Suggest an Edit — Nifont of Novgorod

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Biography

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Nifont (also rendered Niphont or Niphon) was a twelfth-century bishop of the Church in Kievan Rus' and is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church. His year and place of birth are not recorded in the surviving chronicles or hagiographical notices. Before his elevation he was a monk of the Kiev Caves Monastery (the Kiev Pechersk Lavra), the principal monastic house of southern Rus'. In 1130 he was consecrated bishop of Novgorod, a see that in his lifetime was still styled a bishopric rather than an archbishopric. He remained at Novgorod for a quarter of a century and became one of the most clearly attested hierarchs of twelfth-century Rus'.

As bishop he was active in church building and in the ordering of diocesan life in the Novgorod lands, including Pskov. Tradition and later historical writing associate him with the foundation of the Saviour Monastery at Mirozha near Pskov around the mid-twelfth century, whose katholikon preserves an important fresco cycle of that era. He is also the addressee of the so-called Questions of Kirik (Voproshanie Kirika), a mid-twelfth-century canonical questionnaire in which the Novgorod priest-monk Kirik, together with the clerics Savva and Ilya, sought rulings on baptism, marriage, fasting, penance, and other points of discipline. Nifont's answers form one of the earliest substantial monuments of practical canon law in Rus' and show a hierarch concerned to apply Byzantine norms to local custom without simply inventing new rules.

Nifont's widest political and canonical fame comes from his refusal to recognize Klim (Clement) Smoliatich, who in 1147 was chosen metropolitan of Kiev by a council of Rus' bishops at the instance of Grand Prince Iziaslav Mstislavich, without the blessing of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Nifont regarded the election as uncanonical and would not commemorate Klim. For this stand he was summoned from Novgorod to Kiev and detained, remaining associated with the Caves Monastery rather than returning immediately to his diocese. When the political situation in Kiev changed, he was released. In 1156, after Constantinople had sent Metropolitan Constantine to replace the disputed Klim, Nifont went again to Kiev to meet the new metropolitan.

He died in Kiev in 1156, before he could resume his see, and was buried in the Far Caves (the Caves of St. Theodosius) of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. The Novgorodians then proceeded to choose a successor. Nifont was subsequently commemorated among the saints of the Kiev Caves and among the saints of Novgorod. His principal feast in the Orthodox calendar is 8 April; he is also remembered in the synaxes of the Kiev Caves fathers of the Far Caves and of the Novgorod saints. No medieval act of papal-style canonization is recorded; his cult rests on monastic and diocesan veneration later received into the Russian Orthodox menologion. Precise details of his early life, family, and the exact day of death in 1156 are not securely documented in the chronicles.

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