Saint Nikitas the Confessor Abbot of Midiki Monastery

Saint Nikitas the Confessor Abbot of Midiki Monastery

Celebration date: 03/04

Saint Nikitas came from Caesarea in Bithynia and lived in the 8th century AD. In his infancy he was orphaned by his mother and his upbringing was undertaken by his virtuous grandmother and the pious Philaretos, his father, who entrusted his education from a very early age to a clergyman renowned for his pedagogical and spiritual virtues. Thus the young Nikitas acquired a remarkable secular and spiritual education.

Having forsaken father, mother, brothers, sisters, relatives, home, country, wealth and willingly took up his cross, he followed Christ and became his worthy disciple.

At a young age he fled to the famous monastery of Midiki in Triglia, where he quickly, for his many virtues, won the love and esteem of all the brothers of the monastery, who after the death of the abbot Nikiforos, elected him abbot of the monastery, in the reign of Patriarch Tarasiou (784 – 806 AD).

Due to his firm belief in the teaching and tradition of our Church regarding the holy icons, Osios was exiled, during the reign of Emperor Leo V (813 – 820 AD), to the town of Masaleon in Asia Minor. From there he was recalled to be exiled again, in 815 AD, to the island of Agia Glyceria near Akrita. He returned to Constantinople during the reign of Michael of Traulos (820 – 829 AD) and settled in some metochi in the northern part of the city, which probably belonged to the Peleketis monastery. Agios Theodore the Studite constantly wrote to Osios (see November 11). Saint Nikitas the Confessor slept in peace in the place where he had settled.