George Mtsire of Georgia

George Mtsire, known as George the Lesser or George the Minor, was an eleventh-century Georgian monk of the Athonite Georgian tradition. He is remembered chiefly as the disciple and biographer of George the Hagiorite (George Mtatsmindeli, 1009–1065), the hegumen of the Iviron monastery on Mount Athos whose translations of the Scriptures and the writings of the Church Fathers into Georgian shaped the medieval Georgian Church. The Orthodox Church in America's synaxarion commemorates George the Lesser on April 4.

George the Lesser belonged to the circle of Georgian monks who gathered around George the Hagiorite at Iviron, the Georgian monastery on the Holy Mountain. After his master's death in 1065, he composed a Life of George the Hagiorite, the principal source for that saint's biography. Among Georgian scholars the prevailing view is that the compiler of the Life was himself a companion and disciple named George, and it became customary to distinguish him from his more famous master by the epithet "the Lesser" (Mtsire).

Little is recorded of George the Lesser's own life apart from his role as disciple and biographer. Sources place his activity in the late eleventh century, with documentary traces extending to after 1083; his birthplace, education, and monastic offices are not preserved. His enduring significance lies in the hagiographical work he produced, which transmitted to later generations the memory of the Georgian fathers of Iviron and their labors in Byzantine monasticism.