On May 19th, the Church celebrates Saint Nina’s entry into the land of Iberia — the country she would, within a few years, lead back to Christ. This feast falls one day after the commemoration of the Holy Apostles Andronicus and Junia, “of note among the apostles”, about whom we wrote in the previous article. This nearness in the calendar is not without meaning: on two consecutive days, the Church sets before us two faces of women whose work was apostolic in the most proper sense of the word — women sent to proclaim the Gospel, to build up Churches, to turn whole peoples to Christ.
This article seeks to answer a simple question, one that any honest Orthodox reader poses to himself when looking upon the icon of Saint Nina with her cross of grapevine in hand: how could a single woman christen an entire people? The answer is not an apology of modern womanhood, but a return to Tradition. In the Orthodox Church, the apostolic calling is not confused with the priestly ministry, and Christ called women to apostolic labour from the very days of His Resurrection. Saint Nina is not an exception. She belongs to a lineage that begins with the Myrrh-bearers and continues to this day.
The Earliest Witness to Saint Nina Comes from Outside Georgia
The earliest account of the christening of Iberia (the ancient name for Georgia) does not come from Georgian sources, but from a Latin ecclesiastical history written around the years 402–403. It may surprise the reader to learn that Saint Nina was first written about, nearly a century before any Georgian written source, by a Latin scholar: Rufinus of Aquileia (ca. 345–411), translator and Latin continuator of Eusebius of Caesarea.
More surprising still is something else: Rufinus, writing for the Greco-Roman world, does not call the saint by name. In book X, chapter 11, he relates briefly how “at that time, the nation of the Iberians, who dwell in the regions of Pontus, received the laws of the Word of God and the faith of the Kingdom of Heaven” — and that this was accomplished “by a certain captive woman who had fallen among them, who led a life of faith, of deep sobriety and virtue, and who day and night offered unceasing prayers to God”. Astonished by the novelty of such a manner of life, “the barbarians” asked this woman what it meant, and she answered them simply with the truth — that she worshipped Christ, her God.
Rufinus closes by acknowledging his source: “These events were narrated to us by Bacurius, a most trustworthy man, himself a king of that nation and commander of the palace guard among us (who took the greatest care both of religion and of truth), at the time when he was staying with us in Jerusalem in much friendly accord, being then commander of the frontier of Palestine”.
This testimony is of singular importance. Rufinus heard the story directly, at Jerusalem, from a converted Georgian prince, a former imperial governor of Palestine. It is not a late legend transmitted orally over centuries, but an early witness, received in the Greco-Latin ecclesiastical milieu only decades after the saint’s repose (ca. 338) and tied to the testimony of a Georgian prince of high rank. The same account — with the same essential elements — appears thereafter, with no significant variation, in three Greek ecclesiastical histories of the fifth century: in Socrates Scholasticus (HE I.20), Sozomen (HE II.7), and Theodoret of Cyrrhus (HE I.24). All of them, without exception, call her “a captive woman”, “a Christian woman taken into bondage”, “a faithful and devout woman” — never Nina.
Why does this silence of the Greco-Latin sources matter? Because it shows us two things. First: that at the end of the fourth century, in the Orthodox world outside Georgia, the events of Iberia’s christening were known, but the personal identity of the saint had remained hidden — a sign of the humility that accompanied her entire labour. Second: that the name Nino (Nina), which we use today, comes down to us through another channel — the internal tradition of the Georgian Church, preserved in the medieval compilations of Kartlis Tskhovreba (“The Life of Kartli”) and afterwards transmitted in the Synaxarion. We have, then, two witnesses that do not contradict but complete one another: one external, in Greek and Latin, which sees the deeds; the other internal, in Georgian, which preserves the name and the details of her life.
The Witness from Within: The Life Dictated to Queen Salome
The authentic Georgian tradition, preserved with the blessing of the Church and handed down through the ages, has a remarkable source: the account dictated by Saint Nina herself, on the threshold of death, to Saint Salome, queen of Ujarma, the daughter-in-law of King Mirian and her spiritual disciple. Salome wrote down the saint’s words, “and these notes became the principal source for the biography of the saint”, as the Georgian Paterikon attests.
Here is what this tradition tells us.
