Nino

About Nino

Nino, also called Nina, is venerated in the Orthodox Church as the Enlightener of Georgia and Equal of the Apostles. The Orthodox Church in America commemorates her individually on January 14 and observes the Entrance of Saint Nino into Georgia on May 19. The January 14 entry is the individual observance; January 3 in the catalog came from a daily page that mentions another woman named Nino as Ekvtime Takaishvili's wife.A late-antique account of the conversion of Iberia describes a Christian woman taken captive there. In the narrative, her example and reported healings lead the royal household toward Christianity, and the king sends an embassy to Constantine requesting clergy. Socrates Scholasticus says Rufinus learned the account from Bacurius, a former Iberian prince who served Rome. Neither the account as transmitted by Socrates nor its description of the captive names her Nino.Later Georgian and Orthodox tradition identifies Nino with the woman in the conversion account. Modern scholarship treats the evidence through both Georgian and non-Georgian texts, but the identification should remain a statement about received tradition: the earlier narrative does not provide her personal name. The sources reviewed here do not establish Nino's birth or death dates, and no exact life events are entered.