This matchup sounds like a Southern football rivalry… but it’s actually a global showdown: Orléans vs. Georgia. 🇫🇷🇬🇪
That’s right… Joan of Arc vs. Nino of Georgia.
Will Nino send Joan packing on a midnight train? 🚂
Or will the People’s Champion charge ahead with sword and shield? ⚔️
Two nations’ favorite daughters. Two fearless defenders of the faith. One coveted spot in the Elate Eight.
And waiting there? None other than Peter, who just edged out Thomas by two percent in an apostolic nail-biter.
Who advances? That part is up to you. Vote now.
Nino of Georgia
There’s no shame in admitting you hadn’t heard of Nino before this year’s Lent Madness. I mean, I hadn’t, but now I’m basically an expert, and I’m fully convinced that this is one of the most overlooked and under-celebrated holy women in history.
Everything about Nino’s story is larger than life. She was born in Cappadocia but was raised by nuns in Jerusalem and it was there, in childhood, that she fell in love with Jesus and religious life. Because she was a superstar, she was chosen to go to Rome. There, she made such a name for herself as an evangelist that the anti-Christian emperor pursued her until she was forced to flee to Armenia with a crew of 35 virgins (or so, some accounts say 37!). She baptized all the virgins herself.
In Armenia, another king wanted to get rid of her. (Imagine having one king try to get rid of you, let alone 2?!) And so she fled again and finally reached the land with which she would always be associated, the Kingdom of Iberia which is the modern-day country of Georgia.
If you try to google Nino, you might be confused, since the word is often associated with the child Jesus. The “Santo Nino” is revered by Filipino Catholics, an image of the baby with arms outstretched. But Saint Nino of Georgia’s name is more ancient than a romance language’s association with the child. Some research suggests a link to the Sumerian word "Nin," which means "Lady" or "Mistress." This root is found in the names of ancient deities like Inanna (Nin-ana), hinting at a "great mother" or divine teacher connection.
And Nino is certainly great. Once she reached Georgia, buoyed by a visitation from Mary the Godbearer, she converted hundreds of people to Christianity, until she finally reached the Queen Nana and her husband King Mirian, a third king who wanted nothing to do with her! But with this one, Nino’s religious power prevailed. Seeing his wife healed through the waters of baptism and her new Christian faith, he came to Nino and asked to be baptized.
Nino had fulfilled the mission from God she received at Mary’s visitation: convert the people of Iberia. To this day, she is the “Enlightener of Georgia,” and the Orthodox Church has given her the title “Equal to the Apostles.” But did you know that there is an Episcopal Church in Tbilisi, Georgia? And a Georgian Episcopal Mission in Brooklyn, New York, both indirect legacies of Nino’s influence on the Christian landscape in Georgia.
The best part about Nino, though, is that once she had converted an entire country (to-do list, done!), she retreated to the mountains and spent the rest of her life chilling with other nuns, her OG crew. Now that’s retirement!
Just before the turn of the 4th century, a young girl was born to a Greek-speaking Roman family in Cappadocia. The baby, Nino, would go on to receive the title “Equal to the Apostles” from the Orthodox Church for her role as the “Enlightener of Georgia” -- the woman who converted an entire country.
Nino had prominent parents in Roman society and so was raised by a nun in Jerusalem, immersed in the rhythms of early Roman Christianity. Perhaps because she showed promise as a future religious herself, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who was also her uncle, helped her make her way to Rome. There she met and served the lady Hripsime, who had caught the eye of the Emperor Diocletian, a notoriously anti-Christian figure. To avoid his pursuit, with the help of Nino, Hripsime and her companions fled to Armenia. Along the way, Nino baptized the whole crew of women. These “35 virgins” went on to preach the word of God throughout Armenia.
They did not escape the notice of nobility in their new location, however, and soon King Tiridates III called for their beheading. Hripsime was martyred, but Nino made her way out and over to the Kingdom of Iberia, the modern-day country of Georgia.
There, she had her famous vision: Mary the Godbearer extending a cross of grapevines, with the instruction that Mary would be her shield in the work of converting the people there to the saving faith in Jesus. Nino received the grapevine cross and tied it with her own hair. Today, the “grapevine cross” is distinct for its drooping arms.
Nino traveled all over the Kingdom of Iberia converting people to Christianity. Eventually, she encountered Queen Nana, who had long suffered from debilitating illness. Nino healed her, and baptized her. Her husband, King Mirian, initially rejected his wife’s conversion, until his own miracle occurred. After being struck blind on an excursion, he prayed to the God of his wife and begged for healing. With his sight restored, he, too, was baptized, and became the first Christian King of Iberia, securing the role of Christianity in the kingdom. Nino, seeing that she had fulfilled the instructions from her vision, she retreated to the mountains, where she spent her remaining days living a monastic life.
