Nikonas

Nikonas was a monk of the Monastery of Vretou on Chios. He was killed by the Ottomans on Chios in 1822, and the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece numbered him among the saints on 15 July 2021, on the proposal of Metropolitan Markos of Chios. His commemoration, together with that of the other martyrs of Chios, is kept on the Sunday of the Paralytic, at the metropolitan church of Chios.

In the spring of 1822 the Ottoman army and fleet fell upon Chios. More than forty thousand inhabitants were killed or carried off into slavery, and monasteries such as Nea Moni and St Menas were destroyed. The Monastery of Vretou (of the Life-⁠giving Spring), in the south of the island near the village of Armolia and built in the eighteenth century, was a centre of the Kollyvades movement. The sources we have keep no other details of his life or of how he died.