Nicetas of Medikion
Our Venerable Father and Confessor Nicetas, Abbot of Medikion
Venerable · Confessor · b. c. 760 — d. 824
Commemorated 3 April — Commemoration of the abbot-confessor of Medikion
Nicetas (c. 760–824) was abbot of the great monastery of Medikion in Bithynia and one of the foremost confessors of the second period of Byzantine Iconoclasm. Under his governance Medikion became a school of holiness numbering hundreds of monks; and when the emperor Leo V the Armenian renewed the war on the holy icons, Nicetas — with the Patriarch Nicephorus and Theodore the Studite — refused all compromise, and for it endured imprisonment, exile and years of hardship, ending his days a confessor. His Life, written soon after his death by his disciple Theosteriktos, is one of the fullest and most valuable accounts of the iconoclast persecution seen from within.
Formation and the monastery of Medikion
Nicetas was born about 760 at Caesarea in Bithynia; his mother died a week after his birth, and he was reared by his grandmother in the fear of God, showing from childhood an inclination to the church and to the ascetic life. Coming of age, he withdrew to the monastery of Medikion, near the Gulf of Cius on the Sea of Marmara, then newly founded by the ascetic Nicephorus. There he served in perfect obedience, and by his labour, humility and prayer advanced quickly in the spiritual life; he was ordained priest by the holy Patriarch Tarasius. When the founder Nicephorus, grown old, could no longer bear the burden, he gave the governance of the community into Nicetas's hands, and after Nicephorus's repose Nicetas became abbot in name as he had long been in deed.
Under him Medikion flourished as few houses did: the number of monks rose to many hundreds, and the fame of its discipline and its wonderworking abbot spread through the region. Nicetas himself was granted gifts of healing and of insight, but bore them with such humility that he sought always to hide them.
The confession under Leo the Armenian
In 815 the emperor Leo V the Armenian revived the persecution of the holy icons that Irene and the Seventh Council had ended, deposing the Patriarch Nicephorus and demanding that the abbots and bishops subscribe to iconoclasm. Nicetas stood among the leaders of the resistance. Summoned with the other abbots before the emperor and the intruded patriarch Theodotos, he refused to hold communion with the iconoclasts or to surrender the veneration of the images. For this he was seized, imprisoned, and sent into a hard exile, moved from place to place, confined in close and filthy cells, harassed and threatened, and pressed continually to yield.
For a brief season, worn down by suffering and by the persuasions of the persecutors — who staged a show of "communion" that seemed to save the icons — Nicetas was led, with others, into a momentary and equivocal compliance; but he saw the deception at once, repented bitterly of even the appearance of yielding, publicly renounced all fellowship with the iconoclasts, and returned to his confession with redoubled firmness, so that his later steadfastness shone the brighter for his fall and rising. He passed the rest of Leo's reign in exile and imprisonment. When Leo was killed (820) and Michael II relaxed the open persecution, Nicetas was freed; but rather than return to rule at Medikion in a Church still troubled, he withdrew to a quiet dwelling near Constantinople, where he lived out his days in prayer and continued to work miracles. He reposed in 824, and his relics were carried back to Medikion with honour.
The witness of his Life
The disciple Theosteriktos composed Nicetas's Life within a generation of his death; it is a document of the first importance for the history of the second Iconoclasm, describing the monastery, the confessors, and the workings of the persecution with the detail of one who lived through them.
Feast and commemoration
April 3 (church date; Old Calendar civil April 16), within Great Lent. He is kept universally among the venerable confessors of the icons.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a venerable confessor)
O God of our fathers, ever dealing with us according to Thy gentleness: take not Thy mercy from us, but by the prayers of Thy venerable one Nicetas guide our life in peace.
Original translation from the Greek
Kontakion — Tone 2
Celebrating thy holy memory, O all-blessed Nicetas, we glorify the Lord who gave thee strength to confess Him; for standing firm for the honour of the holy icons, thou didst endure exile and affliction, and now thou dost intercede for us all.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Nicetas is shown as an aged monk-priest in the schema, holding a scroll or an icon (the mark of his confession for the images). No pre-1900 icon of him alone has been identified for this collection.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with the several other saints named Nicetas — Nicetas the Goth (Sep 15), Nicetas the Patrician (Oct 13), Nicetas of Apollonias (Mar 20), or Nicetas the Stylite of Pereyaslavl (May 24). His mark is the abbacy of Medikion and his confession under Leo the Armenian.
- Not to be confused, in particular, with Nicetas of Chalcedon (May 28), the confessor-bishop of Chalcedon exiled by the same emperor — and here the confusion has already produced a hybrid in print: reference works, including the OrthodoxWiki day-list for May 28, carry the style "Nicetas of Medikion, Archbishop of Chalcedon," welding the two men into one. They are distinct. This Nicetas was a monk and abbot, never a bishop, and is commemorated on April 3; the bishop of Chalcedon held a great metropolitan see and is commemorated on May 28.