Memory
Vakhtang entered a pantheon of Georgian historical heroes already in the Middle Ages. A royal oriflamme of the Georgian Bagratids was known as "Gorgasliani", i.e., "of Gorgasali". It is sometimes supposed to be the earliest model of the current Georgian national flag. In popular memory, his image has acquired a legendary and romantic façade. Vakhtang is a subject of several folk poems and legends, extolling the king’s perceived greatness, enormous physical strength, courage and devoutness to Christianity.
Vakhtang has been credited with foundation of several towns, castles, and monasteries across Georgia, including the nation’s capital Tbilisi, where a street and a square bear his name, and a 1967 monument by the sculptor Elguja Amashukeli tops the Metekhi cliff. A legend has it that when King Vakhtang was in the forest, his falcon chased a pheasant. The bird fell into a hot water spring and the king and his servants saw the steam come out of the water. Surprised by the abundance of hot water, Vakhtang gave orders to build a city on this site and named it "Tbilisi", that is, "the site of warm springs".
Vakhtang was officially included in the Georgian Orthodox calendar – and a church built in his honor in the city of Rustavi – early in the 1990s, but he had presumably been considered a saint long before that. The Georgian church commemorates him as the Holy and Right-believing King Vakhtang on November 30 (O.S.: December 13).
The Vakhtang Gorgasal Order, created in 1992, is one of the highest military decorations in Georgia.
Read more about this topic: Vakhtang I Of Iberia
Famous quotes containing the word memory:
“Then, lastly, let some weekly strewings be
Devoted to the memory of me:
Then shall my ghost not walk about, but keep
Still in the cool and silent shades of sleep.”
—Robert Herrick (1591–1674)
“There is immunity in reading, immunity in formal society, in office routine, in the company of old friends and in the giving of officious help to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the memory of another. The past with its anguish will break through every defence-line of custom and habit; we must sleep and therefore we must dream.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“It must be a peace without victory.... Victory would mean peace forced upon the losers, a victor’s terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which the terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)