Lomisa church

Lomisa features in many local legends and folktales. It is said that the church was built here to commemorate the deliverance of 7,000 Georgians from the Chorasmian captivity through the miraculous intervention of the icon of Saint George which was mounted on an ox called Loma ("a lion"). Another legend has it that a captain of a royal detachment incurred the wrath of the icon when he chopped the church door for firewood: the soldiers were blinded and their eyesight would not return until the captain promised to donate an iron door to the church. An ironclad oakwood door—with the 16th–17th-century Georgian inscriptions—is still kept inside the church. The church also features an old massive iron chain which believers put around the neck and walk round the shrine three times counterclockwise to make a promise or a wish.^[4][5]

Lomisa has historically been the most sacred Christian shrine for the eastern Georgian mountaineers and their most binding oath was by Saint George of Lomisa.^[6] It was the place where the locals would gather and deliberate on the matters of war and peace. The church enjoyed patronage from the Georgian royalty and nobility.^[4] It also appears to have owned serfs. In the 1320s, King George V of Georgia stopped at Lomisa to pray before St. George on his way back from a journey to the Darial Gorge. This king specially issued a set of laws to regulate conditions in the mountain valleys; one of the clauses had it that a murderer of a peasant of Lomisa presented thereto by the king or by anyone was to be fined with 1,500 pieces of silver.^[6][7]

The Lomisa shrine preserved many church items, such icons, crosses, banners, and various utensils. Prince Vakhushti, compiling his geography of Georgia around 1745, wrote that the church safeguarded "numerous icons and crosses, of gold and silver".^[8] Some of these surviving items have been removed for preservation to safer and more accessible places, such as a church in Mleta or museums in Tbilisi. Among them are utensils donated by the eristavi ("dukes") of Aragvi and a silver candle holder presented to the Lomisa church by Princess Ketevan (1744–1808), wife of the Georgian royal prince Vakhtang, praying St. George of Lomisa to grant them children in an inscription on the item.^[4]

The Lomisa church hosts an annual festival, known as Lomisoba (literally, "of/related to Lomisa"), probably a remnant of an ancient pre-Christian cult superimposed by the veneration of St. George. Every year, on the Wednesday after Pentecost,^[9] thousands of people from various regions of Georgia, especially Mtiuleti, Khevi, and Khevsureti, make a pilgrimage up to the Lomisa church. There are specific rituals for healing the sick and for seeking fertility for childless women. There is a round dance performed, with a song that describes the legend of the heavy chain that hangs in the church and is worn by pilgrims.^[9] The festival also features a large-scale ritual animal sacrifice, in which hundreds of livestock, especially sheep, are slaughtered down in the valley, not far from the church. In the 2010s, the tradition has been increasingly criticized by animal rights activists, but the locals have rejected the calls to abandon it. The Georgian Orthodox clergy have stated that the Church "prefers unbloody sacrifice" but does not forbid the tradition of animal killing and concomitant supra (feast).^[10][11]