COLLECTION OF CERTIFICATES RELATED TO THE WEDDING (Church Ceremony)(According to the Documents Kept in the Archives Administration of Ajara)

Abstract

Wedding (church ceremony), as a religious and ethnocultural practice, played and continues to play an important role in the spiritual life of various peoples. In the context of wedding (church ceremony), written documents were kept, oral traditions were created, records of gifts and clergy, photo documents, etc. Such documents or traditions reflect not only the process of wedding (church ceremony) and the rituals associated with wedding (church ceremony), but also present the social and public life, ethnocultural values and values of the corresponding era. The purpose of this article is to process, systematize and circulate the new archival documents in the scientific circulation of the “collection of certificates related to the writing of the wedding (church ceremony)” (Fund No. E-79) preserved in the Archives Administration of Ajara. The collection of documents related to wedding (church ceremony), preserved in the Archives Administration of Ajara, represents the most important source for the study of this social institution, which gives us a clear idea of both spirituality and forms of social organization. The article presented by us discusses the documents included in the collection (345 volumes), the chronological framework of which covers the years 1883 – 1925. These documents allow us to follow the evolutionary-transformational processes of this institution, which is expressed in the form of hymns, the number of participants, although the main ethnocultural elements and the essence of the liturgy remained unchanged.