Nephon the New

Saint Nephon the New, venerable, called the cenobiarch, was born Nicholas in 1736 in the village of Patrika on Chios and fell asleep on 28 December 1809. He was an important spiritual figure of the Philokalic movement and a fighter beside the Kollyvades fathers. He is commemorated on 28 December (new style, the Greek calendar).

Orphaned young by a plague epidemic, he was taken in by an aunt and, as an adolescent, went to Constantinople, where he worked in a shop. After the death of a dear friend, killed by the Turks, he left for Mount Athos. He went to the Great Lavra, then to Kapsala, where he was tonsured a monk by Elder Dionysios Stavroudas and received the name Nephon. He gave himself to study, prayer and ascetic labour, was ordained priest, and for a time also lived in the skete of Saint Basil.

Around 1773 he was forced to leave, together with other venerable fathers, because of the quarrels against the so-⁠called Kollyvades, to whom he belonged. He visited Chios, Samos, Naxos, Patmos and Lipsi, where he founded a small monastery of the Annunciation, and Ikaria, where in 1775 he built another monastery in honour of the Mother of God. Then he went to Fourni and reached Skiathos, where, at the urging of the monk Gregory Hatzistamatis, he founded the great and beautiful monastery of the Annunciation of the Mother of God. Building began in 1794, in 1797 it received stavropegial rank, and in 1806 the complex was finished, becoming a centre of the Kollyvades. Nephon fell asleep in 1809. At the exhumation of his relics, in 1812, they gave off an inexpressible fragrance and wrought extraordinary healings. His service was composed by the nun Isidora and Ch. M. Bousias, and his life was written by the hieromonk Isidore Kyriakopoulos.