Centuries before Islam reached the Black Sea, the Kingdom of Lazica was one of the earliest lands in the world to embrace Christianity.

An early Christian kingdom

Closely tied to the Roman and then Byzantine world, Lazica received the new faith very early. A Christian bishopric was established at Pityus (today Pitsunda) on the Lazic coast in the early 4th century, and bishops from the region took part in the First Council of Nicaea in 325, the great gathering that shaped Christian doctrine. By that time several coastal cities already had their own bishops.

From the coast to the mountains

Missionaries such as Bishop Stratophilos of Pityus spread the faith not only along the shore but into the foothills and valleys. Most of western Georgia had become Christian by the 5th century, while the full evangelisation of Lazica and neighbouring Abkhazia continued into the 6th century, when Christianity became firmly rooted across the region.

A Byzantine identity

This Christian faith bound Lazica to the Byzantine Empire and set it apart from Zoroastrian Sasanian Persia to the east, a religious divide that helped fuel the long Lazic War. For more than a thousand years the Laz would remain a Christian people, until the changes that came with Ottoman rule. The legacy of this era survives in the ruined churches and fortresses scattered across the old Lazic land.

Learn more: Lazica on Wikipedia.

Image: the Forty Martyrs Church at Nokalakevi, in the old land of Lazica, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA).