Georgia’s parliamentary majority member Giorgi Sosiashvili has announced that a Georgian delegation will travel to the Vatican on December 8 as a landmark, internationally supported project to protect historical Georgian manuscripts approaches completion.
Speaking at a hearing of the Parliament’s Culture Committee, Sosiashvili said that restored manuscript volumes will be ceremonially transferred in Italy on December 8–9 and then returned to their permanent home at the Vatican’s Propaganda Fide Archive where they had faced critical risk of deterioration due to age and long-term storage conditions.
The original three-year research initiative, financed by the Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation, is nearing its final stage, with a two-volume academic publication now completed and expected to be uploaded to the Foundation’s website shortly.
Parallel to the state-funded research effort, preservation work on the endangered manuscripts was undertaken by the Tamaz Bekaias Foundation, funded by entrepreneur Tamaz Bekaias which launched the restoration process to prevent further decay. Following conservation, four restored volumes will be returned to the Propaganda Fide Archive, including rare historical correspondence sent by Georgian kings as well as letters authored by Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani.
Sosiashvili described the initiative as a generational cultural achievement and confirmed the start of a new follow-up project aimed at identifying and publishing previously unknown Georgian manuscripts held in the same archive. Progress on this phase will be periodically presented to the Culture Committee.
