Stephen of Iviron

Stephen of Iviron, with the family name Noukas, was born in 1838 at Vogatsiko in Western Macedonia. He came young to the Holy Mountain, where he was tonsured a monk and later ordained deacon at Iviron Monastery. In 1866, because of a great fire and other temptations, he left his monastery. He had worked with other fathers to make his monastery cenobitic, but they did not succeed. He was quite philanthropic.

He set as the purpose of his life the spread of Greek letters and the founding of schools, like a new Saint Cosmas of Aetolia. In 1900 he returned to Athos to refound and renew the Athoniada School, but did not succeed. He went as far as Paris. He founded in Constantinople the "Macedonian Educational Brotherhood," which maintained at Tsotyli near Siatista a gymnasium with a boarding house, from which more than 500 young men graduated, several of whom became eminent scientists. In 1895 he founded in Thessaloniki the famous Commercial Lyceum, attended by many young people from all of northern Greece. In 1906 he established in Thessaloniki an important model school for girls, where 120 girls studied each year.

"The Iviron monk Stephen Noukas can justly be called great, being by common consent the greatest educational personality of the past generation." Another text calls him "the most venerable, thrice-⁠beloved and flourishing elder of Thessaloniki, whose honoured name was inseparably linked to the educational affairs of the Greek community there, in whose progress he led, laboured and sacrificed himself, so to speak, but conquered and triumphed as no other." For half a century he devoted his life to one high ideal: how to raise and make Greek education there national, effective and reforming. He reposed in 1928. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.