Saint Tbeli Abuseridze (13th century) — August 17 – Old Style / August 30 – New Style

On this day, August 17 according to the Julian Calendar (August 30 civil calendar), the Georgian Orthodox Church commemorates Saint Tbeli Abuseridze. He lived and labored in the thirteenth century. His father, Ivane, was the eristavt-eristavi of Upper Adjara and fell in battle against the Turks. After she was widowed, the mother of Saint Tbeli was tonsured a nun with the name Catherine. Saint Tbeli had two brothers, Abuser and Vardan, who were themselves renowned men of their age.

In keeping with the standing of his family, Saint Tbeli received an excellent education. As a hymnographer, a writer of prose, an astronomer, a scholar of church music, and above all as a man of letters distinguished by profound learning, he left an indelible mark upon the history of Georgian culture.

As is clear from the saint’s own writings, he built the church of Saint George in the village of Khikhani in Upper Adjara. It is thought that he served there as a clergyman and that he composed the greater part of his works in that place. Saint Tbeli had seven children, and, as he writes in his family chronicle, if any further children were born to him their names too were to be entered in it.

Saint Tbeli maintained close cultural ties with the Gelati Academy, and it is supposed that it was there that he received the many-sided education which enabled him to utter his wise and holy word in a variety of different genres.

In his hymnographic collection, “Hymns to Saint John the Baptist, Saint John the Evangelist and Saint John Chrysostom”, the author appears clearly as a great theological writer and as a saint. The profound theological thought of these hymns, their metaphors, and their symbolic and mystical reading of events — the knowledge of things visible and the understanding of things invisible — reveal Saint Tbeli as a scholar and theologian of world stature.

He was also occupied with questions of chronology, and composed “A Complete Chronicon with its Reckoning and Ordering”, in which, together with a knowledge of astronomy and history, he set forth a cosmic understanding of the calendar and of Christian eschatology.

Saint Tbeli Abuseridze is likewise known for his hagiographical work “The New Miracles of the Holy Great Martyr George”, which is significant also for its historical value, for it gives us information about the labors of the Abuseridze family, one of the most ancient and greatest noble houses of feudal Georgia, and about their work of cultural building.

Beyond his literary and scholarly labors, which have been duly honored by Georgian scholars, Saint Tbeli is known as a holy and God-bearing father. By his canonization by the Apostolic Church of Georgia his veneration as a holy father was established forever, and there was fittingly honored the labor by which he justly won the love of the Georgian people.