Symbol of Georgian Christianity: The Grapevine Cross as National Emblem

The grapevine cross of St. Nino as the enduring emblem of Georgian Christianity and Georgian identity. Its drooping arms, born (in the tradition) of the vine and Nino’s hair, became the sign of the Georgian Church on churches, manuscripts, coins, banners, and the heraldry of the nation. This file traces the cross’s career as a symbol — its biblical resonance in the vine, its place in Georgia’s wine culture, its role in the visual tradition studied by Eastmond, and its fusion of faith with nationhood — distinguishing the symbol’s documented history from the origin-legend it rests on.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox / Pan-Orthodox

From Relic to Emblem

The cross St. Nino is said to have carried — vine wood bound with her hair, with arms drooping downward (see The Cross of St. Nino) — became, over the centuries, far more than a single relic. Its distinctive shape was taken up as the characteristic form of the Georgian cross, reproduced on churches, in manuscript illumination, on coins and seals, and on the banners of kings, until it stood as the visible sign of Georgian Christianity itself. Where the origin of the cross belongs to the developed Georgian Life and is reported as tradition (see the disputed note in The Cross of St. Nino), the cross’s career as a symbol is a matter of documented art and political history, and is treated as such here.

The Vine: Gospel and Land

The grapevine cross fuses two of the deepest strands of Georgian self-understanding. The vine is, first, a biblical image of Christ — “I am the true vine” (John 15:1) — and of the Church grafted into him; a cross of vine wood preaches the Gospel in its very material. The vine is, second, the emblem of Georgia’s own land and culture: Georgia is one of the oldest wine-making regions on earth, and the vine is woven through its agriculture, its poetry, and its national imagination. That the apostle of Georgia should carry a cross of vine wood thus joins, in a single sign, the faith and the soil — the Christianity of Iberia and the Georgia that received it. This double resonance is much of why the grapevine cross, rather than a Greek or Latin form, became the national Christian emblem.

The Form and Its Meaning

The drooping form of the Georgian cross — arms that slope downward rather than meeting the upright at right angles — is, in the tradition, a direct consequence of its origin: a cross of two vine branches, bound with the saint’s hair, in which the natural curve of the wood and the pull of the binding drew the arms down. Whatever the historical origin of the form, the tradition has read meaning into it. The downward-sloping arms are seen as a sign of humility, of the cross bowing toward the world it redeems; some have read them as arms opened downward in embrace or in blessing over the land. The form distinguishes the Georgian cross at a glance from the equal-armed Greek cross and the long-shafted Latin cross, and so makes it legible as a national Christian sign — the cross of this people, given to this people’s apostle by the Mother of God. It is reproduced on church domes and gables, carved on stone crosses and tombs, illuminated in manuscripts, and struck on coins, and it remains in use as a Georgian Christian and national emblem into the present day.

The Cross in the Visual Tradition

The grapevine cross and the figure of St. Nino are woven through the visual culture of Christian Georgia. Antony Eastmond’s study of medieval Georgian royal imagery shows how Nino furnished the exemplar of the pious, divinely sanctioned woman in the iconographic program of the Georgian kingdom — a model standing behind the imagery of later sovereigns such as Queen Tamar (A. Eastmond, Royal Imagery in Medieval Georgia, Penn State Press, 1998). The drooping cross marks Georgian churches and crosses off from those of the surrounding Christian traditions, a sign of distinct ecclesial identity legible at a glance. In manuscript, fresco, and metalwork, the cross of Nino and the saint herself bearing it became fixed types of Georgian sacred art.

Faith Fused with Nationhood

The grapevine cross is the clearest single token of a fusion that runs through the whole Nino tradition: in Georgia, the Christian faith and the national identity are bound together so tightly that the symbol of the one is the symbol of the other. The cross of the enlightener of Georgia is at once a sacred relic, an ecclesial emblem, and a national sign — appearing in the heraldry and flags of the Georgian state across its history and into the modern era. This fusion is the subject of its own treatment in section 07 (see Nino and the Georgian Nation); the grapevine cross is its most visible expression. To raise the cross of St. Nino has meant, in Georgian history, at once to confess Christ and to stand for Georgia.

The Cross in War and Endurance

The grapevine cross was not only an emblem of devotion but a standard carried in the long Georgian struggle for survival. Through the centuries in which Georgia stood on the fault line between great empires — Roman and Sasanian, Byzantine and Arab, Mongol, Persian Safavid and Ottoman, and finally Russian — the cross of St. Nino, and the cruciform sign in its distinctive Georgian form, marked the Christian identity that the surrounding powers repeatedly sought to erase. To bear the cross of Nino in such a setting was to confess a faith for which Georgians were, time and again, called to die; the Georgian Church’s calendar is heavy with national martyrs and with whole companies of the slain (the tradition of the hundred thousand martyrs of Tbilisi under the Khwarazmians in 1226 is among the most remembered). The grapevine cross thus came to carry not only the sweetness of the vine but the weight of endurance — a sign at once of the Gospel and of a people’s refusal to surrender it. That the emblem of so embattled a Christianity should be a cross of vine wood, the plant of cultivation and peace, is among the quiet eloquences of the Georgian tradition.

A Note on Symbol and History

The repository’s discipline applies here as elsewhere. The symbolic and artistic history of the grapevine cross — its forms, its appearance in datable monuments, its role in royal imagery — is documented history and is reported as such, with Eastmond and the art-historical literature behind it. The origin of the cross in the Theotokos’s gift to Nino is developed-layer tradition, pinned to the Georgian Life and not asserted as fact (see The Cross of St. Nino). The two are kept distinct: that the grapevine cross is the emblem of Georgian Christianity is a fact of culture; that it descends from a vine-and-hair cross given by the Mother of God is the tradition the culture cherishes.

References

Eastmond, Antony. Royal Imagery in Medieval Georgia. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998.
The Life of St. Nino, in Constantine B. Lerner, The Wellspring of Georgian Historiography. London: Bennett & Bloom, 2004.
Wardrop, Marjory. “Life of St. Nino.” Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica V. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900.
On the grapevine cross in Georgian heraldry, art, and national symbolism: standard references on Georgian church art and national emblems.