Nikon the Metanoeite

Venerable Nikon the Metanoeite, called “Repent,” was a Byzantine monk and itinerant preacher of the tenth century, who called people to repentance in Asia Minor, Crete and the Peloponnese. He died on 26 November 998 and is patron of Sparta. The Church remembers him on the same day.

He was born about 925 or 930, in Pontus or in Paphlagonia, to wealthy and pious parents. The synaxaria say that he was of Armenian descent. As a child he despised amusements and dances and wished to devote himself to God. One day his father, who had many estates, sent him to oversee the labourers. Seeing their toil and sweat, his soul was so grieved that at twenty he left his estates and his parents. He went to the monastery of Chrysopetra (“Golden Stone”) on the border of Pontus and Paphlagonia, was tonsured and received the name Nikon, in the world Nikitas. He lived there twelve years, in a struggle of prayer and penance so severe that the brothers asked him to ease it. The abbot, struck by his spiritual discipline, sent him out into the world to preach.

For three years he travelled through Asia Minor, preaching repentance. After the Arabs were driven from Crete in 961 by Nikephoros Phokas, he went to the island. The land had been a Muslim emirate since the 820s, Christianity had declined, many Christians had been forced to accept Islam, and those who stayed faithful had lost contact with the living tradition, as churches and monasteries had fallen into ruin. According to his life, Nikon regarded the forced converts not as Muslims but as Christians corrupted “by time and long fellowship with the Saracens.” He had to change his manner of preaching and use his wit to lead his listeners to repentance. There he received the nickname “Metanoeite” (“Repent”), because he began all his sermons with those words, taken from Saint John the Baptist: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” He worked mainly in eastern Crete, with his seat at Gortyn.

After five years on Crete, no earlier than 966, he travelled through Epidaurus, Athens, Euboea, Thebes, Corinth and Nafplio, then the Peloponnese, Mani and Messenia, and came to Sparta, where he stayed almost thirty years. Tradition credits him with saving Laconia from a plague and with building three churches and a monastery at Sparta, among them the church of Christ the Saviour, whose remains can still be seen on the acropolis of ancient Sparta. His life presents the Peloponnese as a land full of demons against which he constantly struggles. The more isolated Mani peninsula had resisted the spread of Christianity, and he is credited with introducing Christianity to its inhabitants, the Maniots. In Laconia he had great influence on both clergy and laity and founded many churches. His Life, preserved in two versions, and his Testament are the main sources about him. According to the Life, he continued to perform miracles after his death.

He died in a monastery on the peninsula on 26 November 998, after thirty years of preaching in the Peloponnese. He is patron of the city of Sparta and of the Mani peninsula and is remembered in Laconia and Mani on 26 November. He is depicted in the mosaics of the monastery of Hosios Loukas in Boeotia.