mission · 50 · Colchis
The Byzantine synaxaria send Matthias east along the Black Sea into Colchis — to a people they called the Ethiopians of the interior, which is a phrase that has confused every later reader and is probably the reason a rival tradition sends him to Ethiopia proper. The Georgian church has shown his grave at Gonio, near the mouth of the Chorokhi, for a very long time. The account is late and Eastern, and it matters because it is one of the two apostolic claims Georgia rests on, the other being Andrew's passage along the same coast.
To take the lot that fell to him after the lot that made him an apostle.
A Georgian apostolic claim that stands beside Andrew's, and a grave at Gonio.