Nicolas Preud'homme: Andrew the Apostle, Samżivari and Christianization in the Land of Mesxians

• Centre for Advanced Studies
• Fellows Brunch

From the 3rd and 4th centuries CE, a tradition dealing with the evangelizing mission of Andrew the Apostle around the Black Sea emerged in the Roman East. The diverse hagiographic developments of this legend are approximately contemporary with the earliest archaeological testimonies proving the progress of Christianization in these territories from Colchis to Cimmerian Bosphorus. These newly established Christian communities, in search of a patron saint able to legitimize their presence, strove to recover the sacredness of ancient polytheistic cults. The Georgian collection of chronicles named Life of K‘art‘li reports one of these recoveries, through the story of the widow Samżivari of Acqueri who welcomes Andrew the Apostle visiting the territory of Samc‘xe. The mention of a Mesxian sanctuary dedicated to Artemis and Apollo is reminiscent in some ways of the cults in honour of Phrixos and Leucothea evoked by Strabo and Tacitus about Moschians and Iberians. The structuralist analysis conducted by the French scholar Georges Charachidzé reveals interesting links between the legend of Samżivari and the mythological accounts about the goddess Samżimari honoured in contemporary Georgian paganism. Goddess “endowed with a necklace,” Samżimari has retained the attributes of ancient religious practices featuring priestesses and sacred female characters adorned with jewels whose some traces might have been kept in archaeology. Samżivari of Acqueri could thus designate one of these women playing a major role in the ancient religious life of Caucasian regional sanctuaries. With Nino, whose tradition also finds an origin during the fourth century, Samżivari appears as another charismatic woman’s figure put forward in the literary traditions of Christianization in Southern Caucasia, despite her pagan reminiscences.