The life of St David of Garesjei
David settled first near Tbilisi, the young kingdom's new capital, and through his preaching drew a number of fire-worshippers away from their old religion and into the Christian faith, gathering followers from more than one background as word of him spread.
By the end of his life some two thousand disciples had come to be counted among his own community. With two of them, Dodo and Lukiane, he founded a monastery in the Kakheti region southeast of the capital, a settlement later known simply as David Gareji, a complex of churches, cells, and communal halls cut directly into the rock of the mountainside there. That monastery grew into one of the great centers of Georgian monastic life, and remains so remembered today, carrying forward the labor of the small band of Syrian monks who had first brought organized monasticism to a land only recently turned toward Christ.
