Background
Michel Tamarati was born as Alexander Tamarashvili (ალექსანდრე თამარაშვილი) in the Georgian Catholic family in Akhaltsikhe, then part of the Russian Empire.
Michel Tamarati was born as Alexander Tamarashvili (ალექსანდრე თამარაშვილი) in the Georgian Catholic family in Akhaltsikhe, then part of the Russian Empire.
He died while trying to rescue a drowning man in stormy sea near Santa Marinella, Italy. He received his early education in Akhaltsikhe and Kutaisi before continuing his studies at a Georgian Catholic parish college in Constantinople in 1878. After three years of study in Spain, he returned to Constantinople, where he was ordained as a priest under the name of Michel (მიხეილ, Mikheil).
Considered by the Imperial Russian authorities to be politically unreliable, Tamarashvili left Georgia and finally settled, in 1891, in Rome, where he, now known as Michel Tamarati, obtained a doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas in 1894.
lieutenant also had a decidedly political purpose. lieutenant further criticized the abrogation of the centuries-old Georgian autocephaly by fellow-Orthodox Christian Russia and the heavy-handed policies of the Russian Empire against the resurgent Georgian autocephalist movement.
According to the historian David Marshall Language, "the Russian Embassy in Rome bought up and destroyed as many copies of this important and revealing work as it could."
Tamarati died while trying to rescue a drowning man in stormy sea near Santa Marinella at the age of 53 in 1911. His remains were transferred from his resting place in Civitavecchia to the Didube Pantheon in Tbilisi in 1978.
A memorial mass in Tamarati"s honor was also held at the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Assumption of Saint Mary in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Most of documents related to the life and scholarship of Tamarati is preserved in the archive of the National Center of Manuscripts in Tbilisi.