Nilus of Rossano

Saint Nilus of Rossano (Nilus the Younger) was a Greek monk of Calabria in southern Italy, and the spiritual father of the monastery of Grottaferrata near Rome. He was born in 910 at Rossano, in a pious family that dedicated him to the Mother of God, and he reposed in 1004 or 1005.

His parents died while he was a child, and a faithful sister raised him. A gifted young man, skilled in speech, he fell into sins of the flesh and had a child, but in an illness with high fever he had a vision of death and eternal condemnation, so vivid that he left without telling anyone for the monasteries of the Mercurion region. Out of fear of the governor they would not receive him, so he was sent to the monastery of Saint Nazarius in Lombard territory, where he was tonsured. He then returned to the Mercurion, where he formed a spiritual friendship with Saint Fantinus the Younger, and later he lived in a cave nearby, struggling against temptations of every kind and weeping much. He rebuked and sharply tested a disciple, Stephen.

According to another source, he then came to the monastery of Saint Adrian in Calabria and became its abbot. In 981, when the Saracens invaded, the monks withdrew to Vellelucio, on land given by the monastery of Montecassino. Shortly before his repose, Nilus designated that as the place where his monastery was to be definitively established. This is Grottaferrata, which remained faithful to Orthodoxy for a long time. He is commemorated on 26 September, as a saint of the undivided Church, by the New Calendar.