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Biography

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Saint Nikon of the Caves, often called Nikon the Great, was an eleventh-century hieromonk and later hegumen of the Kiev Caves Monastery (the Pechersk Lavra) in Kievan Rus'. Almost nothing verifiable is known of his birth, family, or early formation. He enters the historical record as an already ordained priest who joined the small cave community gathered around Saint Anthony of the Caves near Kiev in the mid-eleventh century. Because so few of the first brethren were in holy orders, Nikon became the community’s tonsurer. Among those he clothed in the monastic habit was Saint Theodosius of the Caves, who would organize the Lavra as a cenobium and give it the Studite rule.

Nikon’s willingness to receive postulants of high secular rank provoked a clash with the Kievan court. He tonsured Barlaam, the son of a leading boyar, and Ephraim, a member of Prince Izyaslav Yaroslavich’s household. The prince, angered at the loss of men bound to his service, threatened Nikon. In the resulting tension Nikon left Kiev and went to Tmutarakan (Tmutorokan), the Rus' principality on the Taman peninsula. There he founded a monastery dedicated to the Mother of God, arranged on the pattern of the Caves community, and remained for a number of years. He later returned to the Kiev Caves while Theodosius was still abbot and resumed his place among the elders of the brotherhood.

After Theodosius died in 1074, Stephen governed the monastery as hegumen. When Stephen left that office, Nikon was chosen to succeed him, an event generally placed in 1078. As abbot he upheld the cenobitic discipline associated with Theodosius and the Studite tradition that had been introduced at the Lavra. Orthodox synaxaria and the Kievan Caves Patericon record that he died on 23 March 1088 and was buried in the Near Caves, the original caves of Saint Anthony. He is sometimes styled “the Great” in order to distinguish him from other monks of the same name later associated with the Lavra, notably Nikon the Dry, a different saint.

Nikon is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church. His principal feast is 23 March; he is also commemorated in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Near Caves. The traditional portrait of his life depends chiefly on the Patericon of the Kievan Caves and on later liturgical notices. Modern scholars have at times hypothesized that this hegumen had a hand in early annalistic work at the monastery, but that attribution remains conjectural and does not belong to the hagiographical sources. Date and place of birth, parentage, and any career before he appears as a priest at the Caves are unrecorded.

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