Nilus the Myrrh-gusher
Our Venerable Father Nilus the Myrrh-gusher of Mount Athos
Venerable · b. c. 1601 — d. 1651
Commemorated 7 May — Uncovering of the relics on Mount Athos, 1815, 12 November — Repose on Mount Athos
Nilus the Myrrh-gusher (c. 1601–1651) was a Greek hieromonk of Mount Athos who ended his life as a solitary in a nearly inaccessible cave on the mountain's south-eastern cliffs. He is called "Myrrh-gusher" because after his death a fragrant myrrh flowed in such abundance from his grave that it ran down the rock to the sea, drawing pilgrims who came by boat to gather it. In the following century he was believed to have appeared repeatedly to an Athonite monk, dictating a body of prophecies about the last times that circulated widely. He is commemorated on November 12.
Origins and monastic life
Nilus was born around 1601 in the Peloponnese, in a village of the region of Kynouria (the district the sources call Zakoneia), traditionally named for Saint Peter. Orphaned or entrusted young to the care of his uncle, the hieromonk Macarius, he was raised by him in piety and letters. The two came to Mount Athos, where Nilus in due course received the monastic tonsure and was ordained, serving as hierodeacon and then hieromonk. Uncle and nephew lived the common ascetic life together until Macarius's repose.
Ascetic struggle and repose
After his elder's death Nilus withdrew deeper into the wilderness of the Holy Mountain, settling at last in a cave set in the sheer cliff-face above the sea, in the wild country near the cave of Saint Peter the Athonite — a place so steep that it could scarcely be reached. There, in extreme austerity and unbroken prayer, he passed the remainder of his life, and reposed on November 12, 1651.
The myrrh and later cultus
The sign that made his name came after his death. From his grave in the cliff there began to flow a sweet-smelling myrrh in extraordinary quantity, streaming down the face of the rock to the shore below, so that pilgrims and sailors put in by boat to collect it as a blessing and a means of healing. From this wonder he was surnamed Myroblytēs, the Myrrh-gusher, and his cave and the skete that grew up near it became a place of veneration.
More than a century later, in the 1810s, the tradition of Athos held that Nilus appeared many times to a monk named Theophanes then living at the site, and delivered through him a series of admonitions and prophecies concerning the decline of faith and the conditions of the last days — the "posthumous discourses" of Saint Nilus, of which the saying that "the people of that time will become unrecognisable" is the best known. These texts, whatever their precise origin, spread far beyond the Holy Mountain and remain widely read. Nilus was formally numbered among the saints, and his relics and cave continue to be venerated on Athos.
Feast and commemoration
November 12 (church date; Old Calendar civil November 25), the day of his repose. His feast is kept on the Holy Mountain and in the Greek, Russian and other calendars that receive the later Athonite saints; it falls on the same day as the much older commemoration of Nilus the Faster, the ascetic writer of Sinai — a different saint, with whom he shares only the name and the day, and the two are not to be confused. Distinct again are the Russian Nilus of Stolobny (†1554, December 7) and Nilus of Sora (Nil Sorsky, †1508, May 7).
Iconography
Nilus is depicted as an Athonite monk in the schema, with a full beard, holding a scroll; his icons frequently include the motif of the myrrh flowing from his cliff-cave to the sea, or show the saint within the rock of his hermitage. No public-domain or free-licensed image of assured identity has yet been secured for this entry; the surviving depictions are modern works of the Athonite ateliers.