms of both narrative content and historiographical structure. This is but one index of Georgia’s intimate membership in the Iranian cultural world.

  Though lost, extensive remnants of Hambavi mepʻetʻa lie at the heart of two Georgian histories composed between ca. 790 and 813. The Life of the Kʻartʻvelian Kings, the longest premodern narrative devoted to eastern Georgia’s “pagan” history, is customarily but erroneously ascribed to the eleventh‐century archbishop Leonti Mroveli (Rapp 2003, 157–163). Mroveli was not the original author but a creative medieval editor who also inserted several notices from Judaeo‐Christian antiquity. The bulk of The Life of the Kings derives from Hambavi mepʻetʻa. It celebrates the pre‐Christian kings of Kʻartʻli and the foundations of their power: dynastic right, possession of xwarrah, special attachment to the realm’s polytheism (whose core was, in fact, a hybrid Zoroastrianism), and aptitude in combat as hero‐kings who were buttressed by titanic champions called bumberazis. The particular manner in which The Life of the Kings conveys these attributes was directly inspired by the late antique Hambavi mepʻetʻa; this, in turn, parallels the Iranian epic tradition.

  6.5 Christian History in Iranic Colors

  Similar Iranic imagery is applied to Christian Kʻartʻvelian kings in the ca. 800 Life of Vaxtang Gorgasali. Following brief treatments of his Chosroid grandfather and father, Arcˇʻil (r. 411–435) and Mirdat V (r. 435–447), the narrative concentrates on the long reign of Vaxtang Gorgasali (Vakhtang I, r. 447–522). Vaxtang’s royal biography is the first extant Georgian historiographical source to focus on a solitary ruler; it also contains the richest Georgian‐language accounts of the single combat characterizing
the epic‐histories of the Iranian Commonwealth. The model of Iranic kingship articulated in The Life of the Kings is repeated in The Life of Vaxtang with a noteworthy exception: After Mirian’s fourth‐century conversion, certain Christian images were inserted into the existing Iranic conception of royal authority. The Christian Vaxtang is presented as one of the bumberazis of old, joyfully entering into single combat against a variety of gigantic adversaries, including, we are told, a (Christian) Roman logothetēs named Polycarpus. But the religious context has changed: Vaxtang credits his victories to the Christian God. At the same time, as a king ruling in the Iranian cultural world, Vaxtang never engages Iranian champions in single contests and even has Zoroastrian Iranian bumberazis under his command.