Abstracts - International Initiative for Georgian Cultural Studies

Christopher Haas
Villanova University. USA
Ioane Zedazneli: A Georgian Saint in the Syrian Ascetical Tradition
During the first half of the sixth century, the character of Georgian Christianity was profoundly
influenced by the introduction of monasticism. This is attributed to the arrival of St.Ioane Zedazneli (John
of Zedazeni) at the Iberian capital of Mtskheta with twelve of his monastic co-laborers, known collectively
in the Georgian tradition as the Thirteen Syrian Fathers. St. John’s disciples soon fanned out across Iberia,
following his example of asceticism, miracle-working and evangelization.
Some commentators have argued that the Syrian Fathers were, in fact, not Syrian at all, but Georgians
who had come into contact with Syrian ascetics. Others have viewed them as Monophysite dissidents
who fled as refugees from Chalcedonian persecution under Justin and Justinian. One profitable avenue of
inquiry into the origins and character of these monks is to engage in a close analysis of the teachings and
ascetic practices of St. Ioane Zedazneli, one of the best known of the Syrian Fathers. As a spiritual leader
to the other Syrian Fathers, St. Ioane Zedazneli served as their most important model for the ascetic life, as
well as the principal source for their teachings.
This paper examines the early sources, which depict the life and teachings of St.Ioane Zedazneli. These
works are then compared with representative sources from the early Syrian ascetical tradition to reveal the
various links between the pioneers of sixth century Georgian monasticism and their purported Syrian roots.
In addition, this paper will examine St. Ioane Zedazneli’s place in the formation of Georgian historical
memory, and the ways in which he has been commemorated in Georgian iconography and mural painting.
Alexei M. Lidov
Russian Academy of Fine Arts. Russia
Eastern Christian “Image-Paradigms”: A Hierotopic Dimension of Medieval Art History
The paper deals with new approaches to the history of Eastern Christian art, which relate to the methodological
aspects in studies of medieval Georgian art and culture. It, first of all, concerns the concept of
hierotopy (the creation of sacred spaces), recently proposed by the author of this paper and elaborated in
several publications by an international group of scholars. These studies have revealed an important theoretical
issue. In many cases, the discussion of visual culture can not be reduced to a positivist description of
artifacts, or to the analysis of theological notions. Some phenomena can be properly interpreted only on the
level of image-ideas, I prefer to term them “image-paradigms”, which do not coincide with the illustrative
pictures or ideological conceptions.
This special notion seems a useful instrumentum studiorum, which helps to explain a layer of phenomena.
Image-paradigms were not connected with the illustration of any specific text, although they remained
a part of a continuum of literary and symbolic meanings and associations. This type of imagery is quite
distinct from what one may call an iconographic device. At the same time the image-paradigm belonged to
visual culture, it was visible and recognizable, but it was not formalized in any fixed state, either in a form
of the pictorial scheme or in a mental construction. In this respect, the image-paradigm looks similarly to
the metaphor that loses its sense in re-telling, or in its de-construction into parts. It does not concern any
mystic but a special type of consciousness, which determined several symbolic structures as well as numerous
concrete pictorial motifs. In addition, it challenges our fundamental methodological approach to the
image as illustration and flat picture. In the paper, I am going to discuss some particular Eastern Christian
“image-paradigms”, including very important Georgian examples.
75