Awoke from an empty tangled duvet cover to a power cut, so no WiFi.
Haghpat is a monastery where many a swallow finds a nest for her young. (Psalm 84). Good acoustics, too, with the domed roof. On this 20th anniversary of my priesting, I sang a ninefold Kyrie in the Scriptorium, where clay jars embedded in the floor controlled the humidity and served as a repository for the least valuable manuscripts to discourage pillagers.
This and the next one housed 17th century writer Sayat-Nova: see the film The Colour of Pomegranates.
A remarkable khachkar (stone cross with carvings) shows the deposition of Christ from the cross, with small figures of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. I didn’t take a photo of it; but I did photograph some of the frescoes in the church, including a Christus Panocrator on the dome of the apse.
The final monastery, Sanahin, gives more of an impression of its life as a university, with a large pillared gavit which could have housed a large lecture, and a long narrow room with stone seats on either side for small-group work. An illuminated manscript is on display in the Scriptorium, under whose oculus an old Zoroastrian altar stone servers to catch the drips and celebrate diversity.
At the border, we met our Georgian guide Anna and driver Avto who took us to Tbilisi for an evening of free time before tomorrow’s city tour. I changed 80 euros to 227 lari, and spent 1.50 lari (about 50p) on supper: a sausage roll and two apricots. Then walked through some quiet backstreets of the Armenian quarter to the cathedral, where some kind of service was going on in front of a large collage of icons representing the communion of saints, and back down a road of little shops, using my torch in the dark underpass back to the hotel.
emeritablog: life after work 