George was born in
Trialeti, a southern province of Georgia, into the aristocratic family of Jacob, sometime envoy of King
Bagrat III of Georgia to
Iran, and his wife Mariam. He was sent to a local monastery at Tadzrisi at the age of seven to commence his education, and after three years moved to another, at
Khakhuli. Around 1022, George was sent to
Constantinople, where he mastered Greek and gained a profound knowledge of Byzantine
theology. After his return to Georgia in 1034, he took monastic tonsure at Khakhuli, then made a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem and subsequently spent some time as the disciple of another Georgian monk, George the Recluse, on the
Black Mountain near
Antioch. In 1040, George established himself at the Iviron (literally, "of the Georgians") monastery on Mount Athos,
Greece. Four years later, upon the death of the hegumen Stephanos, George was consecrated as his successor. He reorganized and refurbished the Iviron cloister and made it into a vibrant center of Georgian Orthodox culture. At some point between 1052 and 1057, George left his fellow monk George of Oltisi in charge of the Iviron monastery and set off to
Antioch to appear before the Patriarch to defend his brethren, accused by a group of Greek clerics of
heresy. The dispute quickly evolved around the canonical legality of the autocephaly of the Georgian Orthodox church, which had originally operated within the framework of the see of Antioch but had been becoming increasingly independent since the 6th century. In defense of the Georgian autocephaly, George referred to
St. Andrew's mission to ancient
Colchis and
Iberia, a version which appears in medieval Georgian ecclesiastical tradition. Early in the 11th century, the autocephalous
catholicos Melchizedek I (1012–30) assumed the additional title of
patriarch, but Antioch was reluctant to recognize the move on the grounds that none of the
Twelve Apostles had peregrinated in Georgia. In the end, George persuaded
Theodosius III of Antioch to grant confirmation of the autocephalous status of the Georgian church. This happened around the same time that the Byzantine government finally abandoned its efforts to force Georgia into submission and reconciled with the Georgian king
Bagrat IV. George took a considerably more moderate position toward the Western Church than most Eastern hierarchs during the
East–West Schism of 1054. In 1064, in the presence of Byzantine Emperor
Constantine X, he stated that he did not regard the Latin practice of the
Eucharist as heretical. Nevertheless, he considered the
Filioque heretical and translated the anti-Latin works of
Photius I of Constantinople into Georgian. In the
Synaxarion he manually copied, Photius is honored as a saint. Although George declined Bagrat IV's repeated requests to lead the Georgian church, he, in 1057/8, accepted the royal invitation to return to Georgia for five years. There, he initiated reforms in the Georgian church that contributed to a cleansed ecclesiastical hierarchy and regulated its relations with the increasingly powerful royal authority. On his way back to Greece, George visited Constantinople and obtained an imperial decree for the education of Georgian students at Athos. He did not reach his destination, however, and died at
Athens on 29 June 1065. The Athonite monks interred him at the Iviron monastery. George the Hagiorite was subsequently canonized by the
Georgian Orthodox Church and is remembered annually on 10 July. ==Legacy==