page_title: Tsilkani cathedral
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Tsilkani cathedral / History
caption_attribution_description: The Virgin and Child. Icon from Tsilkani
context_page_description: The Tsilkani cathedral of the Mother of God is a Georgian Orthodox church in the village of Tsilkani, Mtskheta Municipality, in Georgia's eastern region of Mtskheta-Mtianeti. Originally built in the 4th century, the church was repeatedly remodeled in the Middle Ages. The extant edifice is a domed cross-in-square design, contained in a walled enclosure with corner towers. It is inscribed on the list of the Immovable Cultural Monuments of National Significance.
context_section_description: The Tsilkani church is credited by the medieval Georgian chronicles to King Bakar (r. c. 365–380), son of Mirian III, the first Christian king of Kartli—Iberia of the Classical sources. Originally a hall church, the cathedral was remade into a three-nave basilica in the 5th or 6th century and, eventually, reconstructed as a domed church in the 12th or 13th century. The church was further renovated in the 16th–17th century. The church was also associated in medieval Georgian tradition—elaborated in the hymns by the 13th-century cleric Arsen Bulmaisimisdze—with the monk Jesse from Antioch who came as part of the Thirteen Assyrian Fathers in Kartli around 545. It is maintained that Jesse's tomb is still preserved in the church. The cathedral was the seat of bishops of Tsilkani, first heard of in 506.
  The cathedral was home to the venerated Virgin Hodegetria of Tsilkani, a 9th-century icon of the Virgin and the Child attended by the archangels. The icon was repainted and refurbished at the turn of the 12th century, but the faces painted in encaustic tempera were left untouched. In 1926, the icon was moved for preservation to the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi.
caption: Hodegetria of Tsilkani
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