Some Issues of Political Legitimization through the Cult of Saints in the Late Antique Caucasus.

Abstract

1.6.1.1.1. Bulletin of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences (Moambe). –2020. –v.14.–#1. –pp.137-143. –eng.; abs.: geo., eng.

The paper discusses the regional peculiarities of the cult of saints in the Late Antique Caucasus. It argues that the Caucasian, i.e. Albanian, Armenian and Georgian written sources introduce distinct concepts, practices and rhetoric of sanctity into the saintly discourses of the Eastern Roman Empire. In late antique Caucasian sources  one  can  identify  a  particularly  strong  interest  in  the  interrelationship  of  the cult  of  saints  and  the political discourses, most notably in the context of the legitimization of royal rule. For this purpose the paper analyzes two late antique literary productions: Agathangelos’ fifth-century History of the Armenians, written in Armenian, and the anonymous Life of Vachagan III the Pious, a part of the History of Albanians, also written in Armenian albeit with a complicated date, with a brief reference to the Georgian Conversion of Kartli. Based on a study of these texts, the paper further argues that the politicization of saints’ relics that these texts engage  are  on  the  one  hand  adopted  from  eastern  Roman  rhetoric,  in  particular  Constantinian  and Theodosian  authors,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  borrowed  from  Iranian  and  Zoroastrian  concepts  of  royal investiture.  According  to  these  early  Caucasian  narratives,  the  relics  serve  the  purpose  of  legitimizing  the political state of affairs; they sanctify a monarch’s rule through creating a metaphysical bridge between the foundations of Christianity and the recent times, by assigning to the kingdom or monarch a central place in the history of universal salvation. Ref. 6.

Auth.

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