Our Venerable Father Nicholas, Luminary of the Georgians, Writer of Akolouthiai (+1308)

The Venerable Nicholas, luminary of the Georgians, lived and laboured from the middle of the thirteenth century to the beginning of the fourteenth. The last years of his work coincide with the reign of Vakhtang (1301–1308), son of Demetrius the Self-sacrificing (commemorated 12 March).

Information about the Venerable Nicholas, luminary of the Georgians and writer of akolouthiai, has been preserved only scantily.

Saint Nicholas was one of the greatest hymnographers and an outstanding churchman of his time. Unhappily very little of his work has come down to us.

Catholicos Anton (1720–1788) writes that Nicholas was “a composer of canons, of many akolouthiai”, and names one of his works: “He composed an akolouthia for stopping excessive rain, a fervent supplication to God from the people, in lofty language.” This akolouthia is found in the Georgian Euchologion.

Saint Nicholas also enriched Georgian sacred literature by his work as a translator; it is supposed that, as a liturgist, the services translated from Greek into Georgian in 1306–1308 must be his, in particular “The Order of the Blessing of Water”.

The well-known scholar and historian Platon Ioseliani (1809–1875) writes that he saw other akolouthiai of Saint Nicholas too among the manuscripts of the Iviron monastery on Athos.

The holy father reposed in peace in 1308.