Saint Nina was born toward the end of the third century in Cappadocia, “where many Georgians lived”. She was a close relative of the Holy Great Martyr George — according to an old manuscript, his very cousin. Her father, Zabulon, was a renowned and devout soldier in the service of Emperor Maximian; her mother, Susanna, was the sister of the bishop of Jerusalem — named in some traditions as Juvenal, although this identification must be received as a hagiographic element rather than as strict historical fact, since the Saint Juvenal known from Church history belongs to the fifth century. Two parents, then, with deep ascetic roots: the father withdrew into the desert of the Jordan as a hermit; the mother served as a deaconess at the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem. Saint Nina, entrusted from childhood to the care of the devout deaconess Niofora-Sara, grew up between the Church of the Resurrection and the Holy Sepulchre.
The daily reading of Scripture kindled her love for Christ. One day, as she read in the Gospel about the Crucifixion, her thoughts dwelt upon a detail that seemed forgotten by all: the Lord’s tunic. Where was the seamless garment now, which the soldiers had not dared to tear? Niofora answered her with the tradition she knew: “It is in the city of Mtskheta in Iberia, to the northeast of Jerusalem. The tunic was brought there by the rabbi of that city, Elioz, after he received it from the soldier who had won it by lot beside the Cross. The inhabitants of that land are called the Kartvelians; they border the Armenians and have remained to this day in the darkness of idolatry”.
These words remained deeply imprinted in the virgin’s heart. Day and night she prayed to the Mother of God to allow her to go to Iberia, to venerate the tunic of her Son. And the All-Holy One heard her prayer. She appeared to her in a vision and said: “Go to Iberia, as you desire! But there you shall also preach the Gospel of Christ, who will pour out His grace upon you. And I will help you also”.
Saint Nina’s reply is the keyword of her entire life, and answers in advance the very question we have asked today: “But I am a weak woman. Shall I be able to bring such a work to completion?”
Then the Mother of God placed in her hand a cross made of grapevine and said: “Take this cross. It will be your shield and protection against all enemies visible and invisible. By its power you shall bring the land of the Iberians to the faith of my beloved Son, who desires that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth”.
When she awoke, the virgin saw that miraculous cross in her hands. She cut a lock of her hair, wove it onto the cross, and went to her uncle, the bishop. He — recognizing in this vision the will of God — took his niece to the Church of the Resurrection, laid his hand upon her head, and prayed: “Lord, our God and Saviour! I commend into Thy hands this virgin, who has resolved with great zeal to dedicate herself to the work of proclaiming Thy Gospel to men. Bless her and be her companion and teacher, wherever she shall proclaim Thee”.
This gesture — the bishop of Jerusalem laying his hand upon the head of a virgin and blessing her for preaching, in the Church of the Resurrection — is not ordination, and must not be confused with ordination. It is, however, a missionary blessing, an apostolic sending recognized by the Church, given with hierarchical authority.
The Vision of the Scroll Written in Greek
The saint set out, together with Saint Hripsime and the roughly thirty virgins who were fleeing the persecution of Diocletian out of Rome (whose martyrdom is commemorated on September 30th). In Armenia, however, the virgins were caught and killed; only Saint Nina, miraculously sheltered by a wild rosebush, was spared. An angel appeared to her and said: “Rise now and go to the north, where the harvest is plentiful”.
The journey to Iberia was long, desolate, and full of dangers. One evening, weakened, frightened, and alone upon a stone in the wilderness, the saint knelt with this thought: “Where is God leading me? Will my labours bear fruit, or have I taken on so great a task in vain?” Then she had a vision that we may call, without fear of exaggeration, the moment of the inward sealing of her apostolic sending.
There appeared to her a man of great dignity, his hair falling upon his shoulders, holding in his hands a scroll written in the Greek language. He extended it to her and said: “Read it carefully!” When she awoke, the saint saw the scroll truly in her hands. Upon it were written the words of the Lord from the Gospel:
“Verily I say unto you, wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her” (Matthew 26:13).
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
“Then said Jesus unto them: Be not afraid. Go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me” (Matthew 28:10).
“He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me” (Matthew 10:40).
“For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist” (Luke 21:15).
“And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say: for the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say” (Luke 12:11–12).
“Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).
“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen” (Matthew 28:19–20).