Today, Nino is a Georgian national hero, whose faith laid the groundwork for the Georgian Orthodox Church. The name Nino is still to this day the most popular name for women in the country.
— Julia Offinger
Joan of Arc
Let's get the wondrously ridiculous part out of the way up front: Joan of Arc is the only person in recorded history to be condemned and canonized by the same institution. The Catholic Church burned her as a heretic in 1431 and declared her a saint in 1920. Now, the Church did eventually come around…it just took 489 years.
In the meantime, she has accumulated a patronage list that covers a surprising amount of ground: France, obviously, but also soldiers, prisoners, and, perhaps most fittingly, people ridiculed for their piety. If you have ever been the person who said grace at a restaurant and caught a sideways look, she is apparently your girl.
Something her accusers probably wished they hadn't pressed her on: Joan never actually killed anyone in battle. She went into combat carrying her banner rather than a weapon quite deliberately. She refused to take a life. She was shot with an arrow between the neck and shoulder and still returned to the field to lead the final assault, all with a banner as her beacon. When asked whether she preferred her banner or her sword, she had an answer ready:
"Better — forty times better — my banner than my sword!"
Then there is the matter of that sword. Before her first campaign, Joan sent men to a church in Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois with instructions to dig behind the altar. Her voices had described it to her: ancient, rusted, marked with five crosses. To everyone’s great surprise, it was exactly where she said it would be. When the rust was cleaned away, the five crosses appeared. For the skeptics in the room, evidence suggests she had never been to that church.
Her trial transcripts are one of the great documents of the medieval period — and one of the more remarkable examples of a teenager refusing to be outmaneuvered by grown men, much less a room full of hostile clerics. When pressed with a question designed to trap her, she replied:
"Children say that people are hanged sometimes for speaking the truth."
And when she left her village for the first time to seek the king, she said not "I am not afraid" which is the version that gets stitched onto throw pillows. She said something with considerably more edge to it:
"I do not fear the soldiers, for my road is made open to me. It was for this that I was born!"
She was nineteen when she died. She never learned to read or write. Everything we know of her in her own voice comes from the transcript of a trial designed to destroy her. That her voice comes through so clearly anyway is, in its own way, a kind of miracle.
— Samantha Smith
64 comments on “Nino of Georgia vs. Joan of Arc”
Again, I'm voting for the underdog. This time: Nino
Me too,
With the middle nmae Joan, I had to vote for her.
Why does the final tally on the page show that Peter won, but yet you said he lost by 1%?
It's another mystery
The tally does indicate that
Peter won by a nose. I did vote for Thomas. I would like to know for sure. I prayed a lot over that one.
Still don’t know who won yesterday! Can’t find where results are supposed to be!this year is very unorganized! Nino gets my vote, just to be contrary. I’m a Daddy’s girl too
Check the brackets section, it's posted there. Agree this should be part of each days description
Hello all, the results have been in every days description, including today’s! Are they not appearing on your screen when you read the blog?
We’re used to having yesterday’s results at the beginning of today’s blurb. In this day of media scanning, few read further down.
The winner is mentioned above the video but not the number of votes or percentage. And those sets of numbers are differently quoted throughout these comments.
Why is there not one and only one summary set of numbers who won by however many votes??? I asked about discrepancy before at Edith Stein versus Amy Carmichael, when the SEC video did not match what was posted at the end of the blogs match-up between those two. But no one could be bothered to respond...
I agree, it's hard to find. It's almost a throw-away remark at the end of opening. Using "in yesterday's match..."
would help me
Here's yesterday's tally (click the link to Peter vs Thomas at the top R of this page to see it for yourselves):
Peter n52.35% 5,694 votes
Thomas 47.76% 5,183 votes
Are you making Lent Madness this year deliberately difficult? Nino vs Joan is the trickiest yet! Can't we have both??
I eventually went for Nino, as I learnt more about her than about Joan, i.e. I knew about Joan already and had never heard of Nino.
Bless the Lord for all his female saints!
Voted for Nino, but the narrative needs fixing. Peter beat Thomas by over 4%. Look at the 3/17 vote totals! Stop the steal!
St Joan is also the patron saint of theater nerds thanks to George Bernard Shaw. I’m voting for her for the second time in this year’s tournament.
