Nilus the Sanctified

Venerable Nilus the Sanctified is the most important ascetic figure of Thesprotia in Epirus. He was born around 1228 in Constantinople, of the imperial Laskaris family. Wealth and fame did not overcome his longing for monastic life, and at a very young age he entered the famous Monastery of the Akoimetoi, where he struggled with great self-⁠denial, abstinence and prayer.

After some years he returned to Constantinople and, without revealing himself, approached his mother and sister as an unknown beggar and received alms from them. He then went to Jerusalem with other pilgrims. On his return he did not hesitate to rebuke the emperor Michael Palaiologos for trying to subject the Orthodox Church to the pope. As an answer he was condemned to be set adrift at sea without food or oars. After forty days of struggling with the waves, by God's providence he reached the shore of a monastery, probably Iviron on Mount Athos. He stayed there three years as a porter, then returned to Constantinople, where the new emperor, the pious Andronikos Palaiologos, honoured him as a confessor.

Of restless nature, he left again, this time for good, and devoted the rest of his life to pilgrimages and monasteries of the Holy Land. He then reached Epirus, to a place called Oryko or Jericho near present-⁠day Vlora, where he lived in a small hut. At the request of devout inhabitants of Thesprotia, he moved south to the region of Gyromeri, into the cave of a sheer rock. A small brotherhood gathered around him. The local tradition says that at night he would see a divine light like fire on the mountain opposite. The ascetics searched for its source and found a holy icon of the Mother of God, and understood that the monastery was to be built on that spot. With help from the rulers of the Despotate of Epirus and local nobles, the monastery was completed, organized as a community on the principles of common life, and became one of the most important monastic centres of Epirus.

At a great age, one hundred and six years old, Nilus appointed his successor, arranged his burial in a tomb he had prepared outside the monastery, and, leaving as a legacy his handwritten Testament, gave his soul to God in the night of 1 January 1334. Some years later envoys of the emperor came to take his relics to Constantinople, but a huge rock fell from the mountain and covered the tomb. The attempt was abandoned, and a chapel was built over the rock. His relics remain in the tomb. Nilus is commemorated on 2 January (new style).