Nicanor the Deacon
The Holy Apostle Nicanor the Deacon, of the Seventy
Apostle · Apostle of the Seventy · Deacon · Martyr · d. c. 34, at Jerusalem
Commemorated 28 July — Synaxis of the deacons Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, and Parmenas, 28 December — Martyrdom at Jerusalem, on the day of Stephen's stoning
Nicanor was one of the seven deacons chosen by the Apostles in the first days of the Church at Jerusalem — the "seven men of good repute, full of the Holy Spirit and of wisdom" set over the daily ministry to the widows (Acts 6:1–6) — and is numbered by the tradition among the Seventy Apostles. The received account holds that he was among the great company of Christians put to death in the persecution that broke out at the stoning of the Protomartyr Stephen, his fellow deacon, and so won a martyr's crown about the year 34. He is commemorated on December 28, and again on July 28 in the joint feast of the deacons Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, and Parmenas.
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Among the seven deacons
Nicanor enters the record in the sixth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. As the Jerusalem community grew, a complaint arose from the Greek-speaking believers that their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution; and the Twelve, unwilling to leave the word of God to serve tables, bade the faithful choose seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, to be appointed over this ministry. The seven chosen were Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas the proselyte of Antioch; the Apostles prayed and laid hands on them (Acts 6:5–6). These are honoured as the first deacons of the Church, and Nicanor with them — set apart for the service of the tables and of the poor that is the deacon's office to this day. The tradition further reckons Nicanor among the Seventy whom the Lord had sent out before him (Luke 10:1), so that the calendars style him "Apostle and Deacon."
Martyrdom
Of Nicanor's life and labours after his ordination the scriptural record says nothing further, and the tradition is correspondingly brief. It holds that he did not long survive his fellow deacon Stephen: on the very day that Stephen was stoned, and in the fierce persecution of the Jerusalem church that followed his death (Acts 8:1), a great number of Christians were killed, and Nicanor was among them, crowned as a martyr about the year 34. This connection of his death with Stephen's is why the Church keeps his memory in the days immediately after the feast of the Protomartyr (December 27), on December 28.
The two commemorations
Nicanor is kept twice in the year. On December 28 he is honoured individually, in the train of Stephen's feast; on July 28 he is commemorated together with three of his fellow deacons — Prochorus, Timon, and Parmenas — in a joint synaxis, though the four are held to have died at different times and in different places, Nicanor at Jerusalem near the beginning, the others later in their apostolic journeys. The tradition of their separate ends is preserved in the July notice; the December memory belongs to Nicanor alone, bound to the Protomartyr.
Not to be confused with
Not to be confused with Nicanor of Mount Callistratus, "the Wonderworker" (1491–1549, feast August 7) — a Thessalonian of the Ottoman period who founded the monastery of the Transfiguration at Zavorda in western Macedonia. Apart from the name the two have nothing in common: fifteen centuries separate them, and this Nicanor is an apostle of the Seventy and a deacon of the Jerusalem church, that one a Greek monastic founder.
Feast and commemoration
December 28 (church date; Old Calendar civil January 10), within the afterfeast of the Nativity of Christ and the day after the feast of the Protomartyr and Archdeacon Stephen, with whom the tradition joins his martyrdom. The July 28 feast (Old Calendar civil August 10) keeps him with the deacons Prochorus, Timon and Parmenas of the Seventy. In the West the Roman Martyrology commemorates Nicanor on January 10 (the Old Calendar equivalent of his Eastern December date).
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 3 (common of an apostle)
O holy Apostle Nicanor, intercede with the merciful God that he may grant to our souls the forgiveness of our sins.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Nicanor is depicted as a young deacon of the apostolic age: beardless or lightly bearded, in the deacon's sticharion and orarion, holding a censer or a liturgical box, in the settled type of the seven deacons and of the martyr-deacons who follow the pattern of Stephen. He appears among the choir of the Seventy in the illustrated menologia. The stored image is the icon of Fedor Zubov from the iconostasis of the Smolensky Cathedral of the Novodevichy Convent, Moscow (1685), inscribed "Апостол Никанор": the young apostle-deacon in a flowered sticharion and jewelled collar, hands raised toward the blessing Christ in the corner — a masterwork of the Moscow Armoury school.