Nikodim I of Peć

Saint Nikodim I was archbishop of the Serbs from 1316 (or 1317) to 1324, who died in 1325. Before that he had been a monk and scribe at Hilandar, then its abbot (1311 to 1316). He is commemorated on 11 May (24 May by the new calendar), and his relics are in the monastery of Peć.

He was a monk on Mount Athos and was abbot of Hilandar from 1311 to 1316. After the death of Sava III he was elected archbishop of all Serbian and coastal lands (1317). He was, according to the Bulgarian source, a pioneer of hesychasm in the Balkans, a man of letters and a diplomat. He translated into Serbian the Jerusalem Typikon of Saint Sabbas the Sanctified; in the preface to the book he says that almighty God, who knows our weakness, will give us spiritual strength, but only if we first show effort. He loved the ascetic life and strove to uproot the Bogomil heresy and to strengthen the Orthodox faith; the Bulgarian source adds that he also opposed Catholicism.

While abbot of his own monastery of profession, Hilandar, Nikodim asked a protos of Athos, Theophanes, to issue a document granting to the monks of the kellion of Saint Sava at Karyes a piece of land and an abandoned monastery; the document, written in rough language full of errors, was copied in a careful hand. He was a co-⁠founder of the fourteenth-⁠century Vratna monastery, together with King Stefan Milutin (1282 to 1321) of the Nemanjić dynasty. He is said to have crowned, in 1322, Stefan Uroš III Dečanski as king and Dušan as young king, on 6 January.

In 1314 the heir to the throne, Stefan Uroš III, was exiled to Constantinople after quarrels with his father, King Stefan Milutin. In 1317 Uroš asked Nikodim to intervene between him and his father. An autobiographical note by Nikodim was written in a manuscript entitled A Visit to Constantinople in the years 1318 and 1319. In 1320 Milutin allowed Uroš to return, at Nikodim's urging. Stefan Konstantin, Uroš's half-⁠brother and heir to the throne, was crowned king at the death of Milutin in 1321. Civil war broke out when Konstantin refused to submit to Uroš III, who invaded Zeta, and in the ensuing battle Konstantin was killed. After the victory, on 6 January 1322, Nikodim crowned Uroš king and Dušan young king.

One source says that Nikodim wrote the Rodoslov, the lives of Serbian kings and archbishops; our sources give no further details. The church of Saint Demetrius at Peć was completed in his time, and his relics are kept there, beside those of Ephraim of Peć. His service of praise is the work of Marko of Peć, the author also of the life of Ephraim of Peć. The Bulgarian Church notes that his day, 24 May, falls on the day of Saints Cyril and Methodius.