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.
***
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
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us
sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
