Nicanor of Thessalonica

Venerable Nicanor was a monk and hieromonk of Thessalonica, the founder of the great monastery of Zavorda in southern Macedonia, near Grevena. He was born in 1491 and departed to the Lord in 1549. He is venerated as a saint in the Orthodox world.

In the world he was called Nicholas. His parents, Ioannis and Maria, a well-⁠off family of Thessalonica, had long been without children and prayed in the church of Saint Mina. When Nicholas was twenty both his father and his mother died. He then became a monk and received the name Nicanor. Metropolitan Maximus of Thessalonica, who served from 1486 or 1487 to 1515, ordained him priest and gave him the office of typikarios, who oversees the order of the daily services.

At twenty-⁠eight he set out for southern Macedonia and traveled through various settlements. According to his life, he worked wonderful healings there. He lived in the great monastery of Saint John the Forerunner at Veria, where he met Dionysius of Olympus and became his friend. Then he went to the lower course of the Bistritsa river, where he restored the small church of Saint George, which today bears his name. This took place before October 1527, the date of a letter of Metropolitan Dorotheus I of Grevena in which he praises Nicanor as hegumen of the monastery of Saint George.

Two wealthy young men of Kozani, disciples of Dionysius, came to him and helped him draw up his testament in 1540. Between 1540 and 1545, at the place where he found an icon, he founded the church of the Transfiguration, around which grew a monastic complex, the monastery of Zavorda. Venerable Nicanor died on 7 August 1549 and was buried in the chapel of Saint John the Forerunner, south of the monastery's katholikon. The chapel was later destroyed, but the grave has survived.