Ephraim the Lesser of Georgia

Ephraim the Lesser, known in Georgian tradition as Ephrem Mtsire and styled "the Philosopher," was an eleventh-century Georgian monk, theologian, and translator who rendered a large body of Greek patristic literature into Georgian. He is commemorated on January 18. By tradition his father was Vache, a Georgian nobleman of the Tao (Tao-Klarjeti) region in southern Georgia, who relocated toward Constantinople around 1027, the year King Bagrat IV ascended the Georgian throne.

Ephraim received a thorough Hellenic education, presumably at Constantinople, before joining the Georgian monastic community at the Black Mountain near Antioch, a center then home to roughly seventy Georgian monks. He spent his monastic career in that region and, around 1091, became hegumen of the Kastana monastery, which is associated with the Castalia spring in Daphne, outside Antioch.

His scholarly output is reckoned at nearly one hundred works covering most branches of theological inquiry. He is remembered above all as a translator who introduced a more rigorous method into Georgian letters, and as a defender of the Georgian Church's autocephaly. He was canonized by the Georgian Orthodox Church and died around the turn of the twelfth century, with sources placing his repose around 1101 to 1103.