Peradze Grigol

Peradze Grigol (1899-1942), Scholar, theologian, paleographer, specialist in ancient texts. He was born in Bakurtsike village, Georgia. In 1918, after he graduated from the Theological Seminary, he was drafted into the army. In 1921 he participated in the war for the defense of Georgian independence. In 1922 G. Peradze departed for Europe to continue his studies on recommendations of Professor K. Kekelidze, Catholicos-Patriarch Ambrosi (Khelaya) and German writer and public figure Arthur Leist. He studied at the Universities of Berlin and Bonn. In 1927 he was granted the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. In 1927-30 he served as a privat-docent of Bonn University and delivered lectures at the same university. Periodically G. Peradze worked on Georgian manuscripts, which were preserved at the universities of Brussels, Leuven, London and Oxford. In 1931 he took the monastic vow. Consequently, he was ordained a priest and began to serve at the newly inaugurated St. Nino Georgian Orthodox Church in Paris. He founded and edited a scientifictheological magazine ‘Cross of Vine’. In 1933 he moved to Poland and took up the position of a Professor of the Department of Orthodox Theology and Head of the Chair of Theology at the Warsaw University. In 1934 G. Peradze was consecrated Archimandrite at St. Sophia Cathedral in London. In 1935 he traveled to Rumania, Bulgaria and Greece and called on Petritsoni Monastery. In 1936 he visited Jerusalem and Syria, where he discovered a number of Georgian inscriptions. In 1937 he traveled to Austria and made an inventory of Georgian manuscripts that were preserved there. In 1942 Gestapo arrested him on a charge of collaboration with Polish resistance movement. The Nazis kept him first in Pawiak prison, then in the Mauthausen concentration camp, from where they transferred him to the Auschwitz camp, where he perished.

Georgian and Polish Orthodox Churches canonized him as a ‘Holy Priest-Martyr’ and December 6 was appointed the day of commemoration of Archimandrite Grigol Peradze.