Georgian Christian tradition credits its conversion to a woman rather than a king's own initiative. Nino, a captive or missionary of debated origin, is said to have arrived in the kingdom of Kartli, eastern Georgia, in the early fourth century carrying a cross bound from vine branches with strands of her own hair, a form still reproduced as the distinctive Georgian cross. She is credited with healing Queen Nana and, through her, converting King Mirian III, who declared Christianity Kartli's religion around 326 to 337, making Georgia among the very earliest states to adopt the faith, alongside Armenia.
The church that grew from this conversion developed its own liturgical language and script, Old Georgian, and by the tenth and eleventh centuries had built a distinctive tradition of church architecture and polyphonic chant found nowhere else in the Orthodox world. Georgian monasteries, both inside the kingdom and at outposts as far as Mount Athos and Jerusalem, made the country a significant center of Byzantine-influenced Christian scholarship through the medieval period despite its small size and exposed position between competing regional powers.
Autocephaly, self-governance recognized by the wider Orthodox communion, was established early but was not permanent: the Georgian church lost its independent status when Russia annexed the kingdom in the early nineteenth century.