ZAKARIA CHICHINADZE AND THE PROBLEMS OF THE DENATIONALIZATION OF THE GEORGIANS (ANTI-GEORGIAN AFFAIRS OF THE ARMENIAN CATHOLICS)

Abstract

In the lengthy history of the Georgian people, the XV and XVIII centuries were especially hard because of the division of the country into small political units, such as the provincial kingdoms and principalities and the isolation of the patriarchates of Mtskheta and Likht-Imereti, as well as Samtskhe church from the unified Georgian Church. At that time two conquerors from the south, Iran and the Ottomans, were conquering Georgian territories and forcibly converted the Georgian population to Islam. The desperate population, hoping for help from Europeans, converted to the Catholic faith on the advice of papal missionaries, although they could still praise God in Georgian with the Georgian Typicon. The situation changed in the sixteenth century when Pope Paul III entrusted the Georgian parish to the Armenian UNITOR Catholics. Historian Zakaria Chichinadze exposed the perfidies of the Catholic Armenians, who forbade the Georgians to worship in the Georgian language and started the ‘Armenization’ of the Georgians.
The Catholic Armenians almost completely Armenianized the Georgian Catholics of Artvin, Ardagan and Nigali valleys and for this purpose, used even threats, terror, bribery, slander, presented the history of the Caucasus and Georgia in a crooked mirror. This is particularly true with the members of the Congregation of the Mechitarists, who successfully convinced European scholars and Roman popes with their fabricated fantastic stories. Zakaria Chichinadze, together with Mikheil Tamarashvili, Ivane Gvaramadze and Petre Kharischirashvili, fought against this treacherous policy of Armenian Catholicism, whose goal was to denationalize the Georgian nation, and protected the identity of the Georgian nation.