Basil of Khakhuli

Venerable Basil of Khakhuli, also called Basil, son of Bagrat, was a Georgian monk and man of letters of the eleventh century, who lived at the Khakhuli monastery in Klarjeti, in southern Georgia, now in Turkey. He is often held to be a son of King Bagrat III. He is a saint of the Georgian Orthodox Church, which commemorates him on 27 May (9 June on the new calendar).

The sources

The evidence on his life is scarce and no work of his survives, but the medieval and early modern sources praise him unanimously for his contribution to the literary tradition of the Georgian Church. The eleventh-⁠century Life of Saint George the Hagiorite calls Basil "the Great" and "a tutor and enlightener of our country". A manuscript of 1027 to 1034, copied at the Khakhuli hermitage in Klarjeti, where Basil lived, also mentions his veneration. A Russian source says that his best-⁠known work is the Praise of the Holy Father Euthymius, written at the Iviron monastery on Mount Athos, while the English source says that no work of his survives.

His family

The Georgian scholar of the eighteenth century, Catholicos Anton I, was the first to surmise that Basil was "a king's son". Prince Ioann Bagrationi, writing between 1813 and 1828, made him a member of the Bagrationi dynasty, and the historian Platon Ioseliani said in 1853 that he was an otherwise unknown son of King Bagrat III. The hypothesis has not been accepted by all, for the medieval Georgian sources know only one son of Bagrat III, George I, but it is maintained by the Georgian Soviet Encyclopedia and by the Georgian Orthodox Church. According to the historian G. Goiladze, Basil may have been Gurgen, Bagrat's son by his first marriage, unknown to the Georgian sources but mentioned by the eighteenth-⁠century Armenian author Mikayel Chamchian. In that case he would have been born about 981 and still alive in 1040. Prince Vakhushti Bagrationi called him an outstanding translator of the time of King Bagrat IV.

Veneration

The sources remember him as a pious monk, a great philosopher and theologian, a skilled religious writer and a translator from the Greek, who was called the "jewel of Georgia". On this account Basil was canonized by the Georgian Orthodox Church.