Venerable Nicholas the Confessor, Hegumen of the Studion (+868)

The Venerable Nicholas the Confessor, hegumen of the Studion, lived in the ninth century. He was born into a Christian family in the village of Kydonia on the island of Crete. He was ten when his parents sent him to Constantinople, to his uncle, the blessed Theophanes, a monk of the Studion monastery. The superior of the monastery, the Venerable Theodore, enrolled the boy in the monastery school. After finishing school, at the age of sixteen, the saint was tonsured a monk, and some years later he was ordained priest as well.

During the persecution under the iconoclast Emperor Leo the Armenian (813–820) the Venerable Nicholas shared the lot of Theodore the Studite: they were put in prisons, tortured and mocked, but the holy fathers courageously went on preaching Orthodoxy. In the reign of the blessed Empress Theodora (+867), who governed the country during the childhood of her son Michael, the veneration of icons was restored and the unrest calmed down. The Venerable Nicholas returned to the Studion monastery and was also chosen its superior. The quiet did not last long. The reins of power were taken from the Empress Theodora by the king’s uncle Bardas, whose soul was defiled by open cohabitation with his daughter-in-law. The most holy Patriarch Ignatius denounced the foul ruler and tried to bring him to his senses, but in vain: Bardas added sin to sin, deposed the hierarch from his throne and exiled him. Saint Nicholas, not wishing to witness the triumph of lawlessness, left Constantinople and lived as a wanderer for seven years. Then he was arrested and shut up in the Studion monastery. Two years passed in confinement; after the death of King Michael (855–867) and of Bardas, and the accession of Basil I the Macedonian (867–886) to the throne, the Venerable Nicholas was released and returned to his office of superior. For his holy life the blessed father received from the Lord the gifts of healing and wonderworking, and in 868 committed his soul to the Lord in peace.