This is the keyword of the entire story. The Tradition does not identify explicitly the one who appeared to the saint in her vision — the keeping of a holy silence is itself a sign of the hagiographic truth. But the words he placed in her hand are the words of the Lord Himself in the Gospel. And if we look closely at the eight passages written on the scroll, we see that they are not a random string of verses: together they make up a complete manual of the apostle sent forth. The mandate to preach to all nations (Matthew 28:19–20) is set beside the universality of grace that erases the boundaries of race, status, and gender (Galatians 3:28). The news of the Resurrection and the overcoming of fear (Matthew 28:10) open the way. The identification of the apostle with the One who has sent him (Matthew 10:40) gives him authority. The promise that Christ Himself will give him “a mouth and wisdom” which no adversary can withstand (Luke 21:15), and that the Holy Spirit will teach him in the very hour of his confession (Luke 12:11–12), strengthen him inwardly. And the victory over the ultimate fear — the fear of death (Matthew 10:28) — gives him the fearlessness of martyrdom if it should be needed. The mandate “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations”, given in the Gospel to the eleven apostles upon the mount in Galilee, is here given to a Cappadocian virgin alone upon a stone, in the wilderness of the Caucasus — and together with it she receives the whole apostolic equipping.
This is the Great Commission of Saint Nina. From here on, her labour is no longer that of “a weak woman”, but of one who has been sent — an apostle in the most proper sense, apostolos meaning in Greek one who is sent.
Mtskheta: The Tearing Down of Idols and the Enlightening of Iberia
The conversion of Iberia was not effected through learned discourses, nor through hierarchical claims, nor through armies. It was effected through three very simple things: prayer, divine signs, and mercy.
Having reached Mtskheta, the capital of Iberia, the saint settled humbly in a small cell in a corner of the royal garden. There, through her prayers, the gardener’s wife Anastasia — a barren woman — received children; and through the touch of the grapevine cross, the dying infant of a poor woman was brought back to life. From these miracles, people began to come to her — particularly the Jewish women of Mtskheta, among whom was the daughter of the head of the synagogue, Aviatar — and to listen to “the new teaching from her lips, sweet as honey, of the Kingdom of God”.
The most resounding victory, however, was the tearing down of the idol Armazi, the deity that King Mirian and the people worshipped with sacrifices upon the mountaintop. The saint went up, mingled with the crowd, looked upon the bronze idol overlaid with gold, sighed — and prayed: “Almighty God! Scatter these idols, as the wind scatters dust and ashes”. She had not finished her prayer when heavy clouds came from the west. A storm broke out, the proud idol was shattered to pieces, the temple collapsed. The next day, the king and the people searched in vain through the mud for the remains of their gods.
The conversion came, then, one by one. First Queen Nana, gravely ill, was brought on a stretcher to the saint’s cell. Saint Nina knelt beside her, prayed, made the sign of the cross over her body — and the queen arose well. Returning to the palace, she confessed before the king that Christ is the true God. (Saint Nana is commemorated on October 1st.)
King Mirian resisted stubbornly at first. He was the son of the Persian king Chosroes, and feared the wrath of the pagan empire should he embrace Christianity. His conversion came about through an experience like that of Saint Paul on the road to Damascus: while hunting in the forests near Mukhrani, suddenly the sky grew dark, lightning blinded him, thunder scattered his retinue. He cried out in vain to his gods. Then he cried: “God of Nina! Take this darkness from my eyes, and I shall confess Thee and glorify Thy name!” And straightway light came.
Returning to the city, the king cried out in the streets: “Glorify ye all the God of Nina, even Christ!” Then, seeing the saint, he fell at her feet and said: “O my mother! Teach me and make me worthy to call upon the name of thy great God, my Deliverer!”
The second miracle, the one which crowned the saint’s labour, was the raising of the Life-giving Pillar at Mtskheta. The king resolved to build a church on the spot where, according to the tradition of the local Jews, Saint Sidonia (the cousin of the rabbi Elioz) lay buried together with the Lord’s tunic brought from Jerusalem. From the cedar tree that had grown over the tomb, six pillars were made; but the sixth, made from the very trunk of the cedar, could not be moved from the spot by any craftsman. Saint Nina remained all night at the construction site, in prayer, watering with her tears the immovable pillar. Toward dawn, “there appeared to her a wondrous young man, girded with a belt of fire. He drew near her and whispered three secret words”. What the saint heard in that moment, Tradition does not tell us — and must not tell us. The angelic youth took the pillar in his arms, lifted it before all eyes, and set it in its place. The pillar began to stream forth healing myrrh.
