A native of Augsburg, Leonhard Rauwolf (Rauwolff) (1535 – 1596) was a German physician, botanist, and traveler. In 1573-1575 he undertook a lengthy voyage through the Levant and Mesopotamia in search of new herbal medicines. Upon his return to Bavaria, he published a book of herbarium and new botanical descriptions, and later, in 1582, a general travel narrative about his trip though Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine. Rauwolf devotes a small chapter to the Georgians he had encountered.
Near the glorious City of Trebizond. situated on the Euxine [Black] Sea, begins the Country of the Georgia, and butts toward the south upon Armenia. These are very civil and simple people, but yet strong and brave warriors; they esteem and honor among other saints, but chiefly for warlike businesses, as their Patron, the Knight St. George, from whom they take their denomination. Their merchants come very often in great caravans to Aleppo, and are, according to all appearance in their shape and posture like the Persians, only that these are more whitish, and the others more tawny and browner: they wear also like them short flying coats, and long and wide drawers [pants]. They have, as the rest, their Patriarchs and Bishops, who although they are differing and dissenting in some points, yet for the most part they follow the Doctrine and Errors of the Grecians [Greeks], and so they have and use the same Writings and Offices. Their Priests are, as well as those of the Armenians, [are] allowed to be married; but yet if either of them should happen to die, they must not marry again. In Jerusalem they are also possessed of their peculiar places, wherein they sing and exercise the Offices, and chiefly of one in the Church of Mount Calvary, in the place near the Sepulchre of our Lord Christ, where he did first appear unto Mary Magdalen in the similitude of a Gardener, after his Resurrection.
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