Center for the Eastern Christian Studies

Medieval Christian society understands itself as a unitary, global space that centers around Hellenism as the ideal and develops in contact with it. Antagonism and rivalry with, or imitation of Hellenism create both a similar and a different, which forms a complex world of Eastern Christianity. Therefore, Political, religious, cultural, linguistic, and literary relationships in this world should be understood, viewed, and studied in a comprehensive way as well.
Georgia – the kingdoms of Iberia and Egrisi – was one of the first among those countries that proclaimed Christianity as their state religion. By adopting the global, supra-national religion the Georgian mentality immediately realized itself as a part of the global world and as a co-creator of this world. It started to talk within this world with its own tongue – its own literature, architecture, art and music. It is impossible to characterize global and individual aspects of the Georgian culture separately from each other.
Georgia is a special part of the Eastern Christian culture: its culture had been formed not only through a relationship with the center – the Byzantine Empire and interaction with the Greek world – but also through tight interrelationships with the provincial cultures – Armenian, Syrian, Arabic, etc. From this perspective, the Georgian cultural experience is quite unique.

 

Today, when the idea of unitary Europe is being searched, one can observe intensifying conflicts between proponents of the national states and the global space, between the Islamic and Christian worlds, the historical Christian East has become a polygon of conflicts, one of the ways for overcoming the conflicts is an in-depth study of cultural-historical roots. The geographical position of Georgia, its historical experience, its living religious tradition and also the novelty of the Georgian material, the experience in the study of ancient languages (Ancient Georgian, Ancient Armenian, Ancient Greek, Syriac, and Hebrew) and cultures provide the Center for Eastern Christian Studies established at the Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University a well-grounded ambition for becoming a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research center the final aim of which is to study the way in which the local traditions and national cultures were developed and formed within the global Christian civilization.