ORIGINS OF GEORGIAN CHRISTIANITY David Marshall Lang (excerpt from the book”A Modern History of Georgia”/NY/1962)
	Saint Nino, to whom is attributed the conversion of the Georgians to Christianity, is traditionally portrayed as a holy captive woman living about the year A.D. 330, in the time of Constantine the Great. She possessed a miraculous gift of healing and cured a little child of some grave disease. The Georgian queen, Nana, also experienced Nino's wondrous powers, and was converted to Christianity. The king, Mirian by name, was also converted following an eclipse of the sun which enveloped him and his followers in pitch darkness until he bethought himself of Nino's God and resolved to pray to Him for deliverance. The Georgian people followed their monarch and declared themselves Christians. They all set to work to build a church at Mtskheta. The construction proceeded according to plan until they came to erect the main pillar, which no force of men or machinery could raise above a slanting angle. 'But when at nightfall everyone went away, and both the toilers and their toil fell into repose, the captive woman remained alone on the spot and passed the whole night in prayer. And behold, when the king with all his people arrived full of anxiety in the morning, he saw the column, which so many machines and so many men could not shift, standing upright and freely suspended above its pedestal--not set upon it, but hanging in the air about a foot above. As soon as the whole people witnessed this, they glorified God and began to declare this to be a proof of the king's faith and the religion of the captive woman. And behold, while they were all paralysed with amazement, the pillar slowly descended on to its base before their eyes, without anyone touching it, and settled in perfect balance. The rest of the columns were erected with such ease that the remainder were all set in place that same day.' Pious Georgian chroniclers later embroidered on the original simple account of Saint Nino's life. Among the episodes added were the bringing of Our Lord's tunic from Jerusalem to Mtskheta by Elioz the Jew, the destruction of the pagan idols by a hailstorm sent from heaven, the fashioning of crosses from the wood of a miracle-working tree, and the appearance of a fiery cross over Nino's church, the saint's mission to Kakheti, and her death at Bodbe. ^4 From the time of Saint Nino onwards, the Georgian Church grew and prospered, in spite of persecution by Persian, Arab and Turkish invaders. The Georgians won the right to elect their own Catholicos-Patriarch, who resided at Mtskheta. The Georgian Orthodox Church has played an outstanding role in the country's history and national consciousness. We read in the Passion of Saint Abo, put to death by the Saracens in A.D. 786: ' Georgia is called Mother of the Saints; some of these have been inhabitants of this land, while others came among us from time to time from foreign parts to testify to the revelation of Our Lord Jesus Christ.' The biographer of Saint Gregory of Khandzta wrote in the tenth century: ' Georgia is reckoned to consist of those spacious lands in which church services are celebrated and all prayers said in the Georgian tongue. Only the Kyrie eleison, which means "Lord, have mercy", or "Lord be merciful to us", is pronounced in Greek'. Colonies of Georgian monks settled at the monastery of Saint Savva near Jerusalem and at the Holy Sepulchre itself, near Antioch in Syria, on Mount Sinai and Mount Athos. Priceless collections of ancient Georgian manuscripts testify to the scholarly zeal of those pious fathers. A Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Jacques de Vitry, describes the Georgian knights and pilgrims who used to visit the Holy City at the time of the Crusades 'with banners displayed, without paying tribute to anyone'.--'These men . . . especially revere and worship Saint George, whom they make their patron and standard-bearer in their fight with the infidels.' Among the titles adopted by mediaeval Georgian rulers were those of 'Slave of the Messiah' ( King David the Builder), 'Sword of the Messiah' ( Kings Giorgi III and IV) and 'Champion of the Messiah' ( Queens Tamar and Rusudan). Yet Georgian Christianity has never been exclusive or intolerant; it has not been a persecuting faith. Narrow fanaticism is alien to this easy-going people, who found it no strain to tolerate in their midst Muslims, Jews, Catholics and members of other persuasions. Several stories are told illustrating the kindness of the Georgian kings to their Muslim subjects. When King David the Builder (1089-1125) recaptured the city of Tbilisi, he 'guaranteed to the Muslims everything they wished, according to the pact which is valid even today', and stipulated that pigs should not be brought over to the Muslim quarter of the town. Likewise, King Dimitri of Georgia visited the Tbilisi cathedral mosque on a Friday, sat on a platform opposite the preacher and remained in his place throughout the service; on his way out, he granted the mosque two hundred gold dinars. ^5 Since the Russian revolution, the Georgian Church has undergone eclipse, although the Patriarchate continues to exist. The principal churches and cathedrals, though classed as historical monuments, are in a sadly decayed structural condition. ______________________________________________________________________________ 4. See the translation in D. M. Lang, Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints, London: George Allen & Unwin 1956, pp. 13-39. 5. The source here is the Arabic historian Ibn al-Azraq, as cited by V. Minorsky in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. XIII, pt. 1, London 1949, pp. 31-34.