The Middle Ages are the most remarkable period in the history of Georgia. This is the time of laying the foundation for the Georgian culture, for forming the Georgian nation, the period when the united Georgian state was established. Both for Georgia and Europe the Middle Ages developed on the basis of common Christian ideology. The analysis of the genesis of medieval Christian civilization manifests that Georgians, together with Greeks and other Indo-European peoples form the medieval civilization. This space was uniform, only later, as result of varied prerequisites and different terms of development this space was divided into the West European and Byzantine civilization. Georgia, being closer to the East Roman Empire, both geographically and by their Hellenistic culture, which was less spread on the territory of West Europe, remained in the area of East Christian civilization. Georgia was assigned to belong to the medieval Byzantine civilization but it chose a different way of development from Byzantium, which made it closer to the peoples of the West.
Bejan Javakhia is the Head of the Department of the Medieval Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Iv. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Georgia. His area of studies is the History of Middle Ages, particularly the History of Medieval Europe, Georgia and Byzantium, the History of the Church and the problems of interrelation of cultures in multicultural societies. Among his monographs are: From Antiquity towards Middle Ages: Western Europe, Byzantium, Georgia (Tbilisi, 2005); Georgia in the European World. 16th-17th-century Georgia in the Travel Book of Adam Olearius (Tbilisi, 2005); Eternal Rome: ‘Another Rome’ after Rome (Tbilisi, 2009); Byzantinism and the Problem of the Legacy of Byzantium (Tbilisi, 2009).