Female Asceticism in Late Antique Georgian Literature

Abstract

This article examines the forms of female asceticism preserved in the so-called extended recension of the Life of St. Nino – a young Christian Virgin who converted the eastern Georgian kingdom of Iberia in the beginning of the fourth century. This study attempts to reinterpret the traditionally-established point of view about the origins of this composition and investigates several aspects of early Georgian Christianity. According to traditional scholarly opinion, the Vita of St. Nino was composed during the eighth and ninth centuries in order to reinforce the cult of the holy virgin who converted Iberia but the contextualization of the vita into the literary realm of late antiquity reveals more ancient origins of various episodes and layers of the vita. We see martyrs, missionaries, miracle workers, prophets and apostles in the images of Nino and her fellow women. Nino is a typical representative of the female ascetic community formed in early Christendom. Apparently, after the invention of the Georgian alphabet, the literary interactions between Georgians and other eastern Christian peoples intensified. As the Martyrdom of the holy Queen Šušanik reveals, already in the fifth century Georgians had translated the acts of martyrs which certainly influenced the subsequent development of Georgian literature. Of course, the Life has an overwhelmingly legendary and fictional character but its ‘sacred fictions’ originated much earlier than has generally been thought in scholarship.