Nil Zlobin

Nil Zlobin was a Russian schemamonk, a hesychast on Karoulia on Mount Athos, where he spent almost sixty years in a half-⁠ruined hut by a cave. It is not known for certain when he was born: 1863 is presumed. In 1942 he was still alive, aged seventy-⁠nine. He is venerated by the faithful, without a synodal canonization.

Almost nothing of his life has been preserved. Archimandrite Cherubim Karambelas mentions him as an elderly Russian hesychast among the true ascetics he had known, and another testimony says that he dug his own grave and said his rule of prayer in it, and was later found dead in the posture of prayer with his prayer rope in his hand. The book from which we learn these few details calls him an ascetic whose labour needs no facts to be understood.