Awaiting the Next Southern Ethnarch

Father Dabney’s recent article on Trump as a type of Alexander the Great, the last leader of an empire before its splitting apart, resonated with us quite strongly. In our age that idolizes the masses (democracy), the ability of strong leaders to change the course of history is downplayed. But it has been proven through the ages, from Righteous Gideon to Cincinnatus to St Vladimir of Kiev.

There is another saint of Georgia, a holy king named Ashot, who is also a strikingly good example of this.  Muslim Arabs had conquered Georgia and were ruling over her people when he inherited the crown in 786.  He attempted to drive them out, but was bested in battle and decided to flee. But the Lord’s Providence led to a different outcome:

Ashot was compelled to leave Kartli, and he departed for Byzantium with his family and small army. The refugees journeyed as far as Javakheti in southern Georgia and stopped near Lake Paravani for a rest. But while they were sleeping, a Saracen army assailed their camp. The king’s army was doomed, but “God helped Ashot Kuropalates and his scant army. He bestowed power upon them, and they defeated an enemy that greatly outnumbered them.” The king was deeply moved by God’s miraculous intervention and decided that, rather than journeying on to Byzantium as he had intended, he would remain in the region of Shavshet-Klarjeti.

King Ashot led the way to a renewal of Christian life in Georgia, despite the devastations she had undergone:

At that time southern Georgia was suffering great calamities. A cholera epidemic intensified the struggles of a people devastated by a ruthless enemy. Very few had survived, but that powerless and wearied remnant gladly received Ashot Kuropalates as their new leader, and the king began to restore the region at once.

Ashot Kuropalates restored Artanuji Castle, which had originally been built by King Vakhtang Gorgasali and later ravaged by the Arab general Marwan “the Deaf.” Ashot founded a city nearby and proclaimed it the residence of the Bagrationi royal family of Klarjeti. He also constructed a church in honor of Saints Peter and Paul. As it is written, “God granted Ashot Kuropalates great strength and many victories.”

The region of Klarjeti took on a new life, and through the efforts of Saint Grigol of Khandzta and his companions, the former wasteland was transformed into a borough bustling with churches, monasteries, and schools. Georgian noblemen soon began traveling to Klarjeti to forge their nation’s future with King Ashot and the other God-fearing leaders.

When God grants us deliverance from external enemies, it is then that we must be vigilant against internal threats. St Ashot let his guard down, and because of that his work was undone:

But after some time the usually virtuous King Ashot fell in love with a certain woman. He forgot his honor, his achievements, and his loyalty to God and the nation and took her to Artanuji Castle, an estate that had been built for the queen. Saint Grigol, however, heard about the king’s adulterous relationship and became exceedingly sorrowful.

He repented, but as with the Holy King David of Israel, the damage caused by his sin would reverberate and have horrible consequences for his people:

The king rediscovered his love for God and his country, and he prepared to return to Kartli. But his plans were foiled when a certain Muslim warrior named Khalil invaded, conquering the lands of Kartli, Hereti, and Kvemo Kartli.

Ashot sent his men to assemble an army, but before the troops had been gathered, the Saracens attacked and forced them to flee. The king then traveled to Nigali Gorge with the intent of enlarging his army. Some of the draftees turned out to be traitors, and when the king discovered the betrayal, it was already too late. He hid in a church, but the godless men found him and stabbed him to death in the sanctuary. “They murdered him on the altar, as though slaughtering a sacrificial lamb, and his blood remains there to this day,” writes Sumbat, the son of Davit, in his book Lives of the Bagrationis.

… Venerable Grigol and the Georgian people wept bitterly over the loss of their king and hope. Saint Ashot’s holy relics were buried in the Church of Saints Peter and Paul that he himself had built.

Dixie has a grand tradition of excellent leadership: Francis Marion, N. B. Forrest, Francis Nicholls, and many others. Why does the Lord withhold from us another leader of their caliber who will help us rebuild an independent, Christian Dixie, like St-King Ashot? Perhaps it is our sinfulness: This should always be our first assumption. Perhaps, as Father Dabney said, there are still other preparations that need to be made on an earthly, practical level. Without a clairvoyant prophet it is difficult for us to say with certainty.

Thus, we should do the things we have been told clearly to do: Seek holiness, seek friendship and union with God, love our neighbors and families, honor our ancestors, etc. Let us prepare ourselves as best we can so that we will not delay, but rather hasten, the day when the Lord might grant us a liberator like the Holy Prophet and God-seer Moses. Let us put away any internal vice that might doom us to further subjugation to the Yankees/globalists.

Dimitri Obolensky says something fascinating about language and Christianity: ‘… a language which serves as a medium for the Christian liturgy becomes thereby a sacred language, and… the nation which speaks it is raised to the status of a people consecrated to God’ (The Byzantine Commonwealth:  Eastern Europe, 500-1453, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1971, p. 334). Our language here in the South has been so blessed, from of old. One can still listen to that liturgical language, like the 23^rd Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer, recited in the Old English tongue of many of our forebears if he wants to go back that far in time.

This is a great blessing, but also a heavy burden, for more is required of those who know about the Christian Faith.

As the remnant of a Christian people, then, we await the Lord’s deliverance from our foes, working all the while in anticipation of that day (should He indeed desire to bring it about), as many Christians in the past have done – seeking deliverance from barbarians, from heretics, from Arian Vandals, from Muslim Arabs and Turks, from atheist communists, and so on. Let us do so with humility, as the Psalmist taught us, for this attracts the Grace of God:

But I am poor and needy: make haste unto me, O God: thou art my help and my deliverer; O LORD, make no tarrying (Psalm 70:5).