Feasts and Devotion: Ninooba

The liturgical commemoration and the living devotion to St. Nino. Her principal feast, Ninooba, falls on her repose, 14 January (Old Style) / 27 January (New Style); a second feast marks her entrance into Georgia, kept in May. This file sets out the feasts (correcting a spurious “October 27”), describes the devotion to the enlightener of Georgia in her homeland — where her name is among the most common borne by Georgian women — and in the Georgian diaspora, and situates her commemoration among the great national feasts of the Georgian Church.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox / Pan-Orthodox

A Note on the Calendar

The Georgian Orthodox Church, like the Russian, follows the Old Style (Julian) calendar for its fixed feasts. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Old Style 14 January corresponds to New Style 27 January. Sources sometimes differ over which number they label “Old” and which “New,” so the system is stated explicitly throughout this file.

Ninooba: The Feast of Her Repose

The principal feast of St. Nino, called Ninooba (ნინოობა, “St. Nino’s day”), commemorates her repose and falls on 14 January (Old Style) / 27 January (New Style). This is confirmed across the calendars of the Orthodox churches — the Georgian Church, the Orthodox Church in America, and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese all keep it (Orthodox Church in America, Lives of the Saints, January 14; Georgian Orthodox Church liturgical calendar). It is one of the great feasts of the Georgian Church year, marked by patriarchal services and by national observance, and it is the chief day on which the enlightener of Georgia is honored.

The Second Feast: Her Entrance into Georgia

There is a genuine second feast, commemorating St. Nino’s entrance into Kartli/Georgia — the beginning of her mission rather than its end. It is kept in May: in the Russian/OCA reckoning on 19 May (New Style) (Orthodox Church in America, “Entrance of Saint Nino the Enlightener into Georgia,” May 19), and given as 23 May in some Georgian listings. This is the authentic “arrival” feast.

A correction worth flagging: some popular sources assign St. Nino a feast on October 27, but this does not check out as a Georgian commemoration. No Orthodox calendar places Nino’s principal or secondary feast on that date. The likely source of the error is a confusion with an Armenian commemoration on 29 October (and there is also an older Roman Catholic commemoration on 15 December). The two genuine feasts are her repose (14 / 27 January) and her entrance into Georgia (19 May NS / 23 May).

[Disputed: A purported “October 27” feast of St. Nino is unsupported; no Orthodox calendar carries it. The two genuine feasts are her repose, 14 January (OS) / 27 January (NS) — Ninooba — and her entrance into Georgia, 19 May (NS) / 23 May in some Georgian calendars. The “October 27” date appears to confuse the Armenian commemoration of 29 October (an older Roman Catholic commemoration fell on 15 December). This collection follows the two attested Orthodox feasts.]

The Two Feasts and the Shape of the Year

That the Georgian Church keeps two feasts of St. Nino — her entrance into Georgia in May (the beginning of the mission) and her repose in January (its end) — frames the saint’s work within the liturgical year as a completed apostolic life: she comes, and she finishes her course. The pattern echoes the way the Church commemorates the apostles, whose comings and labors and deaths it keeps; for the apostle of Georgia, the Georgian Church marks both the arrival that began the conversion and the repose that crowned it. Around these two fixed points cluster the related commemorations — the holy king Mirian and queen Nana, the disciples Sidonia and Abiatar, Salome of Ujarma and Perozhavra, and the feast of the Robe and the Life-Giving Pillar at Svetitskhoveli (see The Robe of Christ Tradition) — so that the whole conversion of Iberia is woven through the Georgian calendar as a connected sacred history, with Nino at its center.

Devotion in Georgia

Devotion to St. Nino is woven into the daily life of Orthodox Georgia in a way few national saints can match. The clearest token is onomastic: Nino is among the most common names given to Georgian girls, a continual, living act of devotion across the generations. Her three great shrines — the tomb and relics at Bodbe in Kakheti (see Bodbe and the Relics), the living pillar of Svetitskhoveli at Mtskheta (see The Living Pillar), and the grapevine cross at Sioni Cathedral in Tbilisi (see The Cross of St. Nino) — draw great numbers of pilgrims, and Ninooba is a major day of national pilgrimage to Bodbe. Churches across Georgia are dedicated to her, and her image, bearing the drooping grapevine cross, is among the most recognizable in Georgian iconography (on the visual tradition, see Symbol of Georgian Christianity). The fusion of her cult with Georgian identity is treated in its own file (see Nino and the Georgian Nation).

The Hymnography and the Liturgical Portrait

The liturgical texts for Ninooba give the Church’s own compressed portrait of the saint, and they are worth reading alongside the source-critical account, because they show what the praying Church holds about her. The hymnography hails Nino as the apostle and enlightener of Georgia, the spiritual mother of the nation, the bearer of the cross given by the Theotokos, and the equal of the apostles in her labor — the same theological portrait the developed Life constructs, now in the form of praise. The troparion and the festal hymns dwell on the grapevine cross, on the conversion of King Mirian and the Iberian people, and on Nino’s apostolic standing among women; they do not dwell on the disputed dates or the documentary questions, because their concern is not historiography but the celebration of a holiness the Church has received. The relation between the liturgical portrait and the source-critical account is exactly the relation the repository’s methodology articulates: the hymns confess what the Church venerates, the source-criticism locates what is known on what authority, and the two are complementary rather than rival (see Equal-to-the-Apostles).

Devotion in the Diaspora

The devotion travels with the Georgian people. In the Georgian diaspora — and more broadly across the Orthodox world, where Nino is venerated as Equal-to-the-Apostles — parishes and communities are dedicated to St. Nino, and her feast is kept among the Georgian faithful abroad as a bond with the homeland and its church. Because she is honored not only as a Georgian national saint but as a saint of the universal Church (see Equal-to-the-Apostles), her commemoration appears on the calendars of Orthodox churches well beyond Georgia, and her story — the captive woman who converted a kingdom — has a reach beyond the bounds of any one nation.

See Also

References

  • Saint Nino, Equal of the Apostles, Enlightener of Georgia. Orthodox Church in America (oca.org), Lives of the Saints, January 14.
  • Entrance of Saint Nino the Enlightener into Georgia. Orthodox Church in America (oca.org), May 19.
  • Georgian Orthodox Church liturgical calendar (Ninooba, 14/27 January; the entrance feast). Used for the Georgian dating.
  • On the “October 27” confusion: the Armenian commemoration of 29 October and the older Roman Catholic 15 December commemoration (standard hagiographical reference works), used to identify the error.