Nicetas the Confessor of Apollonias
Our Father among the Saints Nicetas the Confessor, Archbishop of Apollonias
Confessor · Bishop · d. 9th century, in exile
Commemorated 20 March — Confession of the holy icons under Leo the Armenian
Nicetas was archbishop of Apollonias in Bithynia in the early ninth century, and one of the confessors of the holy icons in the second iconoclast persecution. When the Emperor Leo V the Armenian (813–820) revived the war on the images, Nicetas stood firm in their veneration, refused to submit to the imperial policy, and was for this confession deposed from his see and sent into exile, in which he ended his life. Because he suffered — deprivation, hardship, and banishment — for the faith without dying of it, the Church numbers him among the confessors, and keeps his memory on March 20.
Little of the outward history of Nicetas has been transmitted; what the Church remembers of him is his office and his confession. He was archbishop of Apollonias — the Bithynian city of Apollonias on the Rhyndakos, in north-western Asia Minor — and so a hierarch of the region that, in the eighth and ninth centuries, gave the Church so many of its defenders of the icons.
His trial came with the second period of iconoclasm. The veneration of the holy images, restored at the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787, was overthrown again when Leo V the Armenian came to the throne and, in 815, reinstated the iconoclast policy of the earlier Isaurian emperors, deposing the Patriarch Nicephorus and pressing the bishops to renounce the images. Among the hierarchs who would not yield was Nicetas of Apollonias. He held to the Orthodox confession — that the honour paid to the icon passes to its prototype, and that to depict Christ in his humanity is to confess the reality of the Incarnation — and for this he was stripped of his see and driven into exile, where, enduring the hardships of banishment, he reposed. The tradition keeps him as a confessor, one of the multitude of bishops, monks, and lay people who in those years chose deprivation and suffering rather than deny the images of Christ and his saints.
Feast and commemoration
Nicetas is commemorated on March 20 (church date; New Calendar civil March 20, Old Calendar civil April 2), within Great Lent. His memory is kept in the Byzantine synaxaria among the confessors of the icons, beside the many hierarchs and monks who suffered under Leo the Armenian. As the day falls in the fast, his commemoration is observed at the Lenten services where it does not coincide with a Saturday or Sunday.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
A rule of faith and an image of meekness, a teacher of temperance, hath the truth of thy deeds revealed thee to be unto thy flock: therefore hast thou attained the heights by humility, and riches by poverty. O Father and Hierarch Nicetas, intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Nicetas is depicted as a hierarch of the iconoclast age: vested in the phelonion and omophorion, blessing or bearing the Gospel, and — as befits a confessor of the images — often shown holding an icon, in token of the confession for which he was exiled. No pre-modern, identity-verified image of this Nicetas, distinct from the many same-named saints, has been secured for storage; the icon is wanting.
Disputed questions
- The dates. The synaxaria place him simply in the ninth century, in the reign of Leo the Armenian (813–820); the year of his repose in exile is not transmitted, and the calendars give no more than the century.
- Not to be confused, above all, with Nicetas of Chalcedon (May 28), whose profile is all but identical to this one: another Nicetas, another bishop of a Bithynian see, another confessor of the icons deposed and exiled by Leo V the Armenian, another death in banishment in the ninth century — and in the Greek books the same bare title, Νικήτας ὁ Ὁμολογητής, with no epithet of place. Only the see (Apollonias on the Rhyndakos versus Chalcedon on the Bosporus) and the feast (March 20 versus May 28) distinguish the two men in the transmitted record; where a source gives the name and title alone, the day of commemoration is the only reliable guide to which is meant.
- Not to be confused with the several other saints named Nicetas, and above all with the two other ninth-century iconodule confessors of the name: Nicetas the Patrician, the confessor of Constantinople (October 13), and Nicetas of Medikion, abbot and confessor (April 3), with both of whom this bishop of Apollonias is easily conflated. He is likewise distinct from Nicetas the Goth, the fourth-century great-martyr (September 15), and from Nikitas of Novgorod, the recluse of the Kiev Caves and bishop (†1108, January 31), who share only the name.