 In 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; 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.