Nilus of Erikoussa
Our Venerable Father Nilus the Erikousian, founder of the Monastery of Giromeri
Venerable · b. Constantinople, early 13th century, as Nicholas — d. early 14th century, at the Monastery of Giromeri in Thesprotia
Commemorated 2 January — Principal commemoration; his life is given at length under this date, 16 August — Repeated commemoration in the Greek synaxaria
Nilus the Erikousian was a prince of the house of Laskaris who became a monk, a wanderer and at last a founder. Born at Constantinople as Nicholas, son of John Laskaris and nephew of the emperor Theodore I Laskaris, he took the habit in flight from the Latin occupation, made a long pilgrimage to Jerusalem, was exiled to Mount Athos by Michael VIII Palaiologos for his opposition to the union with Rome, and after ten years at Iveron and a long voyage through the Mediterranean settled as a hermit on the deserted islet of Erikoussa north-west of Corfu, from which he takes his name. After ten years there he crossed to the mainland and founded in Thesprotia the Monastery of Giromeri, where he reposed in great age. His principal feast is January 2; the Greek synaxaria repeat his memory on August 16.
A Laskaris in the ruin of the City
Nicholas was born at Constantinople into the imperial family of the Laskarides: his father was John Laskaris, brother of Theodore I Laskaris, who in 1204 — when the Fourth Crusade took the City and the Byzantine state broke into fragments — established the exile empire at Nicaea and was crowned there. The boy's whole youth therefore falls in the long Latin occupation, and his monastic vocation is presented by the tradition as a flight from it: escaping the persecution of the Latins, he withdrew to a monastery of the Akoimetoi, the "Sleepless Ones," where he was tonsured with the name Nilus.
Jerusalem, Athos, and the union with Rome
In 1261, when Michael VIII Palaiologos recovered Constantinople, Nilus returned to the City. He obtained money from his mother and went to Jerusalem, where he remained six years among the holy places. Returning again to Constantinople, he found the emperor committed to the union with the Latins which was concluded at the Second Council of Lyons in 1274 and enforced with severity on the monks; opposing it, Nilus was exiled to Mount Athos, and spent ten years at the Monastery of Iveron.
He was recalled after the death of Michael by Andronikos II Palaiologos, who repudiated the union. Provided with means by his sister, he did not settle in the capital but set out on a long journey through the lands of the Mediterranean.
Erikoussa
The journey ended on a deserted island. Erikoussa is the northernmost of the Diapontian islets that lie beyond Corfu, on the sea-road between Epirus and Italy: a low green rock of a few square kilometres, uninhabited then, with no water to speak of and no shelter but its own scrub. There Nilus lived as a solitary for ten years, and from it he took the by-name — ho Erikousios, the Erikousian — by which the Church has known him ever since. It is a rare instance of a Byzantine saint named not for a city, a monastery or a family but for an empty island.
Giromeri
At length he crossed to the mainland, into Thesprotia in the north-west of Epirus, and there built the monastery which is his true monument: the Monastery of the Dormition of the Theotokos at Giromeri (Ἱερομέριον, "the holy place"), above the plain of Filiates. It was a foundation made in a border country, in the years when Epirus was contested between Byzantines, Angevins and Serbs, and it survived them all; it remains an active monastery of the Metropolis of Paramythia, Filiates and Gianitsa, and it keeps the relics and the memory of its founder. There Nilus, after many ascetic labours, reposed in peace in deep old age.
Feast and commemoration
January 2 is the principal feast (church date; New Calendar civil January 2, Old Calendar civil January 15), where the full synaxarion notice of his life stands, within the forefeast of the Theophany. The Greek synaxaria repeat his memory on August 16 (Old Calendar civil August 29), within the afterfeast of the Dormition, without explanation; on that day he stands among the local Greek commemorations beside the Translation of the Image Not-Made-by-Hands and Gerasimus of Cephalonia. His veneration is concentrated in Thesprotia and Corfu, where the Monastery of Giromeri keeps his service and his relics; he does not appear in the Slavonic calendars.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8
Sprung from a royal house, thou didst choose the poverty of Christ, and forsaking the City thou didst make thy dwelling in the sea's solitude; then, called from the desert island, thou didst raise a house to the Mother of God in the mountains of Epirus, O venerable father Nilus: intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Nilus is painted as an elderly monk of the Greek tradition — the black rason and megaloschema, the koukoulion pushed back or drawn over the head, a long white beard — and, as a founder, he holds in his hands or on his left arm a model of the monastery church of Giromeri, offered up towards a blessing hand or towards the Theotokos of the Dormition to whom the house is dedicated. In the ktetorial (founder's) portraits of Giromeri itself he appears in this posture on the west wall of the katholikon, the usual place for such an image. Where his life is illustrated, the scene proper to him is the solitary on the island: the saint at prayer on a bare rock ringed by the sea, which is his distinguishing episode and the source of his name. No pre-1900 image of him has been located, and he is entered in the the list of icons still being sought list.
Disputed questions
- The chronology and the Akoimetoi. The Greek synaxarion names the abbot who tonsured him as Marcellus of the Akoimetoi and places the monastery "on the shores of Pontus." Marcellus of the Akoimetoi died about 485 and his community, founded by Alexander the Sleepless, was established at Eirenaion on the Bosphorus. The abbot of Nilus' tonsure cannot be that Marcellus; either a later namesake is meant, or — more probably — the notice has drawn the founder's name into a thirteenth-century narrative. The detail is recorded and discounted.
- The dates. No source available at authoring time supplies a year of birth or of repose. The fixed points are 1204 (the Latin conquest, in flight from which he was tonsured), 1261 (his return to the recovered City), the reign of Michael VIII (1259–1282, the exile to Athos) and that of Andronikos II (1282–1328, the recall). Ten years at Iveron, a long voyage, ten years on Erikoussa and the foundation and governance of Giromeri place his repose in the early fourteenth century, and that is what is recorded here. The traditional foundation date of Giromeri is variously given in the late thirteenth and the early fourteenth century, and the entry does not choose between them.
- Erikousios or Erichiotis? Some Greek sources give the by-name as Ἐριχιώτης (Erichiotis) rather than Ἐρικούσιος. The forms are generally taken for variants of the same epithet and the same man, the founder of Giromeri; the variance is noted.
- Why two feasts? The saint's own synaxarion notice, having given his life under January 2, remarks of the August 16 entry with disarming honesty: "why his memory is repeated today, we do not know." No explanation has been found. The August notice is kept here as a secondary commemoration.
- Not to be confused with the other saints of the name: Nilus the Faster of Sinai, the ascetic writer and disciple of Chrysostom (November 12); Nilus the Myrrh-gusher of Athos (November 12); Nilus of Sora, the Russian founder of the skete rule (May 7); and Nilus of Stolobny (December 7). The name was a favourite in monastic tonsure and the four are constantly interchanged in English lists.