Vardzia Caves

Vardzia Caves
January 16th, 2006

I received a call from my friend Grigol Amiranishvili asking if I would please come to the famous cave complex of Vardzia to chant in a special service. He had been calling all of his other chanting friends, and no one had the time or the money to take the $12, eight-hour minibus trip. I moved into my new apartment in the old city of Tbilisi, just near the Anchiskhati Church, on Sunday night. At midnight, Grigol’s call had me perplexed –he wanted to leave at 8am the next morning, but I was wanting to get settled into life in Georgia. Nevertheless, a chance to finally go to the caves of Queen Tamar in the lands of Tao-Klarjeti Mskheti, and to chant, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

At one time, seven hundred monks lived in Vardzia. The cave city is built into the high cliffs of a gorge over the Mtkvari River. Hundreds of kilometers away the same river flows through Tbilisi. King Giorgi commissioned it built in the twelfth century, and his daughter Queen Tamar further expanded it and made it rich. But in 1283, a huge earthquake wrecked half of the city. Still, it was partially rebuilt and monks lived there through the terrible 14th-15th centuries until finally expelled and killed in the 16th century. Later, three monks lived there in the mid 19th century, and in the 20th it was part of the military border region of the Soviet Union. Or so I read in a book. Six years ago, four monks moved back to the caves.

Grigol is friends with the monks in Vardzia, having come to chant in the summer, so we were their guests in the caves for four days. One cave, walled off at the front, and about twenty by fifteen feet, has a stove and serves as our eating and living room. Ten feet from the front door, there is a two hundred foot drop off, then a steep slope to the river floodplain far below.

Inside the cave, it’s easy to see the original chipping on the ceiling, but the walls have been plastered, and shelves and a table built to make the place more comfortable. Everything has been hauled up the steep switchback trail: dishes, mugs, chairs, pots, the stove, even a chessboard. Grigol and I played copious amounts of chess, he being my superior and never tiring of beating me. The floor is clean, and a window lets in light, though electricity is steady, and a single bright bulb throws glare around the room in the evenings. Outside it is quiet, and the stars are intensely bright.

Most of the visible caves are open at the front, gaping holes facing the southern sun. Exterior stairways connect the thirteen stories of caves, and many caves open into second and third caves inside the mountain. I discovered a tunnel I had read about in the guide. It digs nearly five hundred feet, winding from a large upper story cave, back into the mountain, connecting to one mid-level cave, and emerging in the large royal chambers behind the stone carved church. All the steps are carved right into the stone, and there is just enough room for one body to squeeze past another, though the tunnel ceiling is less than my six feet tall. Queen Tamar’s pool, discovered through the inspiration of a monk’s dream, and excavated deep out of the mountain behind the church, collects ten gallons of water a day.

The church itself is one large barrel vault, small windows letting light in through the five-foot thick outer cliff. Inside, the light is still dim, the frescoes blue and faded red. One of the only depictions of Queen Tamar survives here, and with her larger than life presence next to her father, they stare down at anyone gathered in the church.

At 8am Tuesday, it was about 15 degrees outside. We ran through arches and up and down stairs to get warm. The bell tolled, and we hurried back, morning service had begun. Apparently one of the monks here sang first voice, but he wasn’t here today, so we weren’t able to sing; three voices to make a choir in Georgia. But the service was toned, chanted, in the singsong style of the reading monks. From behind the wooden iconostasis, the priest-monk responded, and the voices echoed back and forth through the dust curls in the early morning beams. I stared at these twists and curls in the light, and imagined countless other services held here, countless thoughts and prayers by generations of monks and visitors.

A monk told me later that a library and scriptorium existed in a cave under the church, but it was looted and burned first by Persians then by invading Turks. One book was secreted away by someone to Turkey, and later acquired by Georgians (I would like to know the full tale), which is why one 11th century illuminated manuscript from Vardzia survives. This small book, ornamented with gold, was written by Ioane Shavteli, ‘John of Shavteli,’ and includes an original troparia to the Theotokos. Could other books from the period have survived in a similar way?

During the Epiphany service, which we chanted with the help of the returned singing monk, we processed outside the church and through the tunnels to the spring of Queen Tamar. We blessed bread in front of the spring, only candlelight illuminating the steam of our breath. And we read interminable prayers as my feet turned to stone; or at least to the same temperature as the mountain we were standing in. Then we processed along the cliff edges to each of the little monks cells, and entering, the priest would paint a cross on each wall with holy oil, and then splash liberal amounts of holy water on each wall, taking great amusement in soaking all of us at the same time. By the time we returned to the church, we were all soaked, exhausted, and exhilarated.