That first wooden church was named Svetitskhoveli — in Georgian “The Life-giving Pillar” — and dedicated to the Twelve Holy Apostles. Today it is the patriarchal cathedral of the Church of Georgia, built up in stone. Beneath the Pillar, according to tradition, the Lord’s tunic is preserved to this day. This was the tunic which the saint, as a twelve-year-old maiden in Jerusalem, had sought with all her heart.
Mirian then sent envoys to the Emperor Constantine the Great, who sent Saint Eustathius, Archbishop of Antioch (commemorated on February 21st), together with two priests. Saint Eustathius baptized the royal family and ordained the first bishop of Iberia, Father John. Thus was the Church of Iberia founded, which until the fifth century would stand under the spiritual covering of the Throne of Antioch.
“Equal to the Apostles”: How the Apostolic Calling Continues in the Church
Here we come to the question we asked from the beginning: how could a woman christen an entire people? The answer requires a theological distinction that, for want of clarity, many Orthodox Christians no longer make.
In the Tradition of the Church there are two different works that must not be confused. One is the sacramental priestly ministry — the celebration of the Holy Mysteries, especially of the Divine Liturgy. This is reserved only to men, through unbroken apostolic ordination, according to the order given by Christ to the Twelve at the Mystical Supper. Concerning this ministry, Saint Paul writes clearly: “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man” (1 Timothy 2:12). On this point, the patristic Tradition is unyielding.
But there is another work — the apostolic calling, that is, the being sent forth to preach the Gospel. The word apostle means in Greek, very simply, one sent. To be an apostle is to be the one who brings the Good News to those who do not yet know it. This sending — which is not sacramental but missionary — Christ entrusted, from the very days of the Resurrection, also to women.
The verse of Galatians 3:28 — often used in the modern West to justify the ordination of women — appears in the life of Saint Nina in an altogether different register: not as an argument for sacramental ministry, but as the foundation of the freedom of grace to call to confession and preaching whomever God wills. Saint Nina does not receive the priesthood, but a sending. She is not given the altar, but the Gospel. She is not called to celebrate the Mysteries, but to bring a people to Christ.
The first “one sent forth” of the Resurrection is a woman: Saint Mary Magdalene, to whom the Risen Lord said: “Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God” (John 20:17). For this the Holy Fathers call her “the apostle to the apostles” — for she announced to the apostles the Resurrection of the Lord. She is honoured in the Tradition of the Church as “Equal to the Apostles”, and this title is given to her precisely for her role as the one sent forth with the news of the Resurrection.
In the Acts of the Apostles and in the Pauline Epistles, women stand alongside the men who bear the Gospel: Saint Thecla, disciple of Saint Paul, celebrated as “proto-martyr and Equal to the Apostles”; Priscilla (Prisca), wife of Aquila, who in four of six New Testament mentions appears before her husband — an unmistakable sign of her missionary prominence; Saint Junia, of whom we wrote in the previous article — wife of Andronicus, “of note among the apostles” (Romans 16:7), numbered among the Seventy Apostles of the Lord. For Saint John Chrysostom, the fact that a woman was found worthy to bear the name of apostle is “high praise”, not a problem.
And if we open the Synaxarion of the Church, we see that the title isapostolos — “Equal to the Apostles” — is borne by a very small group of saints, in which women are not in the shadow, but among the pillars: Saint Mary Magdalene, Saint Thecla, Saint Helen (together with Saint Constantine), Saint Nina, Saint Olga of Kiev, Saints Cyril and Methodius, Saint Vladimir, Saint Cosmas of Aitolia. The list is not long. And we note: in two imperial pairs — Constantine and Helen, Olga and Vladimir — the woman stands beside the man, or as in the case of Saint Olga, before the man who is to come after her (Vladimir was converted through the inheritance of his grandmother).
The Georgian Paterikon gives a clear patristic justification of the title bestowed upon Saint Nina: “Saint Nina is honoured as ‘Equal to the Apostles’. For if he who turns a sinner from the error of his way (James 5:20), and he who separates the precious from the vile (Jeremiah 15:19) is — we might say — the mouth of God, how much more was Saint Nina the mouth of God, who led thousands of souls from idolatry to Christ”.
