Claim of the biblical descent of the Bagrationi dynasty
A legend that the
The legend of the Bagrationi's Hebrew or Davidic descent is given no credence by modern mainstream scholarship. The family's origin is disputed, but the view formulated by the historians such as
Origin of the legend
The legend originated in the Armenian–Georgian milieu in the latter half of the 8th century. A Hebrew provenance is first ascribed to the Armenian Bagratids (
The first Armenian source familiar with the Davidic origin of the Bagratids is The History of Armenia by the early 10th century historian Hovhannes Draskhanakerttsi, who would have been exposed to the Georgian legend while voluntarily residing at the court of the Georgian Bagratid ruler Adarnase IV (died 923).[8] In general, the Armenian Bagratids displayed little interest in the Hebrew theory and its Davidic development, as compared with their Georgian counterparts.[9]
The earliest extant native reference to the Georgian Bagratids and their Davidic clamoring is found in
Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus
The legend became well known enough to feature in the 45th chapter of the treatise
Constantine Porphyrogenitus's account betrays Georgian influence, but some of its details are uncorroborated elsewhere. It contradicts the Georgian historian Sumbat's more elaborated version by citing the genealogical line leading to the Virgin Mary instead of that leading to
Sumbat's chronicle
The fullest expression of the Davidic claims of the Georgian Bagratids in Georgian literature is preserved in the 11th-century Life and Tale of the Bagratids by
Sumbat's genealogy from Adam to King David is based on the
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Other sources
Beside the textual sources, the legend of the Bagratids' Davidic origin is possibly enshrined in the stone effigy in
Furthermore, David Winfield argued that the presence of the six-pointed star in medieval Georgian architecture, such as on the 10th-century church Doliskana, in Klarjeti, alluded to the proposed descent of the Bagrationi from King David, but there is no evidence that this symbol had any Davidic associations in Georgia in this period.[29]
Later sources
Subsequent historical works refer on many occasions to the dynasty's biblical provenance.[5] Just after Sumbat composed his history, an 11th-century anonymous author of the so-called Chronicle of Kartli mentions, while relating the event on the eve of the Georgian Bagratid accession to power, the Davidic tradition as existing at the time of Ashot I's father Adarnase. However, the latter source suggest that the claim was not, in the days of Adarnase, as yet widely known, for the princess of Kartli, whose son married Adarnase's daughter, is shown by the chronicle to have been ignorant of her son-in-law's descent from King David.[30]
Another Georgian chronicle, the anonymous Life of King of Kings David, written c. 1123–1126, declares its subject, King David IV of Georgia (r. 1189–1125), to have been the 78th descendant of his biblical eponym. Later on, the chronicle compares David IV's coronation of his son Demetrius I, prior to the former's death, to the biblical David's enthronement of Solomon and once again emphasizes the "resemblance to his ancestral stock". A contemporaneous versified dedicatory inscription on the venerated icon of the Mother of God, known as the Khakhuli triptych, which mentions David IV and Demetrius I, compares the Virgin Mary's Davidic descent to that of the Georgian Bagratid monarchs.[31] The legendary biblical lineage was also reflected in the later dynastic surname Jessian-Davidian-Solomonian-Bagrationi, not infrequently encountered in the Bagratid documents.[32] The symbols associated with David, a harp and sling, appear in the Bagrationi heraldry, the earliest known example dating from the late 16th century.[33]
Finally, the 18th-century Bagratid historian
Thus, the Bagratid claim to be descended from the biblical David persisted until the Russian takeover of their thrones in the early 19th century and is even entertained by some surviving Bagrationi today.[5]
Parallels
Since the King-Prophet David was considered as a model ruler and a symbol of the God-ordained monarchy throughout medieval Western Europe and Eastern Christendom, the Georgian Bagratids were not the only ruling family to claim a link to David. The Carolingians often connected themselves with David, but did not allege to be descended directly from him.[35] As the historian Ivan Biliarsky have conjectured, the Caucasian paradigm of Davidic royalty may have influenced the Old Testament-modeled vision of kingship in early medieval Bulgaria, the country then in transition from an ethnic pagan state to a Christian empire, as evident in the case of Tsar Izot, cited in the Narration of Isaiah, the so-called Bulgarian Apocryphal Chronicle of the Eleventh Century.[36]
The closest parallel to the Georgian Bagratid experience is that of
Modern interpretations
The Bagrationi's Hebrew or Davidic origin is considered by modern scholarship as purely legendary forged by the Georgian dynasty early in their history to help assert their legitimacy. The family's alleged Hebrew provenance was utilized and elaborated by the Georgian Bagratids to claim the descent from the divinely appointed model biblical king David, himself a descendant, in an unbroken line, of Adam and the ancestor of Jesus Christ, at the same time obscuring the dynasty's true origin and blood-ties with Armenian cousins. These claims became articulated in the medieval Georgian texts, especially in the chronicle by Sumbat Davitis-dze, himself a purported Bagratid. Moreover, Sumbat erroneously or purposefully presented the earlier, pre-Bagratid Guaramid dynasty of Kartli as the first Bagratids on the Georgian soil by identifying the Guaramid prince Guaram as a scion of the biblical King David. It is true, however, that the early Georgian Bagratids were related to the Guaramids by marital ties and a Guaramid dowry formed an important segment of the original Bagratid realm.[38][18]
In the 20th century, the British historian Steven Runciman attempted to rehabilitate the theory of the Hebrew origin of the Bagratids. Runciman suggested that there was no reason to doubt their Jewish origin given the presence of Jews, fleeing from the Assyrian captivity, in Caucasia, "where, as in Babylonia, there were hereditary chiefs who claimed descent from David known as the "Princes of the Diaspora", till the high Middle Ages". The hypothesis has not been accepted by other scholars and Toumanoff have thoroughly dismissed such a possibility.[39]
Notes
- ^ a b c Toumanoff 1963, p. 423.
