Eikon

Niphon of Athos

Our Venerable Father Niphon the Athonite, of Kavsokalyvia

Venerable · Priest · Wonderworker

Commemorated 14 June — Repose of the venerable father on the Holy Mountain

Niphon, a priest's son from the Epirot village of Loukovo, was a monk of the Holy Mountain in the fourteenth century and one of the small company of Athonite hesychasts gathered about Maximus the Hut-burner, to whom he attached himself as a disciple. He was tonsured and ordained at the monastery of Mesopotamos in his own country, went up to Athos while still young, moved from cell to cell in the territory of the Great Lavra seeking stillness, and, when disciples began to gather to him at the Transfiguration, fled even that and finished his life in a cave near Kavsokalyvia in the strictest asceticism. He lived ninety-six years and was granted, the tradition says, the gifts of clairvoyance and of wonders. He is also one of the earliest witnesses to the life of Saint Maximus. His memory is kept on June 14.

Epirus and Mesopotamos

Niphon was born at Loukovo (Λουκόβη) in the district of Argyrokastro — Gjirokastër in the Northern Epirus, on the Ionian coast of what is now southern Albania — the son of a priest, and was brought up from childhood in the strict Christian discipline of a clerical household. As a young man he entered the monastery of Mesopotamos in the same country, where he received his education and was in time ordained to the priesthood.

The Holy Mountain

The desire for stillness took him from Epirus to the Holy Mountain. He settled within the territory of the Great Lavra, and there began the restless search for solitude that shapes his whole life: he changed cells several times, and about the year 1330 he was ascetically labouring at a place called Vouleuteria. He went afterwards to live at the Transfiguration; but monks began to come to him in numbers, and he left that place too rather than be encumbered with disciples and reputation.

With Maximus the Hut-burner

He then did what a hesychast of that generation did when he wanted to be taught rather than followed: he went and put himself under obedience as a disciple of Saint Maximus the Kavsokalyvite, the great and strange ascetic of the southern Athos who burned down each hut he had built as soon as anyone came to find him in it. This is the connection that fixes Niphon's place in the history of the Mountain. After a short time under his elder, and with his blessing, Niphon settled in a cave near Kavsokalyvia, and there passed the rest of his life in a severity of ascesis that his own biographers call extreme.

Niphon is one of the writers of the Life of Maximus — the earliest group of vitae, composed by men who had known him — and so the disciple is, in the ordinary way of the Holy Mountain, part of the reason we know anything about the master.

Repose

He reposed on June 14, having lived ninety-six years in all; the tradition credits him with the gifts of wonderworking and of foresight. The synaxarion distichs of Nikodemos the Hagiorite play, as Greek verses about him always do, on his name — Niphon, "the sober" — and add the note that his asceticism belonged to "the last times," that is, to a late and diminished age of the monastic life, which is itself a small witness to how the fourteenth-century Athonites regarded their own generation.

Feast and commemoration

June 14 on the church calendar (Old Calendar civil June 27). The commemoration is Greek and Athonite: he stands in the Greek synaxaria of the day after the Prophet Elisha, Methodius of Constantinople and Cyril of Gortyna, and is kept with a full service at the skete of Kavsokalyvia, where his cave is shown. The Orthodox Church in America also carries him for June 14. He is further commemorated with all the fathers who have shone forth on the Holy Mountain in the Synaxis of the Athonite Fathers, which is movable — the second Sunday after Pentecost — and therefore belongs to the movable calendar rather than to this day, although the Greek day-pages print the two together whenever they coincide.

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 8 (common of a venerable father)

By a flood of tears thou didst make the barren desert fruitful, and with sighs from the depths thou didst bring forth thy labours a hundredfold; thou wast made a beacon for the whole world, shining with miracles, O Niphon our father. Intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.

Original translation from the Greek

Synaxarion

Niphon is Niphon in very deed: for by the sobriety of his mind he ran his course through life. Niphon has passed beyond all men now in virtue, though it was in the last times that he laboured. On the fourteenth Niphon flew away from life.

Iconography

Niphon is painted as a very old monk with a long white beard, in the great schema, holding a scroll and often a prayer-rope; where he is shown with others he stands beside Maximus the Kavsokalyvite, and the Athonite compositions place the two of them against the crags of the southern Mountain with the burnt huts and the cave that belong to their story. He has no distinguishing attribute of his own beyond the schema and the extreme age the Life records. No pre-modern image of him has been located that can be verified as his; the icons in circulation are the modern panels of Kavsokalyvia and the Athonite sketes, which are the copyrighted work of living or recent iconographers and are not stored here.

Disputed questions

  • Dates. No year of birth or repose is transmitted, and none is asserted here. The fixed points are the notice that he was ascetically labouring at Vouleuteria "about 1330," that he lived ninety-six years, and that he was a disciple of Maximus the Hut-burner (†c. 1365). Taken together these push his repose toward the end of the fourteenth century or into the beginning of the fifteenth; the Greek sources and the Orthodox Church in America both call him simply a father of the fourteenth century, and this entry indexes him there.
  • His office. The akolouthia sung to him at Kavsokalyvia, with its two apolytikia, two kontakia, oikos, kathisma and several megalynaria, is a modern Athonite composition; only the synaxarion notice and distichs are of public-domain age. The hymnography section here therefore gives the common of a venerable father and the distichs, and not the proper service.
  • Not to be confused with Niphon II, Patriarch of Constantinople (†1508, kept August 11) — an Athonite likewise, who hid his patriarchal rank as a labourer at Dionysiou — nor with Niphon of Constantiana, the visionary of the Life of Niphon (December 23), nor with the Niphon of the Kiev Caves.

Sources

  1. The Greek synaxarion for June 14 with its distichs, as printed in the Synaxaristes of the Twelve Months of the Year of Nikodemos the Hagiorite — the birthplace at Loukovo near Argyrokastro, the priest father, Mesopotamos, the cells of the Great Lavra, Vouleuteria about 1330, the Transfiguration, the discipleship to Maximus, the cave at Kavsokalyvia, and the ninety-six years.
  2. The Athonite Life of Maximus the Kavsokalyvite, of which Niphon is one of the authors — the primary link between the two saints.
  3. Orthodox Church in America, Lives of the Saints, June 14 — Venerable Niphon of Mount Athos (the clergy father, the priesthood, the ascetic labours with Saint Maximus, the age of ninety-six, and the gifts of wonderworking and clairvoyance).
  4. Greek calendar day-page for June 14 (saint.gr, after the Synaxaristes) — consulted live for the enumeration of the day and the text of the distichs.