Nikephoros of Medikion

Holy Venerable Nikephoros of Medikion was abbot of the Medikion monastery in Bithynia and a defender of the holy icons, and he died in the year 813.

He was born in 755 in Constantinople, into a rich family of a high official. His father was named Andrew and his mother Phota. Together with his brothers, Theodore, the elder, and Gregory, the younger, he received a good education. In the time of the struggle against the icons he defended the veneration of the holy icons.

In the year 780 he withdrew into the mountains of Bithynia, to the monastery of Herakleion in Kios, where he lived as an ascetic and received the monastic habit. At the urging of the abbot Joseph, he then went west of the Katabolo district, where his family estate lay, and founded there a monastery dedicated to the Mother of God. The number of monks grew, so Nikephoros bought land at Medike, called "the place of clover", near Triglia, and built the Medikion Monastery, dedicated to Saint Sergius. In 787 Patriarch Tarasius called him to take part in the Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicaea, and the acts of the Council bear the signature "Nikephoros, abbot of Saint Sergius of Medikion". In the time of the emperor Constantine VI and Irene of Athens the monastery became a place of pilgrimage, and the abbot enjoyed the esteem of all.

At the beginning of the ninth century he received Nicetas as a disciple, who proposed that, because of failing health, he go to Constantinople for treatment. But on the island of Halki in the Propontis the venerable one departed on 4 May 813. His relics were brought to the Medikion monastery. His life was written by an unknown monk, a contemporary of Nicetas of Medikion, between 824 and 840. Another short synaxarion says that he was driven from the monastery in 814, when the struggle against the icons was renewed under Leo the Armenian, and that he died in prison after many hardships.

His memory is kept on 17 May, in the new style. The Azbyka page notes that he is not included in the present calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church.