- ^ Rapp 2000, pp. 571–572.
- ^ Taqaishvili 1935, pp. 23–25.
- ^ a b Toumanoff 1963, p. 328.
- ^ a b c Rapp 1997, p. 533.
- ^ Rapp 2003, p. 234.
- ^ Rapp 1997, pp. 529–530.
- ^ Rapp 1997, pp. 527–528, 530–531.
- ^ Toumanoff 1963, p. 329, fn. 108.
- ^ Rapp 1997, p. 526.
- ^ Rapp 2003, pp. 233–234.
- ^ Toumanoff 1963, p. 329.
- ^ Biliarsky 2013, p. 152.
- ^ Taqaishvili 1935, p. 19.
- ^ Toumanoff 1963, p. 323.
- ^ a b Biliarsky 2013, p. 153.
- ^ Constantine Porphyrogenitus 1949, p. 171.
- ^ a b Rapp 2000, p. 571.
- ^ Rapp 2003, p. 339.
- ^ Rapp 1997, p. 532.
- ^ Taqaishvili 1935, pp. 17–19.
- ^ Rapp 2003, p. 351.
- ^ Biliarsky 2013, p. 154.
- ^ a b Rapp 2003, p. 369.
- ^ a b Biliarsky 2013, pp. 154–155.
- ^ Rapp 2000, p. 573.
- ^ Djobadze 1992, pp. 14–15.
- ^ Eastmond 1998, pp. 223–224.
- ^ Eastmond 1998, p. 225, fn. 22.
- ^ Toumanoff 1963, p. 329, fn. 107.
- ^ Papamastorakis 2002, pp. 226–228.
- ^ Toumanoff 1949–1951, p. 209, fn. 29.
- ^ Bichikashvili 2004, p. 4.
- ^ Rapp 1997, pp. 533–534.
- ^ a b Rapp 1997, p. 528, fn. 139.
- ^ Biliarsky 2013, p. 157.
- ^ Karbelashvili 1999, pp. 250–251.
- ^ Toumanoff 1963, p. 425.
- ^ Toumanoff 1963, p. 329, fn. 110.
References
- Bichikashvili, Ioseb (2004). ჩხეიძეთა საგვარეულო. დანართი 1: ქართული საგვარეულო ჰერალდიკა [The Chkheidze family. Appendix 1: Georgian family heraldry] (PDF) (in Georgian). Tbilisi: National Parliamentary Library of Georgia. p. 3. ISBN 99928-0-213-8.
- Biliarsky, Ivan (2013). The Tale of the Prophet Isaiah: The Destiny and Meanings of an Apocryphal Text. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-25438-1.
- Constantine Porphyrogenitus (1949). De Administrando Imperio, Greek text edited by Gyula Moravcsik, English translation by R. J. H. Jenkins. Budapest: Pazmany Peter Tudomanyegyetemi Gorog Filologiai Intezet.
- Djobadze, Wachtang (1992). Early Medieval Georgian Monasteries in Historic Tao, Klarjet'i, and Šavšet'i. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. ISBN 3-515-05624-6.
- Eastmond, Antony (1998). Royal imagery in medieval Georgia. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01628-0.
- Karbelashvili, Mariam (1999). "იოანე ბატონიშვილის ცნობა საქართველოსა და ეთიოპიის სამეფო დინასტიათა ნათესაობის შესახებ" [Ioane Batonishvili's Information on the Relationship of Georgian and Ethiopian Royal Dynasties]. Literaturuli Dziebani (in Georgian and English). 26 (1): 244–254.
- Papamastorakis, Titos (2002). "Re-deconstructing the Khakhouli Triptych" (PDF). Deltion of the Christian Archaeological Society. 23 (4): 225–254.
- Rapp, Stephen H. Jr. (1997). Imagining history at the crossroads: Persia, Byzantium, and the architects of the written Georgian past. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan.
- Rapp, Stephen H. Jr. (2000). "Sumbat Davitʿis-dze and the Vocabulary of Political Authority in the Era of Georgian Unification". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 120 (4): 570–576. JSTOR 606617.
- Rapp, Stephen H. (2003). Studies in Medieval Georgian Historiography: Early Texts And Eurasian Contexts. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium. Leuven: Peeters Publishers. ISBN 90-429-1318-5.
- Taqaishvili, Ekvtime (1935). "Georgian chronology and the beginning of the Bagratid rule in Georgia". Georgica. 1: 9–27.
- Toumanoff, Cyril (1949–1951). "The Fifteenth-Century Bagratids and the Institution of Collegial Sovereignty in Georgia". Traditio. 7: 169–221. S2CID 149043757.
- Toumanoff, Cyril (1963). Studies in Christian Caucasian history. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.