Modern Scholarship: The Sources Studied

The modern scholarship on the sources of St. Nino, on which this collection rests. Stephen H. Rapp Jr. has reset the study of Georgian historiography, dating the Conversion of Kartli and the Life of St. Nino and reading them within a deeply Iranian as well as Byzantine context. Constantine B. Lerner’s translation made the Conversion of Kartli and the Life of St. Nino available in English; Marjory Wardrop’s earlier translation remains a touchstone; Tamila Mgaloblishvili has gathered the study of early Caucasian Christianity; and Antony Eastmond has analyzed Nino in the Georgian visual tradition. This file surveys the scholarship and the editions a reader should know.

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox / Pan-Orthodox

Why the Scholarship Matters Here

The whole method of this collection — separating Rufinus’s early, anonymous captive from the developed Georgian Life that names and elaborates her — depends on modern source-criticism that has dated the Georgian texts, traced their recensions, and read them in their historical context. This file gathers the principal scholars and editions, both as acknowledgment of the debt and as a guide for the reader who would go further. The source-critical framework these works supply is applied throughout (see Origins and the Sources and The Developed Hagiography).

Stephen H. Rapp Jr.

Stephen H. Rapp Jr. is the scholar who, more than any other writing in English, has reframed the study of medieval Georgian historiography. His two major works are:

Studies in Medieval Georgian Historiography: Early Texts and Eurasian Contexts. CSCO 601, Subsidia 113. Louvain: Peeters, 2003. The foundational study, the first of a planned trilogy, treating the Kartlis Tskhoveba (Georgian Chronicles) and the Conversion of Kartli (Mokʻcʻevay Kʻartʻlisay), their manuscripts (the Shatberdi Codex of 973, the Chelishi manuscript), their strata, and their dating. Rapp argues for a seventh-century core to the Conversion of Kartli — reading it as “a seventh-century declaration of autonomy” that asserts a distinct Kartvelian Christian identity — and for a ninth/early-tenth-century recension of the Life of St. Nino. This dating is the spine of the collection’s account of the developed layer.
The Sasanian World through Georgian Eyes: Caucasia and the Iranian Commonwealth in Late Antique Georgian Literature. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014 (reissued Routledge). Rapp’s argument that Georgian historiographic culture was shaped as deeply by the Iranian/Sasanian world as by Byzantium — important for understanding the pre-Christian Iberian cult (the idols Armazi and Zaden) that Nino’s mission displaced (see Miracles and the Mission).

Rapp’s general posture — that the Georgian texts “undoubtedly preserve many older, accurate memories” but must be read as shaped, politically motivated documents and not as neutral history — is the posture this collection adopts.

Constantine B. Lerner

The key modern English translation of the primary Georgian texts is the work of Constantine B. Lerner:

The Wellspring of Georgian Historiography: The Early Medieval Historical Chronicle “The Conversion of Kʿartʿli” and “The Life of St. Nino.” Translated with introduction, commentary, and indices. London: Bennett & Bloom, 2004.

This volume makes both the Conversion of Kartli chronicle and the Life of St. Nino available in English with scholarly apparatus, and it is the edition cited throughout this collection for the content of the developed Georgian layer. For the reader who wants the Georgian tradition’s own account of Nino in a reliable English version, Lerner is the indispensable book.

Marjory Wardrop

The older standard English translation, still valuable, is that of Marjory Scott Wardrop (1869–1909), the pioneering English translator of Georgian literature:

“Life of St. Nino.” Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica V. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900, pp. 3–88.

Wardrop’s translation, made with her brother Oliver Wardrop’s encouragement, opened the Life of St. Nino to English readers a century before Lerner and remains a touchstone; this collection cites it alongside Lerner.

Tamila Mgaloblishvili

Tamila Mgaloblishvili, a leading Georgian specialist in early Georgian Christian texts and manuscripts, edited the principal English-language collection on the subject:

Ancient Christianity in the Caucasus. Caucasus World / Iberica-Caucasica vol. 1. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon (RoutledgeCurzon), 1998.

This multi-author volume gathers the study of early Caucasian (especially Georgian) Christianity — the Christianization, the archaeology, and the Jewish-diaspora dimension that bears directly on the Robe-of-Christ tradition of Mtskheta (see The Robe of Christ Tradition). It launched the Iberica-Caucasica series.

Antony Eastmond and the Visual Tradition

For the figure of Nino and the grapevine cross in Georgian art and royal imagery, the standard study is Antony Eastmond’s:

Royal Imagery in Medieval Georgia. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998.

Eastmond analyzes the monumental painting, coins, and icons of the medieval Georgian kingdom and shows how Nino furnished the exemplar of the pious, divinely sanctioned woman in its iconographic program — background for the imagery of later sovereigns such as Queen Tamar (see Symbol of Georgian Christianity).

