Mikhail Sabinin

Mikhail Sabinin ( georg. მიხეილ საბინინი, Russian Михаил Павлович Сабинин, religious name Gobron, * 1845, † May 10, 1900 in Moscow) was a Russian- Georgian monk, historian of the Georgian Orthodox Church, hagiographer and painter of religious images.

Sabinin was the son of Pawel Sabinin, a Russian priest in Tver, and his wife, a Georgian. After attending secondary school in Tbilisi in the 1860s, he attended the Theological Academy Saint Petersburg and earned a master's degree with the work history of the Georgian Church until the end of the 6th century ( История грузинской церкви до конца VI в. , Printed 1877), the first comprehensive treatment of this topic in the Russian language.

He traveled in different landscapes of Georgia and studied the monuments of Christian architecture. He copied frescoes and icons, drew on legends and collected manuscripts. In St. Petersburg, he received the tonsure and the monk's name Gobron.

In the 1880s, he lived in the famous Athoskloster Iviron. In 1882 he published The Paradise of Georgia ( საქართველოს სამოთხე ), a comprehensive volume with biographies of the most revered Orthodox saints in Georgia. In the same year he published the Passio of Eustathius of Mtskheta, which is expected to be the oldest documents of the Georgian literature.

In 1898, he came into conflict with the Russian Exarchate in Tbilisi because he had criticized the Russification of Georgia. He was transferred to Moscow. There, two years later he died of pneumonia.