St. Nino and the Christianization of Kʻartli: Gender, Memory, and Mission in Medieval Georgian Tradition
Authors
Irma Makaradze
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Annotation
This study re-examines the Christianization of K'artli through the figure of St. Nino, foregrounding the role gender played in the formation, suppression, and later revival of her cult. While early Christian sources outside Georgia recognize a female agent in the conversion of Iberia, Georgian written tradition remains silent on Nino until the 9th–10th centuries. The recensions of The Life of St. Nino preserve traces of an early Christian stratum in which women functioned as primary agents of the faith - missionaries, baptizers, and ascetics. The diminishing visibility of Nino reflects the gradual restriction of women's roles in ecclesiastical life from Late Antiquity onward. Her figure was rediscovered and re-elevated only after the Georgian-Armenian ecclesiastical schism, when the need arose to assert a national enlightener against the cult of Gregory the Illuminator. The article argues that St. Nino’s narrative preserves an early layer of Christian memory, later reworked under gendered pressures of institutional Christianity.
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Authors
Irma Makaradze
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References:
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