A record of the founding of the Gelati monastery complex and the building of its church appears in the will of David the Builder: "the monastery, my burial place and the sepulcher of my children, remained unfinished, and its pain went with me everlasting; now let my son Demetre complete it in every part." From other sources we learn that David began construction in 1106. His historian conveys it well: "he conceived the building of a monastery and fixed upon the place which divine grace had chosen, snow-beautiful and lacking in nothing, wherein like a second heaven he spread out the church of the All-Holy and most blessed Mother of God"