Dodo of Gareji
Our Venerable Father Dodo of Gareji, founder of the monastery of Dodo's Rqa
Venerable · d. c. 623
Commemorated 17 May — Commemoration of Dodo of Gareji as kept on the fixed calendar
Dodo (†c. 623) was the first and closest disciple of David of Gareji, one of the Thirteen Syrian Fathers who established monasticism in the Georgian lands, and the founder of the second of the great cave-monasteries of the Gareji wilderness — the house called Dodo's Rqa, "Dodo's ridge," cut into the cliff-face across the ravine from David's own lavra. A nobleman of Kartli who gave away his inheritance to follow David into the semi-desert of Kakheti, he became there the father of a large community of hermits living in caves hewn from the soft rock, and reposed in extreme old age about the year 623. His relics lie at Dodo's Rqa. The Georgian Church keeps him with his teacher in the week after the Ascension; the Slavic and American calendars fix his commemoration on May 17.
The Syrian fathers and the Gareji wilderness
Georgian monasticism as an organised life begins in the sixth century with the coming from Mesopotamia of John of Zedazeni and the company remembered as the Thirteen Syrian Fathers, whom the Georgian tradition sends out from Zedazeni to plant monasteries the length of Kartli and Kakheti — Shio at Mgvime, Abibus at Nekresi, Anthony at Martqopi, Stephen at Khirsa, and, in the bare semi-desert east of Tbilisi, David in the waterless valleys afterwards called Gareji.
David settled in a cave on the north side of a ravine in that country of clay ridges and salt flats, living on herbs and the milk of two deer that came to him, and his cave became the lavra of David-Gareji, the mother-house of what would grow into a complex of a dozen monasteries and many hundreds of rock-cut cells extending along the escarpment into what is now the Georgian–Azerbaijani borderland.
Dodo, the first disciple
Dodo came to David in that wilderness. The Georgian tradition makes him a nobleman of Kartli, of a family of some standing, who heard of the ascetic of Gareji, distributed his property, and went out to him — the classical pattern of the Georgian aristocratic monastic vocation, which recurs with Shio and with many later Georgian fathers. He is named in the sources as David's first disciple and the closest to him, and he was, in the ordinary practice of the eremitical life, sent by his teacher to found a separate house when the brethren grew too many for one.
The place David appointed him lay across the ravine from the lavra, on a spur of rock the tradition calls Dodo's Rqa — rqa being the Georgian for a horn or a projecting ridge. There Dodo and those who followed him cut their cells into the cliff, a vertical warren of chambers, refectories and chapels on several levels reached by ledges and stairs in the rock, with cisterns to catch what little rain the wilderness gave. The community is said to have become very numerous — the Georgian accounts speak of several hundred monks in the Gareji desert taken together in this first generation — and Dodo governed it as its abbot for the remainder of a long life, in a discipline of silence, manual labour and the recitation of the psalter.
Beyond this the record is thin, and it is honest to say so. No Life of Dodo independent of the Life of David survives; what is transmitted of him is transmitted as part of his master's story, and the Georgian sources for the whole Gareji foundation reach us in redactions considerably later than the events. He is not credited with writings, and the miracles attached to Gareji in the tradition belong for the most part to David.
Repose and relics
Dodo reposed at his own monastery about the year 623, having outlived his teacher, and was buried in the rock church of Dodo's Rqa; his relics remain there, and the site was a place of pilgrimage through the Georgian middle ages. The house he founded shared the long martyrdom of the Gareji complex: sacked by the Mongols, devastated by Shah Abbas of Persia on the Paschal night of 1615 — the occasion of the six thousand monks of Gareji killed together — abandoned under Soviet rule and used as a military range, and reoccupied by monks after 1991. Dodo's Rqa is today again inhabited.
Feast and commemoration
May 17 (church date; New Calendar civil May 17; Old Calendar civil May 30) on the fixed calendars that keep him — the Russian usage and the Orthodox Church in America — where he stands as a minor commemoration among the day's saints. Because Orthodox Pascha cannot fall later than May 8, this day lies always within the Pentecostarion, and in years in which the Ascension falls late the fixed May 17 commemoration and the Georgian movable one can come within a few days of each other; in other years they are widely separated. He is kept in Georgia with his teacher David in the week of the Ascension, and at Gareji itself as the founder of one of the two chief houses of the wilderness. He is not a commemoration of the Greek or Antiochian books. A proper Georgian service exists; the general commemoration is served with the common of a venerable father.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 8
By a flood of tears thou didst make the barren desert fruitful, and thy longing for God brought forth fruit a hundredfold; thou becamest a beacon for the world, shining with miracles: O Dodo our father, intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Iconography
Dodo is painted as an aged monastic father in the Georgian manner: long white beard, the black koukoulion and mantle, one hand raised in blessing or holding a scroll, the other at his breast. His constant attribute is the rock: he is shown standing before or within the cliff-face of Dodo's Rqa, with the tiers of cave-cells cut in it behind him, and often with the ravine and David's lavra on the far side. He appears most often not alone but beside David of Gareji, the elder in the centre with Dodo at his right — sometimes with the two deer of the David legend at their feet — in the Gareji cycle painted on the walls of the cave-churches themselves and in Georgian icons of the fathers of the wilderness. In Georgian composite icons of the Thirteen Syrian Fathers he stands with the second rank, as a disciple rather than one of the Thirteen.
No pre-1900 image of Dodo has been located for this collection: searches of Wikimedia Commons in English and transliterated Georgian forms returned nothing depicting him, although medieval frescoes of him certainly survive in situ at Gareji, imperfectly photographed and not freely licensed. The Menologion of Basil II covers only September to February and has nothing for May 17.
Disputed questions
- The date of the feast: fixed or movable. The Georgian Church commemorates Dodo in the week after the Ascension — by the usual reckoning on the Wednesday after Ascension, his teacher David being kept on the Thursday — which makes his Georgian commemoration movable, tied to the date of Pascha. The Slavic and American calendars fix him on May 17, and it is on that fixed day that the Orthodox Church in America lists "Venerable Dodo of the Saint David-Gareji Monastery, Georgia." This entry follows the fixed usage for its primary feast, since that is the usage under which the commemoration reaches the calendar this collection indexes, and records the Georgian movable rule here; the movable commemoration is owed a rule entry of its own.
- The date of repose. The Georgian tradition gives 623; the range offered by the sources for the Gareji foundation is the second half of the sixth century into the first quarter of the seventh, and some lists place Dodo simply "in the sixth century," which is where the OrthodoxWiki day-list puts him. This entry follows c. 623 and indexes him to the seventh century.
- Dodo among the Thirteen. Dodo is a disciple of David of Gareji and is not himself one of the Thirteen Syrian Fathers, though some popular lists confuse the two ranks. The Thirteen are the companions of John of Zedazeni; Dodo belongs to the generation after them, the first native Georgian generation of the monastic life.