St. Nino of Georgia

Nino was born about the year 296 in Cappadocia, of a devout family, and from her youth she gave herself wholly to Christ. The tradition of the Georgian Church recounts that she came to the land of Iberia, the eastern kingdom of the Georgians, longing to find the seamless robe of the Lord, which by an ancient account had been carried there, and to make Christ known among a people who did not yet know Him.

She lived among them quietly, in prayer and fasting and works of mercy, dwelling at the edge of the royal city of Mtskheta. Through her prayer the sick were healed, and the report of it spread. When a noblewoman's child was made well, and then the queen, Nana, was raised up from a grave sickness after Nino prayed over her, the queen believed in Christ.

King Mirian was slower to believe, and for a time was set against the faith of his wife. The tradition tells that while he was hunting a sudden darkness fell upon him and his way was lost, and that in his fear he called upon the God of Nino, vowing that if he were delivered he would worship Christ. The darkness lifted, and the king came home a believer, and with him his house and, in time, his people.

By the labor of Nino and the zeal of the converted king, the faith was established in Iberia, and the first church was raised at Mtskheta. The Georgians keep the memory of her cross, made of two lengths of grapevine bound together with her own hair, which she had carried as her sign and staff. Having seen the kingdom turned to Christ, she withdrew to Bodbe in the region of Kakheti.

There she reposed in peace, about the year 338, and over her tomb a church was built that remains a place of pilgrimage. The Church keeps her memory on the fourteenth of January, honoring Nino as Equal-to-the-Apostles and the Enlightener of Georgia.