Simon Baghdavadze

Simon Baghdavadze was a Georgian hieroschemamonk, the last head of the Georgian monks of the Skete of St John the Theologian beside Iviron Monastery on the Holy Mountain. He was born in 1857 and reposed in 1942; he is venerated by the faithful, without a synodal canonization.

Named Solomon in the world, he was born in the village of Chkvishi in the Vani district, in a peasant family. After a flooding river destroyed the village, the family moved near Samtredia. Solomon loved the services and often visited the monasteries of Gelati and Motsameta. He married, but his wife died in childbirth and the infant could not be saved. As a widower he wished to become a monk, but his only brother also died, leaving a small son, Ivane. Solomon raised his nephew and kept a school at home for the village children, teaching them Georgian reading and writing, history and arithmetic, as well as good manners and work.

When his nephew married, he left him his land and house and moved to Gelati Monastery. In the late 1890s he was tonsured with the name Simon and soon ordained hieromonk. In 1901 he went to Jerusalem to the Holy Places, then to Athos, where he joined the Georgian skete of St John the Theologian. The brotherhood then numbered nearly fifty monks, and services were sung in the old Georgian chant. Father Simon was given the kitchen as his main obedience and served periodically in the skete church. He lived through the earthquake of October 1905, which damaged the Athonite monasteries badly but spared the Georgian skete.

The Georgians were in dispute with the Greek monks of Iviron, who restricted their rights because the skete was only a cell dependent on the monastery. In 1919 the Iviron authorities came to the skete with soldiers and took the keys from Father Simon. The Georgian monks, left homeless, were received by the Russian monastery of St Panteleimon, and in 1920 nine of them settled under Simon's guidance in the skete of the First Martyr Stephen. They lived by hard labour, mowing grass and gathering walnuts. Ill in 1926, Father Simon was cared for at St Panteleimon, where he stayed as refectorian, loved by all as a kind and prayerful old man. The fire of 1932 at the skete of St Stephen grieved him deeply. He reposed in peace in 1942 in the infirmary of St Panteleimon Monastery.