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The Medieval Church · 951
The Life of Grigol of Khandzta
Giorgi Merchule
What it is
The life of a monastic founder who cleared forest in the mountains of Tao-Klarjeti and built a dozen houses there, told with unusual attention to landscape, building, and argument with local nobles. It contains the sentence that Georgia is wherever the liturgy is celebrated in Georgian.
Why it lasted
The masterpiece of Georgian hagiography, and the source of the definition of nationhood by language and liturgy that Georgian identity has rested on ever since.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
This work is in the public domain and can be read in full, free, at the archives below.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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