I thought yesterday was hard but today is even worse. I went for Joan in the end as she was an inspiration to me as a teenager and because it's important to recognise that the church can be wrong and sometimes does need to make amends/change course.
Back in the summer of 2017, I was the Spiritual Director for a J2A pilgrimage that consisted of seven teen aged girls. We were walking in the steps of Jeanne d’Arc. They are all now young adults, college grads, traveling into responsibilities grown-ups. So…my vote is for Joan and her modern day admirers.
That sounds like an amazing journey with and for those young women. As the mother of two daughters (now both 20-something) you have my thanks.
Time to give Joan her due. I think she gets passed over because her story is so familiar to us, but if you ever read even part of the trial transcripts, you would have to be impressed by this young woman, firm in her convictions, speaking her truth to power, with the institutions of the day arrayed against her.
Happy to have opportunity to vote for Joan.
Well, although I am no scholar of any kind, I was familiar with Joan; however, I have never heard of Nino. I was beyond mildly impressed. As a Daughter of the King, we take three vows; to love, to serve, and to evangelize. We say evangelize in an Episcopalian whisper! Well, it seems Nino surely did not whisper!
My name saint! Of course I’ll vote for her.
The quotes in the Joan of Arc got me!B
Odd double Nino commentary.... was one the edited version, and the other the original before editing? Seems like sloppy something....but still a great story.
I noticed that too.
Me too, but it was good to get the reminder of her whole story (so far).
Very hard to choose between these two but Nino came out on top.
I'm very happy to see the story of Nino (AKA Nina) of Georgia finally getting some recognition and appreciation!
Another "1/2 vote for each" combo.
Joan: I have an MA in Medieval Studies:
More interest; have also read portions of the trial transcript.
Yes, the trail transcription is compelling narrative. An uneducated young woman avoids the legal traps the skilled canon law lawyers set for her - mirabilis! A true miracle.
Wow, another really close one. I can't remember a Lent Madness that had so many nail biters. Good job, new SEC, of pairing up genuine contenders.
Joan of Arc for me today. She's pretty amazing.
a close vote for me and the current votes are VERY close.
another nail biter, sorry Nino, although I will love to have your LentMadness Golden Halo mug, had to vote for Joanie
C'mon, Joanie! We gotta get you ahead in this game. Not letting you be condemned a second time! Let's Go, gurrrl!
Ooh, another down-to-the-wire contest. I voted for Joan because a) I'm always suspicious of hagiographies that include a large number of virgins travelling around together, and b) I have never heard of Nino of Georgia (for instance, she does not appear in the Oxford Dictionary of Saints). For 65 years I have lived in a city with a large Orthodox Christian population and by now Nino should have cropped up in conversation. She hasn't, so Joan it is.
Your traveling virgins criterion is astute. I'm especially suspicious if the number of virgins is indeterminate.
Nino for the win!
They are always posted, every day, including today! You just have to read through the days descriptions. Take a look just above the video
Mike Styer in his comment indicated that there was a discrepancy between what was said and what was seen in the tally. I think that is what concerned most of us.
Reposting the numbers:
Peter 4,694 votes 52.35%
Thomas 5,183 votes 47.65%
Voting for St Nino
The second write up on Nino was the original one against Gregory.
I am always going to vote for Joan of Arc. She had zero social capital, she was illiterate, she had no protectors, and yet she ventured out to speaker truth first to her local priest, then to her local bishop, then to her king himself. All of these men eventually turn their backs on her, and yet she persisted in speaking her truth.
The fact that the only record of her spoken words come from the transcript of her trial is even more impressive as she had no way to otherwise leave a trace of her existence.
The Free French Forces wore the emblem of her cross, the cross of Lorraine, during the second world war and French troops continue to wear it on ceremonial uniforms today.
We got Nino’s story not once but twice today! One for each king trying to kill her. I voted for Joan because she wasn’t up against a king so much as a regime. A regime of power that imposes a narrative and structure of official thought and language to silence and suppress the voices of the lowly and dispossessed. I hope Galileo and Jan Hus will be similarly welcomed back as wronged figures in church history. I feel that today when propaganda is attempting to distort the historical record with bleached stories about laundry fires aboard ships when the far more likely account is that the ship sustained a missile or drone strike it is worth recognizing and upholding those saints who stayed true to their vision and their voice. I pray for the sailors being cynically abused in a navy being cynically misused in a time when empire vaunts that it can create its own reality through lying. For Joan, a non-warrior warrior who would have liked to make it safely home. May empire be rebuked.
Tough choice!