Nicholas the Studite

Venerable Nicholas the Studite, also called the Confessor, was a Byzantine monk, born in 793 in Crete, who twice became abbot of the Stoudios monastery in Constantinople, from 846 to 850 and from 867 to 868. He suffered together with Saint Theodore the Studite in the struggle against the holy icons. The Church remembers him on 4 February.

Childhood and life at Stoudios

He was born in a village called Kydonia, in Crete. One source says that from a young age he learned the Holy Scriptures. At ten he was sent to be brought up at the Stoudios monastery in Constantinople, where his uncle, Saint Theophanes the Branded, and the abbot, Saint Theodore the Studite, were monks. The children lived there in a separate house, outside the monastery walls, built as a school. Later he became a monk and received the priesthood.

Confession in the time of iconoclasm

When the emperor Leo the Armenian came to the throne and began to persecute the defenders of the veneration of icons, Patriarch Nikephoros, the bishops and the abbots stood on the side of the icons, and Leo sent them all into exile. Saint Theodore the Studite and the blessed Nicholas, arrested in 814, were cruelly beaten and imprisoned at Mesopa, near Lake Apollonias, where they stayed a year. Then they were taken far to the east, to Boneta, and heavily tortured.

After Leo's death, in 820, the emperor Michael the Stammerer ordered all those condemned for the faith to be released. Nicholas and Theodore went free. At Chalcedon they visited Patriarch Nikephoros, who was also imprisoned, and together they went to Constantinople to urge the emperor to accept the true faith. The emperor did not listen, though he did not prevent anyone from venerating the holy icons. They then settled on an island, where they served at the church of the holy martyr Tryphon, and there Saint Theodore the Studite fell asleep. One source says that nine years later Nicholas was again persecuted and tortured by the iconoclasts.

According to our sources, in the reign of the emperor Theophilos, when the persecution began again, Nicholas fled from place to place until Theophilos died, in 842. Peace came under the empress Theodora, with Saint Methodios as patriarch. Then he returned to Stoudios.

Abbot and prison

He was chosen abbot in 846, in the time of Patriarch Ignatios according to one source. After three years he handed the abbacy to the blessed Sophronios and withdrew to a quiet place to live in silence. After Sophronios died he was called back to be abbot. In the quarrel between the emperor Michael III and Patriarch Ignatios he was thrown into prison, and the emperor Basil the Macedonian released him after coming to the throne.

The sources say that even in life he worked miracles by the grace of God. He healed Eudokia, wife of the emperor Basil, and Helena, wife of the patrician Manuel, of sickness. To the noble Theophilos Melissenos, who had no children, he blessed a newborn daughter and prophesied that she would live and have many children, and so it came to pass.

His repose

He fell asleep in the Lord on 4 February 868, in Constantinople, in the seventy-⁠fifth year of his life. On the day of his death he asked the monks what they lacked, and they answered: wheat. He told them that He who fed Israel in the wilderness would send them wheat in abundance within three days. On the third day a ship loaded with wheat arrived at the monastery, sent by the emperor Basil. Some manuscripts of the Stoudios from the turn of the ninth century are said to be his. The Church remembers him on 4 February, and the Serbian Church on the same day, which is 17 February on the new calendar.