A holy Christian king of the country of Georgia celebrated on 26 January offers a challenge for the South, forces us to make a choice about what kind of people we really want to be. Before we reach that crux, let us see what kind of a life Saint-King David IV the Restorer (+1125 A.D.) lived.
Most notably, he placed the highest priority on the spiritual health of his people:
At the end of the 11th century the Georgian Church underwent a trial of physically and spiritually catastrophic proportions.
The Seljuk sultan, Jalal al-Dawlah Malik Shah (1073-1092), captured the village of Samshvilde, imprisoned its leader, Ioane Orbeliani, son of Liparit, ravaged Kvemo (Lower) Kartli, and finally captured all of Georgia, despite the isolated victories of King Giorgi II (1072-1089). The fearful Georgians fled their homes to hide in the mountains and forests.
Tempted and deeply distressed by the difficult times, the nation that had once vowed its unconditional love for Christ began to fall into sin and corruption. People of all ages and temperaments sinned against God and turned to the path of perdition. God manifested His wrath toward the Georgian people by sending a terrible earthquake that devastated their Paschal celebrations.
In the year 1089, during this period of devastation and despair, King Giorgi II abdicated, designating his sixteen-year-old only son, David (later known as “the Restorer”), heir to the throne. It is written that the Heavenly Father said: I have found David My servant, with My holy oil have I annointed him (Ps. 88:19).
The newly crowned King David took upon himself enormous responsibility for the welfare of the Church. He supported the efforts of the Council of Ruisi-Urbnisi to restore and reinforce the authority of the Georgian Church and suppress the conceited feudal lords and unworthy clergymen. During King David’s reign, the government’s most significant activities were carried out for the benefit of the Church. At the same time, the Council of Ruisi-Urbnisi reasserted the vital role of the Orthodox Faith in rescuing the Georgian people from the godless mire into which they had sunk.
Despite this abundance of activity on behalf of the Church, King David did not forget about the physical well-being of the Georgian ethnos, nor did he leave the physical protection of them to others. He put himself in danger to drive out the invaders of Georgia:
The king summoned his noblemen and began to reunify the nation. The king’s efforts to reunify Georgia began in the eastern region of Kakheti-Hereti, but the Turks and traitorous feudal lords were unwilling to surrender the power they had gained in the area. Nevertheless, King David’s army was in God’s hands, and the Georgians fought valiantly against the massive Turkish army. King David himself fought like any other soldier: three of his horses were killed, but he mounted a fourth to finish the fight with a fantastic victory. The Turkish presence was eliminated from his country.
When overwhelming odds faced him and his army, he did not quail in fear or puff himself up with prideful self-confidence, but placed his hope in God and encouraged his soldiers to do the same. The result was victory over the enemy and unity and rest for his country:
The defeated Turks returned in shame to their sultan in Baghdad, draped in black as a sign of grief and defeat. Nevertheless, the unyielding sultan Mahmud II (1118-1131) rallied a coalition of Muslim countries to attack Georgia. The sultan summoned the Arab leader Durbays bin Sadaka, commanded his own son Malik (1152-1153) to serve him, gathered an army of six hundred thousand men, and marched once more towards Georgia.
It was August of 1121. Before heading off to battle, King David inspired his army with these words: “Soldiers of Christ! If we fight bravely for our Faith, we will defeat not only the devil’s servants, but the devil himself. We will gain the greatest weapon of spiritual warfare when we make a covenant with the Almighty God and vow that we would rather die for His love than escape from the enemy. And if any one of us should wish to retreat, let us take branches and block the entrance to the gorge to prevent this. When the enemy approaches, let us attack fiercely!”
None of the soldiers thought of retreating. The king’s stunning battle tactics and the miracles of God terrified the enemy. As it is written, “The hand of God empowered him, and the Great-martyr George visibly led him in battle. The king annihilated the godless enemy with his powerful right hand.”
The battle at Didgori enfeebled the enemy for many years. The following year, in 1122, King David recaptured the capital city of Tbilisi, which had borne the yoke of slavery for four hundred years. The king returned the city to its mother country. In 1123 King David declared the village of Dmanisi a Georgian possession, and thus, at last, unification of the country was complete.
One victory followed another, as the Lord defended the king who glorified his Creator.
The challenge for us in the South today is How do we respond to a life like this, to such outstanding heroism and faith? Modernity teaches us to scorn kings and traditional Christianity as irrelevant artefacts of the past, to reject them as retrogressive forces in society. It is precisely here that Dixie finds herself in trouble, as she has tried to live with one foot in the world of tradition and one in the world of modern Progress – in the former we are constrained by the activities of a virtuous hereditary aristocracy, while in the latter it is proclaimed that all government originates from an all-powerful mass of ‘the people’, that everything must be done according to their will. No less than John Randolph of Roanoke warned us throughout his life of the dangers of this schizophrenia, particularly at the Virginia constitutional convention held in 1832 as Mr Randolph neared the end of his life.
Compromise between the two is impossible. We cannot go only a quarter of the way or half way with the progressive Revolution. We must either master it, or it will destroy us. And one of the surest signs that a people has vanquished the Revolution is its embrace of hereditary Christian monarchy, which is one of the most visible symbols of tradition.
. . .
The rest is at https://www.reckonin.com/walt-garlington/tradition-or-revolution.
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Note: For those who want to access Henry Hughes’s book, mentioned in the essay, they may do so here:
https://archive.org/details/treatiseonsocio00hughgoog/mode/2up
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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
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