Professor of History
Caucasus University
Abstract
In the East, demarcation from the Roman Catholic Church was, as a rule, accomplished through church councils. Constantinople drew a firm boundary with the Latins by formal conciliar rulings (the councils of 1484 and 1755), as did Moscow (the council of 1621). Georgia, however, stands apart in this respect: no Georgian church council ever condemned the Latin Church or unionist endeavors with Rome.
The silence in question cannot be explained away by a shortage of sources or by historical accident, since it is accompanied by positive evidence as well: signs of openness toward Latin Christianity in the theological legacy of St. George the Hagiorite and St. Arsen of Ikalto, the patronage Georgian kings extended to Catholic missionaries arriving from Europe, friendly correspondence with European monarchs and the Roman Curia, and instances of Georgian alliance with the Latin crusaders.
It is worth noting that this refusal to condemn the Latins held up under pressure as well. By the missionaries' own testimony, Orthodox Russians, Armenians, and Greeks sought to stir up anti-Latin sentiment in Georgia, yet the Georgian Church never answered this agitation at the conciliar level, one way or the other. What we are dealing with is not inert quietude but a sustained conciliar silence maintained under strain.
The sole apparent exception is the council of 1755, which condemned Catholicos-Patriarch Anton I for his conversion to Catholicism. In fact, this council proves the rule: it was convened ad personam, not to pass judgment on Latin doctrine a priori. Moreover, the outcome of the interested faction's intrigue was soon undone. Under the reign of king Erekle II, Anton was restored to the catholicosal throne, and a church council convened thereafter excommunicated that very anti-Catholic faction.
Methodologically, the paper avoids the intentionalist claim that the silence was somehow "chosen." It draws instead on Robert Merton's concept of latent function, which allows one to analyze the real, observable consequences of a phenomenon without presuming an intention behind it. Viewed in this light, the silence performed three functions at once: it kept a diplomatic channel to the West open without dogmatic commitments, it protected the internal unity of the Orthodox Church of Georgia, and it left room for flexibility at the ritual level. This combination of conciliar silence and pro-Latin sympathies is best captured by the concept of negotiated orthodoxy, a model of confessional coexistence in which the boundary remains officially undefined and, precisely for that reason, negotiable.
Keywords: Orthodox Georgia; Roman Catholic Church; conciliar silence; negotiated orthodoxy; confessional relations.