Art on the Edge: The Church of the Holy Cross, Jvari, Georgia

Abstract

Jvari, the Church of the Holy Cross, overlooking the old capital of Georgia, Mtskheta, is a building that is literally and metaphorically on the edge. It is a liminal monument that crosses borders but also creates them. The church lies at the heart of Georgia’s Christian history, but in the seventh century it lay on the frontier between the Byzantine and Sasanian empires. Architecturally it belongs to a group of churches found across the Caucasus, but it has often been promoted as an exclusively Georgian monument. Jvari is a single monument that illuminates issues in transnational history, and the changing roles of a building in the creation of identities in the early Middle Ages.