In 1810-1811, John Smith published a vast encyclopedia, A System of Modern Geography: Or, the Natural and Political History of the Present State of the World, of peoples, customs and traditions of the world. Below is the section on Georgia, reflecting information collated from the writings of generations of travelers. Needless to say, many of the cited details are incorrect or obsolete but the passage illustrates what an average literate person in the English-speaking world would have learned about the Georgians and their customs at the start of the 19th century.
[In Georgia] the prevailing religion is undoubtedly Christian, but it is not certain to what particular church the Georgians incline, or what forms or particular ceremonies of worship are observed by them: they build their churches in remote places, and on the summit of hills and mountains, that they may be seen at a distance, and use bells in them to call the congregations together, who are, however, said to frequent them but seldom, being content with looking at, without entering them. The clergy are paid liberally, not by the living, but by the dead; for, at the death of a Georgian, the bishop requires one hundred crowns for performing the funeral rites; and this extravagant demand must be satisfied, [even if] the wife and children of the diseased be ruined to discharge it, which is frequently the case. When the bishop or priest has thus received his fee, he lays a letter on the breast of the corpse requiring St. Peter to admit the soul of the deceased to the mansions of the blessed, a situation to which he is entitled by the generosity of his surviving friends. A similar custom prevails among the Mahometans of the country, the priests of which religion address the like passport to their prophet.
The language of Georgia is soft, harmonious, and expressive; and some writers agree in fixing the paradise of the first pair in this province, which for fertility, beauty, and serenity of air, seems more entitled to the honour than the country of Palestine.
The Georgians concern themselves little with commerce; they are unacquainted with figures and arithmetic, few of them being able to count [to a] hundred. The principal species of their traffic is that from which uncorrupted human nature recoils; they consider their children as transferable property, in common with the beasts of the field; these they inhumanly expose to sale, and are ready to sacrifice to the lust of the highest bidder, or to gratify the avarice or flatter the ambition of the unfeeling authors of their existence.
The beauty of the Georgian, and Circassian, females renders them desirable objects for the purchase of those who are employed to supply the harems of the great, either at Constantinople or other large towns of the Turkish empire. Their usual agents on such occasions are Jews, who traverse whole provinces, culling the fairest flowers they can find, at almost any price that is demanded for them. Nor is the sale of the human species confined to the female part of it only; the male youths who are educated in the seraglio of the Grand Signor, and fitted for public offices, are mostly purchased in this country; and Christian parents, for the sake of gain, part with their infant sons to be instructed in the religion of Mahomet, and to be brought up in every species of immorality.
From the Mingrelians, who inhabit the regions bordering upon the Black Sea, the archbishop has a great revenue; for besides seven hundred vassals, bound to furnish him with the necessaries and luxuries of life, he raises money by the sale of the children of his wretched dependents, and by visitations of the several dioceses within his jurisdiction, in which he levies contributions on the other bishops and inferior clergy, demanding for the consecration of one of the former six hundred crowns, and a hundred for saying mass at the ordination of a priest. These, in their turn, plunder the people committed to their care, oppressing their vassals, selling their wives and children to slavery, commuting the most heinous crimes, and foretelling for money future events. In conformity to these practices, as soon as a Mingrelian falls sick, a priest is called in, who expects a handsome present to appease the evil genius which harasses the patient: he then pronounces what will be his future fate.
The habits of the superior clergy are scarlet; the inferior orders are distinguished from the laity by the length of their beards, and by high round caps, which are worn by all the clergy. Their churches are full of idols, among which are those of St. George and St. Grobas, which engage their principal attention; the former is held in great veneration both by Mingrelians and Georgians; to the latter they have annexed such ideas of terror, that they place their presents even at a distance from the formidable representation of imaginary power, to which they dare not approach, lest they should experience the fatal effects o£ his wrath.
Among the Mingrelians are monks and nuns who abstain wholly from animal food, but pay no other regard to religion than a strict observance of the fasts, which all the Christians of the eastern churches consider as an atonement for the omission of every other act of duty.
The ceremonies used at the death of their friends are very similar to those that will be noticed in the article [on] Persia. They abandon themselves to grief, which at the interment they wash away in plentiful draughts of wine. But the chief cause of concern to the survivors is, their being obliged to surrender to the bishop all the movables of their departed relation, whether they consist of horses, arms, clothes, or money: a right which the prince exercises at the death of a bishop, assuming the character of an ecclesiastic for the occasion, and seizing at once on the spoil which the defunct priest had collected in the plunder of great numbers of his subjects. The Mingrelians never eat pork nor drink wine without making the sign of the cross.
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