Mtskheta
City at the meeting of the Kura and Aragvi rivers, north of Tbilisi. The Georgian accounts of Nino call it the royal residence of Kartli and set the conversion of King Mirian and the building of his church here.
Mtskheta lies where the Aragvi joins the Kura (Mtkvari), about twenty kilometres north of Tbilisi. The Conversion of Kartli calls it “a great city, the royal residence”, and says that Nino lived outside its walls and that the king built a church in the royal garden (Conversion of Kartli Wardrop, p. 62). The Life of Nino tells how the central pillar of that church, cut from a cedar in the garden, was set in place by a miracle and afterwards honoured as a source of healing (Life of Nino pp. 38–41). See the Conversion of Georgia.
What happened here
- c. AD 326–337, estimated dateThe Conversion of Georgia
Rufinus, about 402, tells how a captive Christian woman brought the king and queen of the Iberians to the faith and how they asked Constantine for clergy. Georgian tradition names her Nino and the king Mirian and sets the story at Mtskheta.