Christianization of Iberia
According to Roman historian Sozomen, this led the king's "large and warlike barbarian nation to confess Christ and renounce the religion of their fathers",[1] as the polytheistic Georgians had long-established anthropomorphic idols, known as the "Gods of Kartli".
[5] Prior to the escalation of the Armeno-Georgian ecclesiastical rivalry[6] and the Christological controversies, their Caucasian Christianity was extraordinarily inclusive, pluralistic and flexible that only saw the rigid ecclesiological hierarchies established much later, particularly as "national" churches crystallised from the 6th century.
[7] Despite the tremendous diversity of the region, the Christianization process was a pan-regional and a cross-cultural phenomenon in the Caucasus,[8] Eurasia's most energetic and cosmopolitan zones throughout the late antiquity, hard enough to place Georgians and Armenians unequivocally within any one major civilization.
[12] Its adoption of Christianity meant that King Mirian III made a cultural and historical choice with profound international implications, though his decision was not tied with Roman diplomatic initiatives.
[18] On the eve of the historic Christianization, the king and the queen were quickly acculturated Georgianized foreigners,[19] the physical fusion of Iranian and Greek cultures.
Nevertheless, outsiders such as Greeks,[22] Iranians, Armenians and Syrians continued to play a prominent role in the administration of the Georgian church.
The only major thing that differs in these Greco-Roman accounts from the Georgian tradition is Nino being an unnamed Roman captive who was brought to Iberia.
[29] When she reached the capital, she found herself at the pagan holiday held for the god Armazi, with King Mirian taking part in the ceremony.
[31] He initially opposed his wife's new religion until he, too, encountered a miracle one day while hunting, riding and "looking over Uplistsikhe" through the woods of Tkhoti mountain when he suddenly was surrounded by the threatening darkness of a solar eclipse.
[36] When the church was completed, the king sent ambassadors to the emperor Constantine the Great requesting that he send clergy to help establish the faith in the kingdom.
Pre-Christian Iberia had a Jewish community as early as the times of Nebuchadnezzar II,[46] and there were close and deep connections in the Iberian ideology of the sacred with the holiness of Jerusalem.
This Iberian fascination with Jerusalem and Zion largely predates the claims of Georgia's unprecedented "Byzantinizing"[47][48] Bagrationi monarchs to have descended directly from King David.
[52] Despite the royal enthusiasm for the new religion, and its adoption within court circles, Christianity took root slowly in the rural districts of the kingdom.
[53] Nino and her entourage met hostility from highlanders inhabiting the southeastern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains, but ultimately, they were persuaded to surrender their idols.
[55] Sometime in the 530s or 540s, the Thirteen Assyrian Fathers arrived in Mtskheta,[56] whose activities would result in the establishment of some sixteen monasteries and other churches across Georgia, many of whose sixth-century foundations still can be observed today.
[61] An eclipse per model ΔT≈7500 with solar azimuth angle being about 290°[62] would make king and his fellow hunters – or royal entourage – witness the totality of it, but not the townspeople nearby.
[64] During the eclipse of AD 319, observers at lower elevations near Mtskheta, would have seen the sky grow prematurely dark and then slightly brighter, without the Sun reappearing over the horizon.
L. V. Morrison and F. R. Stephenson according to their geophysical model ΔT≈7450±180°, do not contradict this scenario and an intriguing possibility,[65] but it remains an open question whether the ancient and medieval written accounts are trustworthy and really based on actual facts.
