ABSTRACT
From the beginning of the twelfth century, Georgia became not so much a planet torn between Byzantine and oriental orbits but a centre of gravity in its own right. The invasions of the Seljuk Turks had forced not just independence but unity on the Georgian principalities. At last Mtskheta and Tbilisi were no longer vulnerable to foreign domination but places where a king, his court, and his church could attract the men of talent and learning who had for centuries previously scattered either to the remote regions of Tao-Klarjeti or to monastic communities all over the eastern Mediterranean. The state under Davit Aghmashenebeli, his predecessors, and his successors, was now stable and successful enough to rival the church as the guardian and patron of Christian culture. Prosperity, leisure, and self-confidence grew so strong that life was no longer a vale of tears which only a religious literature could make bearable: a life-affirming secular literature became possible, even a literature that was not overtly Christian.
