The Katskhi
Pillar, a towering limestone monolith in the Republic of Georgia with
the ruins of two Byzantine churches on top of it. A survey of the cliff a
few years back revealed a pair of monasteries dating from the sixth to ninth
centuries, where members of an ascetic religious order called the Stylites
lived until around 1400. In the ruins of the churches, researchers found three
hermit cells, a crypt, and a wine cellar. To this day, the locals of the
village of Katskhi venerate the rock formation as the "Pillar of
Life," a symbol of the cross where Jesus was crucified, and some believe
the monastery on the surface was once connected by a long iron chain to the
dome of another nearby church.
The first mention of the
ancient monastery was in the 18th century, when a Georgian scholar and prince
described it thusly: "There is a rock within the
ravine standing like a pillar, considerably high. There is a small church on
the top of the rock, but nobody is able to ascend it; nor know they how to do
that." For centuries, it was uninhabited.
In the 1990s, a local monk named Maxim Qavtaradze moved in and began to
restore the vertiginous churches himself. He enters and leaves via a 131-foot
iron ladder; it takes him about 20 minutes to climb. Qavtaradze had been
motivated to change his life after a stint in prison, and actually slept in an
old fridge for his first two years, until some supporters built him a cottage.
Picture Source: Collected from Internet
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