Christianized in the fourth century, Georgia was visited by Syrian monks in the sixth century and some monasteries were founded then. In the 960s two Georgians, John the Iberian and his son Euthymios, both friends of St Athanasios the Athonite, joined the recently founded Great Lavra on Athos. In return for services rendered in war, the Byzantine Emperor Basil II granted the Georgians great wealth and also monastic lands on Athos which enabled them to found the monastery of Iviron (literally ‘of the Georgians’). The monastery remained in Georgian hands for almost four centuries, during which time it became the chief entrepot for the transmission of Greek Christian learning to Georgia. Iviron passed into Greek ownership in the mid-fourteenth century, though a Georgian minority survived there until the mid-twentieth century and to this day Iviron remains a powerful symbol in the cultural and spiritual memory of the Georgian people.