Nikolai

Nikolai was a Russian schemamonk, also known as Nikita, the companion in asceticism of the great elder Arsenius, born in Tula province, who died on 6 February 1841. He is venerated by the faithful, without a synodal canonization.

Known from the Life of Arsenius, he met him at the Kiev Caves Lavra as a companion whom he did not leave for more than forty years, in all sorrows and labours. First tonsured into the mantle, as Nikita, he was named Nikandr at the Balashevsky monastery, and on Athos, with the schema, Nikolai. They promised to be in obedience to each other and not to part until death, and so they did, though Nikandr would have wished to have Abel (Arsenius), the hieromonk and confessor, as his shepherd, and Abel would not be his elder. They lived by a hermit's rule, without worldly cares, tending no garden or orchard, receiving no one; Nikolai lived on Athos nineteen years. At the services they wept, two elders worn by fasting. He died on 6 February 1841, on the Thursday of Cheesefare Week.