Sioni

Inside Sioni Cathedral, north of the iconostasis, a cross with the ends of its crossbar lowered is kept. According to church tradition, in the fourth century the preacher Nino tied it from grapevine with her own hair. She sought the baptism of Kartli, an ancient kingdom in the east of present-day Georgia; King Mirian accepted Christianity, and it became the state religion. This is why the Cross of Nino is revered as one of the principal shrines of the Georgian Church.

Sioni is the Georgian form of the name Zion. The church is dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God and is named after Mount Zion in Jerusalem, like several other Georgian cathedrals. For centuries, Sioni Cathedral in Tbilisi was the city’s main episcopal church. This explains both the relic’s location and what happened here after its return.

In the mid-eighteenth century, Metropolitan Roman secretly took the cross to Russia and gave it to Tsarevich Bakar, the son of the Georgian king Vakhtang VI. Bakar’s family kept the shrine on its estate for more than half a century. King Erekle II tried to get it back, but unsuccessfully. In eighteen oh one, Bakar’s grandson Giorgi presented the cross to the Russian emperor Alexander I. The emperor ordered the relic returned to Tiflis.

On April ninth, eighteen oh two, General Karl Knorring, commander in chief of the Russian troops in the Caucasus, brought the cross. The shrine was solemnly placed in Sioni Cathedral. However, Knorring had also come to carry out another order from Alexander I: to announce the abolition of the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti.

Three days later, the general gathered Georgian princes and nobles in the cathedral. These people lived from estates worked by dependent peasants, and their offices and status were tied to the royal house of Bagrationi. The imperial manifesto promised to preserve their estate rights and land, but required them to acknowledge that the heir of the last king would not take the throne.

Knorring ordered soldiers to surround Sioni Cathedral. Inside, the manifesto was read out and an oath to the Russian emperor was demanded; those who refused were taken into custody. In May, a new imperial administration opened in Tiflis, and members of the Bagrationi family began to be exiled to Russia. Knorring himself was soon recalled, but the Georgian throne was not restored.

The cross he brought remained in Sioni Cathedral. It is still in the niche north of the iconostasis—the place where it was put three days before the oath in the surrounded cathedral.