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Renovation or destruction?: Conflicting reports on an Armenian Catholic church in Georgia

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• Passions over Holy Cross: An Armenian church in Georgia faces identity issue

Typical Georgian inferiority complex syndrome propels these once proud people to become slaves of their own demons. If Georgians will feel better confiscating this Armenian church and that Khatchkar, then let them have what they want. Instead of thanking the Armenians for introducing Christianity to Georgia, inventing their alphabet, giving them the Royal house of Bagratyuni, and helping them thro...

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Conflicting reports about the fate of the Holy Cross Church in Akhaltsikhe, an Armenian-populated province in present-day Georgia, were made early this year, as some groups in Armenia claimed the Armenian traces of the church were being erased under the guise of planned renovation.

The non-functioning church’s status has been another point at issue amid reports that it has been handed over to the Roman Catholic Church.

“There should be an appeal of cooperation to the Georgian authorities to restore the church with the assistance of local and Armenian specialists and the issue of the church’s belonging should be left to our spiritual fathers to decide. It can never be allowed that the church becomes a faith center of Georgian Catholics. This will become a basis for everything that is Armenian to be distorted or destroyed,” says Hakob Simonyan, a candidate of historical sciences, who heads a scientific research center on historical-cultural heritage affiliated with the Armenian Ministry of Culture.

A group of Armenian experts was recently in Georgia over the matter. Hakobyan says the visit was prompted by reports from Akhaltsikhe Armenians in March about earth-moving activities within the Church’s premises. The Armenian expedition, however, has confirmed that the activity was for “excavation purposes” rather than constituted demolition as claimed by some advocacy groups.

The expert says the excavation has in fact reaffirmed the Armenian origins of the church, moreover its belonging to the Apostolic Church, which has been questioned by historians in Georgia.

“Four cross stones, or khachkars, laid inside the eastern wall of the altar were uncovered and three of them had Armenian inscriptions on them. The khachkar that mentions the year 1366 is the most important piece of evidence among them,” says the center’s director. “This testifies to the fact that Armenians have lived in this territory from [at least] the 14th century onward. And the far-fetched versions that Armenians had not lived in the Akhaltsikhe region before the [1829-30] exodus of ethnic Armenians from Karin [in modern-day Turkey] do not correspond to the facts.”

The possibility of handing the church over to the Catholic community in Georgia has been discussed lately.

Hakobyan says that the church could not have belonged to the Catholic Church, which appeared in Akhaltsikhe no earlier than in the 17th century. Meanwhile, he says, evidence shows that the church is Armenian
Apostolic.

From 1830 the Armenian Catholic community of Akhaltsikhe divided into two parts: the indigenous folks and those who had come from Grand Hayk. Those who had come from the Karin province were Armenian-speaking Armenians. And the “locals” gradually became Georgian-speaking and assimilated with the Georgian community.

As a new community, the Armenian Catholics became owners of the churches in the 17th century and the churches were later passed to the Catholic community.

“And the Holy Cross, which was initially founded as an apostolic church, is one of such churches,” says monuments expert Samvel Karapetyan. The church in the upper district of Rabat has remained non-functioning. Medieval khachkars were built around it; it also has an old cemetery with tombstones, a majority of them bearing inscriptions.

Karapetyan has long protested the destruction of monuments of Armenian cultural heritage outside Armenia, including in Georgia. He contends that the destruction of Armenian monuments in Tbilisi and Armenian-populated provinces is part of a Georgian policy. The expert cites the example of a large inscription on a 17th-century Armenian church located in-between two Armenian-populated villages, Damnia and Sion, in Georgia’s Marneluli province, which has disappeared.

Karapetyan’s work “Monuments of Armenian Culture and the State Policies of Georgians” published in 1998 presents more than 100 pieces of evidence and photographs showing how Armenian monuments have been destroyed in Georgia. An English-language version of the book is expected to be published this year. Karapetyan believes Armenia ought to raise the issue of monuments destruction at an international court.