The Cross of St. Nino: The Grapevine Cross

The cross of St. Nino, made of vine wood and bound with her own hair, given her (in the developed Georgian tradition) by the Theotokos to carry to Iberia. With its arms drooping downward, it became the distinctive Georgian cross and the emblem of Georgian Christianity. This file tells the origin-legend, describes the cross and its later history of concealment, removal, and return, and identifies its present home — Sioni Cathedral of the Dormition in Tbilisi — while pinning each claim to its source and marking the cross, like the Theotokos vision, as a feature of the developed layer.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox / Pan-Orthodox

The Origin in the Vision

The grapevine cross belongs to the developed Georgian Life, not to Rufinus’s early account, which knows nothing of it. In the Life, the Theotokos appears to Nino during her formation in Jerusalem, commissions her to evangelize Iberia, and gives her a cross made of grapevine (vine) wood with the words, “Receive this cross as a shield against visible and invisible enemies.” On waking, Nino finds the cross in her hands and binds it with strands of her own hair (Life of St. Nino, in Lerner, Wellspring, 2004; Wardrop, “Life of St. Nino,” Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica V, 1900). The vision is treated as the hinge of the mission in section 03 (see The Developed Hagiography); here the focus is the cross itself.

A variant the collection flags: most accounts have Nino bind the cross with her own hair, but some recensions have the Theotokos herself bind it with Nino’s hair. The detail is small, and the recensions split; the binding-with-hair is constant across them.

[Disputed: The grapevine cross and the vision of the Theotokos that bestows it are features of the developed Georgian Life of St. Nino (in Lerner, Wellspring, 2004; Wardrop, 1900), with no counterpart in Rufinus’s earliest account (HE 10.11). Recensions differ on whether Nino binds the vine cross with her own hair or the Theotokos binds it for her; the binding-with-hair is constant. The cross is reported as the Georgian tradition transmits it, not as documented from Nino’s own time.]

The Drooping-Armed Cross

The cross of St. Nino has a distinctive form: its horizontal arms slope or droop downward rather than crossing at right angles — a shape tradition attributes to the natural curve of the vine and to the binding that drew the arms down. This Georgian cross (in Georgian, the jvari, often called the “grapevine cross”) became the characteristic emblem of Georgian Christianity, distinguishing Georgian crosses from the Greek and Latin forms. It appears on Georgian churches, manuscripts, coins, and banners, and is today carried at the head of the modern Georgian national flag’s heritage and at the heart of the Georgian Church’s iconography (on the visual tradition, see A. Eastmond, Royal Imagery in Medieval Georgia, Penn State Press, 1998). The vine, with its deep biblical resonance — Christ the true vine (John 15:1) — and its place in Georgia’s own ancient wine culture, made the grapevine cross a peculiarly fitting national symbol, fusing the Gospel and the land (see Symbol of Georgian Christianity).

The Later History of the Relic

The cross venerated as St. Nino’s has a long history of concealment and movement through Georgia’s many invasions. By tradition it was kept first at Mtskheta and then, through centuries of Persian, Arab, and other incursions, repeatedly hidden and moved for safekeeping — at times taken into the mountains of the Caucasus and concealed, at times sheltered in Armenia. In the troubled early-modern and modern periods it passed, with the Georgian royal family, out of Georgia: it was taken to Russia in the era of the Russian annexation of Georgia (turn of the nineteenth century), and was kept there until it was returned to Tbilisi in the early nineteenth century and placed in the cathedral. The cross’s removals and return are part of the cult’s history and are reported here as the tradition and the Georgian Church record them; the precise dates of some of its medieval movements are not securely documented.

[Disputed: The medieval history of St. Nino’s cross — its repeated concealment during invasions, its sheltering at times in the Caucasus mountains and in Armenia, and the dates of its movements — is known from tradition and later Georgian church records rather than from contemporary documentation. Its removal to Russia with the Georgian royal family at the turn of the 19th century and its subsequent return to Tbilisi are recorded by the Georgian Church; the exact dates of the earlier movements are not securely fixed.]

Present Location: Sioni Cathedral

The cross of St. Nino is kept today at the Sioni Cathedral of the Dormition (the Tbilisi Sioni), the historic cathedral of the Georgian capital, where it is venerated as one of the holiest relics of the Georgian Orthodox Church. Pilgrims and faithful venerate it there, and it remains, with the Robe of Christ at Svetitskhoveli and the relics at Bodbe, among the chief tangible foci of devotion to St. Nino in Georgia (see Bodbe and the Relics). Its presence at Sioni binds the cult of the enlightener of Georgia to the living heart of the capital’s church life.

The Cross and the Vine

The choice of vine wood for the cross, in the developed tradition, is not incidental, and the Georgian sources make something of it. The vine is the plant of Christ’s own self-description — “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman” (John 15:1) — and of the Eucharist, in the fruit that becomes the Blood of the Lord; it is also, in Georgia, the plant of the land itself, for Georgia is among the most ancient wine-cultures on earth. A cross of vine wood thus preaches, in its very material, both the Gospel and its taking root in Georgian soil: the true vine grafted into a land of vines. That the cross should be bound with the apostle’s own hair adds a further note — the saint gives of her own body to hold together the sign she carries, a small foreshadowing of the self-offering that her whole mission embodies. The developed tradition’s instinct in these details is sound: it has made the national cross a compact emblem of incarnation and of mission, and the symbolism is drawn out further in the companion file (see Symbol of Georgian Christianity).

The Cross as Sign of the Mission

In the developed tradition the grapevine cross is not a mere relic but the instrument of the mission: it is the cross over which Nino prays in her healings, the cross she raises in preaching, the sign by which the idols fall and the king is brought to vow he will “raise a cross and worship it.” That a laywoman’s vine-and-hair cross, given by the Mother of God, should become the national emblem of a Christian kingdom is the kind of paradox the Nino tradition delights in — power made perfect in the humblest of instruments. Its significance as the symbol of Georgian Christianity and identity is developed in the companion file.

See Also

• Symbol of Georgian Christianity — the cross as national and ecclesial emblem
• The Developed Hagiography — the Theotokos vision in which the cross is given
• The Traditional Biography — Nino’s formation and commission
• Bodbe and the Relics — the other chief relics and shrines of St. Nino
• Georgia (Autocephalous Churches) — the Georgian Church that venerates the cross at Sioni

References

• 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.
• Eastmond, Antony. Royal Imagery in Medieval Georgia. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. (The visual tradition of the cross and Georgian royal imagery.)
• On the cross’s present keeping at Sioni Cathedral, Tbilisi, and its history of removal and return: Georgian Orthodox Church sources and standard references on the Tbilisi Sioni.