Cyril Toumanoff and the Chronology

Behind the dating disputes treated in this collection stands the chronological work of Cyril Toumanoff:

Studies in Christian Caucasian History. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1967.

Toumanoff reset the regnal chronology of the Iberian kings, revising Mirian III’s reign to 284–361 and placing the conversion in the 330s — the framework against which the conversion-dating debate is conducted (see the disputed note in The Darkness and the Prayer).

David Marshall Lang

For an accessible English account of the Georgian saints, including Nino, the older standard is David Marshall Lang:

Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1956.

Lang’s selections and translations introduced the Georgian hagiographical tradition, Nino included, to a general English readership.

What the Scholarship Has Established and What Remains Open

It is worth summarizing, at the end of a survey of the scholarship, what the modern study of the sources has firmly established about St. Nino and what remains genuinely open — for the value of the scholarship is precisely that it makes the confidence level of each claim legible (METHODOLOGY §6).

Firmly established. That the earliest account (Rufinus, c. 402/403, on Bacurius’s authority) names the apostle of Iberia an unnamed captive woman, and that the name Nino and the full biography belong to the later Georgian recensions; that those recensions (the Conversion of Kartli and the Life of St. Nino) are no earlier than the ninth and tenth centuries in their surviving form, with a possible seventh-century core and an eleventh-century reworking by Leonti Mroveli; that the conversion of Iberia falls within the Constantinian period; and that the Georgian texts are shaped, purposeful documents reflecting later concerns of Kartvelian identity, not neutral records (Rapp, Studies, 2003; Lerner, Wellspring, 2004).

Genuinely open. The exact year of the conversion (proposals span c. 312–337); St. Nino’s own dates (birth c. 280–296, death c. 321–340); the historicity of the biographical details (Cappadocia, the parents, the kinships); the precise relation of the Georgian Life to Rufinus and to the early Iberian tradition; and the ultimate origin of the name Nino. On all of these the scholarship offers ranges and hypotheses, not settled answers, and the collection reports them as such (see the structured notes throughout, and especially The Earliest Layer Assessed).

This division — between what is established and what is open — is the practical fruit of the source scholarship, and it is the backbone of the whole collection.

The Latin and Greek Sources

For the earliest layer the essential editions are Philip R. Amidon’s translation of Rufinus (The Church History of Rufinus of Aquileia, Books 10 and 11, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), with the Latin in Mommsen’s GCS edition; and the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers translations of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret for the Greek parallels (see Rufinus and the Captive Woman and Church Fathers).

A Note on Sources to Use and to Use Carefully

For the reader building on this collection, a brief practical guidance. The primary texts should be read in the scholarly translations: Amidon for Rufinus, the NPNF for the Greek historians, and Lerner (with Wardrop alongside) for the Georgian Conversion of Kartli and Life of St. Nino. The scholarship of Rapp, Toumanoff, Mgaloblishvili, and Eastmond is the reliable secondary foundation. The popular devotional Lives — on the calendars of the Orthodox Church in America, the Greek Archdiocese, and the Georgian Church, and on the various Orthodox websites — are valuable for the received form of the tradition and for the liturgical and devotional life of the cult, but they descend from the late, fuller recensions and present the developed Georgian biography as a seamless narrative; they should be read as the tradition’s portrait, not as critical history, and cross-checked against the scholarship for dates and source-claims. Wikipedia and OrthodoxWiki are useful for locating sources and surveying the range of scholarly positions (the dating spread, for instance) but, per METHODOLOGY §2.3, are never the terminal citation; the underlying primary or scholarly source is followed and cited instead. Applied consistently, this hierarchy of sources is what keeps the account of St. Nino honest about what is known on what authority.

References

Rapp, Stephen H., Jr. Studies in Medieval Georgian Historiography: Early Texts and Eurasian Contexts. CSCO 601, Subsidia 113. Louvain: Peeters, 2003.
Rapp, Stephen H., Jr. The Sasanian World through Georgian Eyes. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.
Lerner, Constantine B. The Wellspring of Georgian Historiography: The Early Medieval Historical Chronicle “The Conversion of Kʿartʿli” and “The Life of St. Nino.” London: Bennett & Bloom, 2004.
Wardrop, Marjory. “Life of St. Nino.” Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica V. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900, pp. 3–88.
Mgaloblishvili, Tamila, ed. Ancient Christianity in the Caucasus. Caucasus World / Iberica-Caucasica 1. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1998.
Eastmond, Antony. Royal Imagery in Medieval Georgia. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998.
Toumanoff, Cyril. Studies in Christian Caucasian History. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1967.
Lang, David Marshall. Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1956.
Amidon, Philip R., trans. The Church History of Rufinus of Aquileia, Books 10 and 11. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.