The Tsilkani cathedral of the Mother of God ( ka, წილკნის ღვთისმშობლის ტაძარი, tr) is a Georgian Orthodox church in the village of Tsilkani, Mtskheta Municipality, in Georgia's eastern region of

Mtskheta-Mtianeti Mtskheta-Mtianeti ( ka, მცხეთა-მთიანეთი, literally "Mtskheta-Mountain Area") is a region (Mkhare) in eastern Georgia comprising the town of Mtskheta, which serves as a regional capital, together with its district and t ...

. Originally built in the 4th century, the church was repeatedly remodeled in the Middle Ages. The extant edifice is a domed cross-in-square design, contained in a walled enclosure with corner towers. It is inscribed on the list of the Immovable Cultural Monuments of National Significance.

Location

The Tsilkani cathedral stands in the centre of the eponymous village—northwest of the ancient city of

Mtskheta Mtskheta ( ka, მცხეთა, tr ) is a city in Mtskheta-Mtianeti province of Georgia. It is one of the oldest cities in Georgia as well as one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the World. Itis located approximately north of T ...

—on the left bank of the Narekvavi, a tributary of the Aragvi River. The village, home to a Late Bronze Age burial mound and other archaeological finds, is also notable for a 4th–5th-century Christian

crypt A crypt (from Latin ''crypta'' "vault") is a stone chamber beneath the floor of a church or other building. It typically contains coffins, sarcophagi, or religious relics. Originally, crypts were typically found below the main apse of a chur ...

, with a Greek inscription on its wall.

History

The Tsilkani church is credited by the medieval Georgian chronicles to King Bakar (r. c. 365–380), son of Mirian III, the first Christian king of Kartli— Iberia of the Classical sources. Originally a hall church, the cathedral was remade into a three-nave basilica in the 5th or 6th century and, eventually, reconstructed as a domed church in the 12th or 13th century. The church was further renovated in the 16th–17th century. The church was also associated in medieval Georgian tradition—elaborated in the hymns by the 13th-century cleric Arsen Bulmaisimisdze—with the monk Jesse from Antioch who came as part of the Thirteen Assyrian Fathers in Kartli around 545. It is maintained that Jesse's tomb is still preserved in the church. The cathedral was the seat of bishops of Tsilkani, first heard of in 506. The cathedral was home to the venerated Virgin Hodegetria of Tsilkani, a 9th-century icon of the Virgin and the Child attended by the archangels. The icon was repainted and refurbished at the turn of the 12th century, but the faces painted in encaustic tempera were left untouched. In 1926, the icon was moved for preservation to the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi.

Layout

The extant church, measuring 28 × 24 m and built largely of dressed sandstone blocks, is a cross-in-square building, with a semicircular apse and a central dome held up on four free-standing piers. The base of the dome is pierced with 12 windows. The interior is additionally lit with 10 windows cut in the walls. The church has three entrances. To the south porch is attached a small hall church with a semicircular apse and two niches, connected via a doorway to the cathedral's south nave. The church bears remnants of the coarse wall paintings, dated from the 15th century to the 18th. The cathedral is enclosed in a late-18th-century stone curtain wall, measuring 58 × 72 m. The wall is pierced by an arched brick gate on the southwest and a number of embrasures and contain rounded corner towers, one of which, on the southeast, is topped by a 19th-century hexagonal belfry.

References

{{reflist Buildings and structures in Mtskheta-Mtianeti Immovable Cultural Monuments of National Significance of Georgia Georgian Orthodox cathedrals in Georgia (country) 4th-century churches 12th-century Eastern Orthodox church buildings