Number DOI: http://doi.org/10.33209/2519-4348-2019-7-54

VB. – № 7, 2019. – P. 139-162

Summary

In Orthodox world it is commonly known that Tomos on recognition and acceptance of autocephaly of Orthodox Church of Georgia took place on the 25th of January 1990. The Georgian Orthodox Church occupies the sixth place in the local Slavic Church diptychs alongside the ninth place in the diptychs of ancient eastern patriarchates. All those facts may cause an uninitiated reader to consider Georgia to be a developing country that managed to gain its political and religious independence only after Russian Empire had collapsed. Few know nowadays that Georgian Orthodox Church is one of the most ancient in the world and that Georgia itself after the 5th century is a country with its own autocephalous Church, mentioned by a Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea in the 6th century: «Iberians are Christians, they abide by rules of faith better than anyone we know». Even such an influential clergyman and theologian as Archbishop of Telmessos Job (Getcha) stating that «the Orthodox autocephalies, except for the most ancient ones, were created due to Tomos granted by Church of Constantinople and only they can be considered as truly autocephalous Churches,» apparently does not include Georgia into the number of those «most ancient» ones, as further on he mentions: «Autocephaly is every time declared due to a number of political reasons, for example owing to acquiring national independence as it happened in Georgia, Czech Republic and Slovakia»1. The reason for such underestimation of Georgian Orthodox Church is deprivation of autocephaly for more than a hundred years when the history of the nation, past and present of its church were questioned. In Tsarist Russia very few theologians and church historians would defend the right of Georgian Orthodox Church, among them M. Sabinin and N.N. Durnovo. Overwhelming number of authors simply tried to justify the status quo. Activists who wrote articles exploring the issue deeply such as bishops (and future patriarchs of Georgia) Kyrion, Leonid, Ambrosius, Callistratus felt like a voice crying in the wilderness. Their works being written mainly in Georgian were rarely taken into account outside of their own country. Our survey intends to familiarize readers with history of autocephaly of Georgian Orthodox Church, with views of the above-mentioned Georgian clergy activists, and to keep track of the inner and outside factors that led to autocephaly at dawn of christianity and of the reasons that have contributed to the loss of autocephaly and to its restoration again.

Key words: autocephaly, Orthodox Church, Georgia.