St. Nino's ancestral roots lead to Cappadocia. Her father Zabulon, a General of the Roman Emperor Maximian, introduced Christianity to ten fiefdoms of the Gallic lands. He was married to Sosanna, a sister of the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Their only daughter was Nino.

St. Nino was twelve years old when her family left their home and set out for Jerusalem. Zabulon gave out all his possessions to the poor and chose a life of ascetic solitude in the Jordanian desert, while Sosanna looked after the weak and miserable. Nino's uncle, Patriarch of Jerusalem, gave her up to be disciplined by Sarah from Bethlehem, who served at Christ's Sepulchre.

The Virgin Mary appeared to St.Nino when the latter was fourteen years old and announced to her through a divine revelation her important destiny - to preach the True Faith in the Virgin's chosen holy place of Iberia (Georgia). Blessed to serve as an Apostle, with a sign of God's will, the Mother of God gave her a cross made of branches of vine, which St. Nino bound with her own hair (the Cross of St. Nino is currently kept in Tbilisi, in the Sioni Cathedral).

In Georgia, the country which St.Nino converted to Christianity in the years about 327-332 AD., she completed her mission with a lot of work and prayer. Her prayers cured Queen Nana from a serious disease and made her believe in the True God, and King Mirian himself soon followed her example. Shortly after the entire population was baptized in the waters of the Aragvi River, in Mtskheta (the ancient capital of Georgia).

After completing her great deeds, St. Nino reposed in the village of Bodbe, and there, in accordance with God's providence, she was buried.

King Mirian, desiring to honour the Enlightener of Georgia, intended to transfer the relics of the Saint to Mtskheta, to the Cathedral of Svetitskhoveli, where the tunic of Christ (allotted to Georgian Jews after the Crucifixion) was buried. However, two hundred people could not even move her coffin from its place. Soon the King St. Mirian built a church on the burial place of the Saint. Before passing away the King said to the Queen St. Nana: ,,You, Nana, if God grants you enough time, divide the royal treasury in two and sacrifice half of it to the tomb. Let this place be honoured unto the ages."

Since then, Bodbe Convent has witnessed many interesting historical events. In the fifth century the faithful King Vakhtang Gorgasali, who was distinguished for being the most beloved and marked by St.Nino's grace, widened and decorated the church and the tomb. In the 8"¹-9'" cc it acquired a ,,three-church" Basilica form. In the 12^th c., another Georgian King Demetrius l, the son of the faithful King David the Builder, renovated the whole site.

The tomb of St. Nino was revered so much that even Tatar-Mongols who had devastated the entire country did not dare to desecrate it, although they did some harm to the church itself.