Dadivank
Dadivank or Khutavank is an Armenian Apostolic monastery in the Kalbajar District of Azerbaijan, bordering the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Martakert Province of the breakaway Republic of Artsakh. It was built between the 9th and 13th centuries and is one of the main monastic complexes of medieval Armenia.
In Azerbaijan, the monastery is called Dadivəng or Xudavəng. Azerbaijan denies the monastery’s Armenian religious and cultural heritage, instead falsely referring to it as a “Caucasian Albanian temple
The monastery is said to have been founded by St. Dadi, a disciple of Thaddeus the Apostle who spread Christianity in Eastern Armenia during the first century AD. However, the monastery is only first mentioned in the 9th century. In July 2007, the grave said to belong to St. Dadi was discovered under the holy altar of the main church. The princes of Upper Khachen are also buried at Dadivank, under the church’s gavit (narthex).
The monastery belongs to the Diocese of Artsakh of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and consists of the cathedral church of the Holy Mother of God, the chapel, a kitchen and refectory, and a few other buildings․ The main church has Armenian script engraved into its walls, in addition to several 13th-century frescoes. The bas-relief on the south facade of the cathedral at Dadivank, built in 1214, shows the princess offering the church in memory of her sons.
According to Paolo Cuneo, Dadivank is one of two monasteries along with Gandzasar where bust motifs (possibly the donors of the monasteries) are encountered. British art historian Anthony Eastmond places Dadivank’s construction within a wider context of examples of female patronage of ecclesiastical buildings in the thirteenth-century Near Eastern world.
