Ioane-Zosime was the 10th century Georgian

Georgia (country)

Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

 Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

 monk and religious writer known for his liturgical compilations and the hymns dedicated to the Georgian language.

Biographical details on Ioane-Zosime are scarce beyond the fact that he was one of the numerous expatriate Georgian clerics active at the monastery of Mar Saba

Mar Saba

The Great Lavra of St. Sabbas the Sanctified, known in Arabic as Mar Saba , is a Greek Orthodox monastery overlooking the Kidron Valley in the West Bank east of Bethlehem. The traditional date for the founding of the monastery by Saint Sabas of Cappadocia is the year 483 and today houses around 20...

 in Palestine

Palestine

Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

 from where he moved, probably fleeing the Arab rule

Muslim conquest of Syria

The Muslim conquest of Syria occurred in the first half of the 7th century, and refers to the region known as the Bilad al-Sham, the Levant, or Greater Syria...

, to Mount Sinai

Mount Sinai

Mount Sinai , also known as Mount Horeb, Mount Musa, Gabal Musa , Jabal Musa meaning "Moses' Mountain", is a mountain near Saint Catherine in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. A mountain called Mount Sinai is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus in the Torah and the Bible as well as the Quran...

 early in the 970s. His voluminous body of work dates from between 949 and 987. Of the three surviving manuscripts of Ioane-Zosime's Mar-Saba period, two – the collections of hymns of 949 and 954 – are the most important. On Mt. Sinai, Ioane-Zosime principally engaged in bookbinding, collating and copying. In his hymnographic compilations and chronologic treatises, Ioane-Zosime provides a detailed list of sources as well as an encyclopedically organized calendar of saint’s feast days and the chronology of the Georgian liturgy. He also collected obsolete texts which he frequently cites, comparing usage in different ecclesiastical centers and distinguishing Georgian from Greek sources. One of his anthologies of chants ends with Ioane-Zosime’s "testament" written as an elaborate acrostic

Acrostic

An acrostic is a poem or other form of writing in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out a word or a message. As a form of constrained writing, an acrostic can be used as a mnemonic device to aid memory retrieval. A famous...

 hymn in which reading the first and last letter of each stanza gives us the name of St. George.

Ioane-Zosime's best known hymn is "Praise and Exaltation of the Georgian Language" (ქებაჲ და დიდებაჲ ქართულისა ენისაჲ; kebay da didebay kartulisa enisay), a mystic poem, full of numerological symbolism and biblical allusions, viewing the author’s native tongue as esoteric, juxtaposing Georgian with Greek – the official language of the Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...

 – and claiming a unique, sacred role for it. Furthermore, Ioane-Zosime imbues the Georgian language with religious connotation as the tongue to be used on the Judgment Day.

External links

• Mikaberidze, Alexander, ed., Ioane Zosime. Dictionary of Georgian National Biography. Retrieved on 2008-08-06 Authors: Ioane Zosime (X century). From "Anthology of Georgian classical literature" by UNESCO
  UNESCO
  The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
  
   Project. National Parliamentary Library of Georgia
  National Parliamentary Library of Georgia
  The National Parliamentary Library of Georgia is a governmental organization under the Parliament of Georgia. It is the main book depository of Georgia, as well as the most important cultural, educational, scientific, informational and methodological centre....
  
  . Retrieved on 2008-08-06