Saint Nicholas Catholicos of Georgia

Saint Nicholas was a sixteenth-century Catholicos-Patriarch of Georgia and a member of the royal Bagrationi dynasty of Kakheti. Born around 1529 as a son of King Levan I of Kakheti (who reigned from 1520 to 1574), he set aside the prospects of his royal estate and embraced the monastic life. He was enthroned as Catholicos of All Georgia in 1584 and led the Georgian Church until his death in 1591. He is commemorated on February 18.

According to the tradition recorded in the synaxarion, Nicholas preferred the monastic habit and the discipline of the ascetic life to the privileges of his inheritance. After King Levan's death the throne of Kakheti passed to Nicholas's elder brother, Alexandre II, who reigned from 1574 to 1605, and the future Catholicos supported his brother while pursuing his own vocation in the Church.

Nicholas's catholicate fell during a difficult period in eastern Georgia marked by Persian incursions, and he served his people both as a spiritual leader and as a diplomat. The Georgian chronicle Life of Kartli records his enthronement as taking place on Saturday, February 28, 1584. He maintained contact with the Church of Russia, corresponding with the Russian Patriarch during the later 1580s. He died in 1591 and was later numbered among the saints of the Georgian Orthodox Church.