The Bieti Church: The Problem of Dating and the Origin of Masters

Abstract

This article considers a monument of architecture located in the middle reaches of the Mejuda River in the Ksani gorge in the historical Georgian region Shida Kartli. The Bieti church is a unique monument of the region, representing a half-cave building. The southern part of the church is built of travertine and cobblestone, and the northern part is carved into the adjacent rock. The main primary source for the study of the monument is the ecclesiastical architecture of Georgia, mostly Shida Kartli region, as well as Armenia, Cappadocia, and Lycaonia. The study refers to epigraphic material, i.e. building and memorial inscriptions on the churches in the upper courses of the Liakhvi and Ksani Rivers, as well as the main chronicle of Georgia, Kartlis Tskhovreba . The author analyses the architecture of the Bieti church, its construction technics, decoration, etc. Among the monuments of the historical region of Shida Kartli, the church in Bieti stands alone: most of its closest analogues can be found in Asia Minor. Based on the analysis of the Bieti building inscription and historical data related to this part of Shida Kartli, the author proposes a more accurate dating of the monument. Additionally, based on the stylistic and typological analysis of architecture and the study of building technics, the author suggests that masters from Asia Minor may have been involved in building the church in Bieti. Despite the fact that the innovations of Bieti monastery brought from outside occur in local architecture only once in the church of the village of Kusireti near Tskhinval, the church in Bieti (due to the use of traditional architectural technics) is a link between the early architecture of the upper course of the Ksani River of the third quarter of the ninth century and subsequent buildings of the same direction in the upper course of the Liakhvi River.