Background
He was born to the Russian priest from Tver, Pavel Sabinin, and a Georgian woman.
He was born to the Russian priest from Tver, Pavel Sabinin, and a Georgian woman.
He travelled in several regions of Georgia, studying monuments of Christian architecture, copying frescos and icons, recording legends and collecting manuscripts. In Saint St. Petersburg, he was tonsured a monk and given the name Gobron after a 10th-century Georgian saint. In 1882, he published The Paradise of Georgia (საქართველოს სამოთხე.
Street St. Petersburg, 1882), a voluminous lithographed edition of biographies of important Georgian Orthodox Christian saints.
In the 1880s, he served at the famous Iviron Monastery on Mount Athos. In 1882 he published also The Passion of Eustathius of Mtskheta.
In 1898, he clashed with the office of Russian exarchate at Tiflis over his criticism of Russification and was removed from Georgia to Moscow where he died of pneumonia on May 10, 1900.