This, then, is the essence of the matter. Saint Nina did not celebrate the Divine Liturgy. She did not perform Baptism (this was brought to Iberia by Saint Eustathius of Antioch and the priests sent by Constantine). She did not ordain a bishop (Saint John of Iberia was ordained by Saint Eustathius). But she did what no one else could do: she preached the Gospel, she tore down the idols by her prayer, she healed the queen, she converted the king, she brought a whole people to the knowledge of Christ. And, as Tradition itself testifies, “the newly-founded Church of Iberia resolved — with the blessing of the Church of Antioch — to glorify her as Equal to the Apostles and Enlightener of Iberia”.
The apostolic mission, therefore, is not reduced to sacramental ministry. Nor is the sacramental reduced to the apostolic. They are two divine callings, each with its own order. And the Church has honoured them equally, without confusing them. Precisely because she does not confuse them, the Orthodox Church preserves both the unshaken male priesthood and the honouring of the women apostles — without shame, without compromise, without reservation.
Bodbe: The Final Withdrawal and the End
After she had seen Iberia baptized and the first churches built, Saint Nina withdrew. She did not remain at the court of the king she had converted. She did not seek glory. “Avoiding the glory and the honours of the king and the people, she took refuge on Mount Kazbegi, near the headwaters of the river Aragvi. There, with prayer and fasting, she prepared herself for new apostolic labours”. Beside her cave there gushed forth from her prayers of tears a spring that to this day is called “the one that weeps”.
There followed her last mission — the preaching of the Gospel in the mountainous regions of the Caucasus and in Kakheti, in the village of Bodbe, the final place of her labours. There she made for herself a simple hut on the mountainside, “and she passed her days and nights in prayer before the Honourable Cross”. The inhabitants came, listened, and were baptized by the ministry of the priest Jacob who accompanied her.
When God revealed to her that her end was near, the saint wrote to King Mirian a letter that deserves to be read in full: “May thy kingdom have the everlasting blessing of God, the help of the Most Holy Theotokos, and the protection of the Honourable Cross. I, as a stranger and pilgrim on the earth, depart from this world. I shall follow the path of my fathers. Send me, I pray thee, Bishop John. He must prepare me for the eternal journey, for the day of my death is near”.
The king came in haste, with the bishop and all the people. At the bedside of the dying saint stood Queen Salome, the saint’s disciple, who wrote down the words of the history upon which we have founded our account. In a humility incomprehensible to those who love glory, the saint asked that “my life passed in slothfulness and emptiness” be written down, “so that it may be known also to your children”. Then she received Holy Communion from the hand of the bishop. She asked to be buried in that poor hut, “so that the newly-founded Church of Kakheti might not be left orphaned”.
She fell asleep in peace on January 14th, most probably in the year 338.
Saint Nina was not alone even in the hour of her end. Beside the bed of the dying saint watched two disciples who were also her biographers: Saint Salome, queen of Ujarma (the daughter-in-law of King Mirian), and Saint Perozhavra, wife of the ruler of Kartli. Under the saint’s dictation, they wrote down her life, and the Church commemorates them both on January 15th — on the day immediately following the falling-asleep of their teacher. Thus, through three women, the inward witness of the christening of Iberia was preserved. As for the name Nino — which we do not find in the Greco-Latin patristic sources, where the saint appears anonymous — it is first attested in writing in a Georgian manuscript transcribed around the years 960–970 at the Shatberdi Monastery, in what is today north-eastern Anatolia.
The king and the people, weeping, tried to move the holy relics to the cathedral at Mtskheta, beside the Life-giving Pillar. “But despite all their efforts, they could not move the saint’s coffin from the place she had chosen”. They buried her, therefore, in her humble hut at Bodbe. In 342, King Mirian laid the foundation of a church above her tomb, dedicated to Saint George — the saint’s kinsman. Around it grew, over the centuries, the women’s monastery which to this day preserves Saint Nina’s tomb and receives pilgrims from throughout the Orthodox world. And the cross of grapevine, given by the Mother of God to a Cappadocian virgin in a vision, is preserved today in the cathedral in Tbilisi, in a silver reliquary upon which the scenes of the saint’s life are carved.
Georgia’s love for Saint George the Great Martyr is no ordinary devotion. The European name of the country — “Georgia” — has often been linked, in the Western tradition, with the veneration of Saint George the Great Martyr, although its etymology is disputed. What is certain is that the Georgian people’s love for Saint George is one of the most ardent in the Orthodox world. The national flag bears five red crosses on a white field: one large cross in the centre and four smaller crosses in the four quadrants (called in Georgian bolnisi-cross), a sign often associated with the Christian heritage of Georgia. And at the root of this love stands a bond of blood: the Cappadocian kinswoman of the Great Martyr, the virgin who brought Iberia to Christ.
