Saint Nina, Equal-to-the-Apostles and Enlightener of Georgia

Nina is honoured as the woman who brought Christianity to Iberia, the eastern Georgian kingdom of Kartli, in the early 4th century. Her Life says she was born in Cappadocia and grew up in Jerusalem, and that in a vision the Mother of God gave her a cross of vine branches, which she bound with her own hair. She came to the capital, Mtskheta, as a stranger, calling herself a captive.

According to the Georgian tradition, she healed a child and then Queen Nana, and King Mirian, after losing his sight while hunting and recovering it when he prayed to Christ, was baptized with his household. Mirian asked Emperor Constantine for a bishop and priests, and the first churches were built in Mtskheta. Nina preached in the mountains of Kakheti and died at Bodbe, c. 335, where she was buried. A cross of vines tied in her way is still a symbol of the Georgian Church.