ABSTRACT
Traditionally it is the composite work The Conversion of Georgia (მოქცევაი ქართლისაი) which is regarded as the primary Georgian historical chronicle. Its core is a hagiographical Life of the legendary Saint Nino, believed to have brought Christianity to central Georgia around AD 335. But the Conversion has a detailed relative and absolute chronology, unparalleled in hagiographic and patristic literature, and certain episodes are corroborated by Roman sources, such as Tyrannius Rufinus’ Historia ecclesiastica of AD 403. For all its contradictions — the elements of folklore, traditional magic, and biblical reminiscences — we may, guardedly, treat the Conversion as a historical source. Rufinus gives a Georgian prince Bakurus (Bakar?) as his source for accounts of Nino’s miracles, in particular the raising of the miraculous ‘living pillar’. Other Byzantine writers identify Nino as the Theognoste, ‘she who made God known’ to the Iberians.