The Orthodox Church celebrates Saint Nina several times a year: January 14th (her falling-asleep), May 19th (her entry into Iberia), and October 27th (the discovery of her cross).
What Saint Nina Teaches Us Today
Looking upon the life of Saint Nina with the eyes of the Holy Fathers, without modern additions, we see three things.
First: that the Gospel is spread by humility, not by power. Iberia was not baptized because it was conquered by a Christian army, but because a single virgin prayed in a small cell in the corner of the royal garden. “The living God works through the small, the humble, those whom the world counts as weak” — this is the patristic principle of the whole history of apostolic mission. It is not without reason that Saint Nina asks, upon her first vision of the Mother of God: “But I am a weak woman. Shall I be able to bring such a work to completion?” It is precisely for this confessed weakness that she was chosen. “God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty” (1 Corinthians 1:27).
Second: that in the Orthodox Church, woman is not reduced to silence — she is called to the fullness of holiness. Saint Nina is not a tolerated exception, but a model of the apostolic calling as Christ ordained it from the days of the Resurrection. Isapostolos is a title that the Church bestows with rigour, not with indulgence; and she bestows it with the same rigour upon women and upon men. This honour is the recognition of a spiritual reality, not a concession made to any modern sensibility.
Third: that among the ancient Orthodox peoples there exists a brotherhood that the modern world has forgotten, but that the Church preserves. Iberia received the light of Christ through Saint Nina; in Cappadocia the saint was born and from there received her faith; at Jerusalem her preparation took place and she received the apostolic blessing; at Antioch her first bishop was ordained. Four Churches of the East — Iberia/Georgia, Cappadocia, Jerusalem, and Antioch — are bound together for eternity through the life of this virgin. Thus is woven, in silence, the Body of the Church of Christ across peoples and borders.
In the dawn of May 19th, commemorating Saint Nina’s entry into the land of Iberia, we may open lightly our Orthodox calendar toward a tradition we do not sufficiently know — and toward a question to which, if we have asked it with a pure heart, we have already received the answer: one woman enlightened an entire people because Christ called her, the Mother of God blessed her, and she answered with tears and prayer. So was apostolic work done, and so is it still done, in the Church of the Lord.
Holy Nina, Equal to the Apostles and Enlightener of Iberia, pray to Christ God for us.
Troparion of Saint Nina (Tone 4):
O handmaid of the Word of God, who in apostolic preaching didst equal Andrew the First-Called and the other apostles, enlightener of Iberia and reed-pipe of the Holy Spirit, Saint Nina, Equal to the Apostles, entreat Christ God to save our souls.
Principal sources:
- Georgian Paterikon, the section “Saint Nina, Equal to the Apostles”.
- Rufinus of Aquileia, Historia Ecclesiastica X.11, critical edition by Theodor Mommsen, Eusebius Werke II, GCS 9.2, Leipzig, 1903; English translation by Philip R. Amidon, Rufinus of Aquileia: History of the Church, The Fathers of the Church 133, Washington D.C., 2016.
- Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica II.7; Socrates Scholasticus, HE I.20; Theodoret of Cyrrhus, HE I.24 (ed. Sources Chrétiennes).
- Kartlis Tskhovreba — A History of Georgia, English translation, Artanuji Publishing, Tbilisi, 2014, the section “The Conversion of Kartli by Saint Nino” by Leonti Mroveli.
- Bernadette Martin-Hisard, “Jalons pour une histoire du culte de sainte Nino (fin IVᵉ – XIIᵉ s.)”, in From Byzantium to Iran: Armenian Studies in Honour of Nina G. Garsoïan, Atlanta, 1997, pp. 53–78.
- The Synaxarion of the Orthodox Church: January 14th, May 19th, October 27th (Saint Nina); January 15th (Saints Salome and Perozhavra); October 1st (Saint Nana and Saint Sidonia); February 21st (Saint Eustathius of Antioch); September 30th (Saint Hripsime and the 30 virgins); July 22nd (Saint Mary Magdalene); May 17th (Saints Andronicus and Junia).