6a. The Church of Georgia.
This Church is not to be counted among the branches of the Orthodox Communion because it has now ceased to exist. We have seen how the Georgians or Iberians were converted by St. Nino, how they became a separate body independent of the Patriarch of Antioch (pp. 17, 18). The Church of Georgia under the Katholikos of Tiflis[1] had its own rite in the Georgian language. It was almost entirely Orthodox and free from any suspicion of Nestorianism or Monophysism. In the 7th century Georgia was conquered by the Saracens, and a great persecution filled the Calendar of Tiflis with names of martyrs. In the 11th century the country was again free, and the native Georgian kings reigned at Tiflis till the beginning of the 19th century. They were continually attacked and overrun by the Persians; but, on the whole, the land was free, and the valiant Georgian warriors formed one of the bulwarks of Christendom against Islam. Meanwhile the Church of Georgia shared the fate of the kingdom; she was persecuted whenever the Georgians were defeated, and she shared their triumph when they won. Almost inevitably this little distant Church, surrounded by other Orthodox Churches, shared their schism, probably hardly or not at all realizing the fact. But the Russians can scarcely afford to blame her for that, and otherwise no shadow of reproach can be brought against her. The most ancient Church of a heroic people, she deserved to remain one, and one of the most honoured of the Orthodox allies. In 1802, however, the greatest misfortune happened to Georgia that can happen to any nation. It was made a Russian province. And from that time its Church has ceased to exist. The upstart tyrants at Petersburg, of course, cared nothing for the rights of a Church that was by five centuries more ancient and more venerable than their own, nor for the national feeling of the heroic race that for centuries had guarded the frontier of Christendom.
- ↑ Tiflis, the capital of Georgia, was built in 455. Its name means "warm" (Slav, tepl; the same name as Teplitz in Bohemia), from the hot springs near the city. Iberia is the older name of the country: it is called Grusia, or Kursia, too.
