Early Life and Monastic Calling
According to the synaxarion accounts, Nikoloz was born toward the close of the thirteenth century to a God-fearing couple who guided their son toward the spiritual life. At the age of twelve he traveled to the Klarjeti Wilderness, a center of Georgian monasticism, where he was tonsured a monk.
From Klarjeti he made his way to Jerusalem and remained in the holy city, settling at the Holy Cross Monastery, the historic Georgian foundation also known as the Jvari Monastery. There, the accounts relate, he burned with desire for the apostolic life and resolved to die a martyr's death.
Confession, Imprisonment, and Travels
In Jerusalem a group of hostile men arrested and tormented Nikoloz for publicly confessing the Christian faith, but a group of Christians succeeded in rescuing him from prison. Following the counsel of his abbot, he then relocated to a Georgian monastery on Cyprus.
By tradition, while he was praying before an icon of Saint John the Baptist on Cyprus, he heard a voice directing him to return to Jerusalem, where he was joined to an appointed spiritual guide. The sources further relate that at Damascus he entered a mosque and openly confessed Christ; he was seized, beaten, and imprisoned, lashed five hundred times, and after a period of some two months released.
Martyrdom
Recognized again for his confession, Nikoloz was brought before Dengiz, described in the accounts as an emir, and was condemned to death after refusing to convert to Islam. He was executed by the sword on Tuesday, October 19, in the year 1314.
The traditional accounts relate that after the beheading his severed head glorified God, and that his body was afterward burned. The Georgian Church keeps his memory on October 19, the day of his martyrdom, while February 12 is observed as his feast in the broader Orthodox calendar.
