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Biography

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Nikon the Dry (also called Nikon Sukhoi) was an Eastern Orthodox monk of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra who lived in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Later liturgical and paterikon tradition presents him as a native of Kiev who entered the cave monastery founded by Saints Anthony and Theodosius and lived under the Studite monastic rule that Theodosius had introduced there. He is distinct from the better-documented hegumen Nikon of the Caves (died 1088). Almost everything known about him comes from the Kievan Caves Paterikon and from the menologia of the Lavra rather than from contemporary chronicle notices devoted to him personally, so the outline of his life remains that of church tradition.

According to that tradition, during one of the Polovtsian (Cuman) raids that repeatedly struck the Kievan lands in this period he was seized with other captives and carried onto the steppe, where he was sold to a Polovtsian master. He remained in bondage for three years. Christians offered to ransom him, but he refused, saying that God would free him in His own time. His captor beat him and forced him to labor. When Nikon declared that he would be delivered within three days, the master, fearing escape, had the tendons of his legs cut and set a guard over him.

The hagiographical account states that on the third day Nikon was miraculously translated, still in chains, into the church of the Caves Monastery during the Divine Liturgy. The brethren recognized him with astonishment. The irons later fell from him through prayer and were kept at the monastery. Prolonged starvation, wounds, and asceticism had left him extremely emaciated, which is the origin of the epithet “the Dry.” His former master, after later coming to Kiev and seeing the monk alive and restored, was converted, received baptism, and himself became a monk of the Caves, remaining in obedience to Nikon.

Nikon spent the rest of his life in the Lavra in prayer and ascetic labor. Synaxaria give his death as 1101; more cautious modern notices sometimes say only that he died at the beginning of the twelfth century. He was buried in the Near Caves (the Caves of Saint Anthony) of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, where his relics have been venerated. The Orthodox Church commemorates him on 11 December and also with the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Near Caves on 28 September. Independent documentary evidence beyond the Paterikon tradition and the liturgical memory of the monastery is scarce.

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