NICODEMUS OF THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (HAGIORITES)

NICODEMUS OF THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (HAGIORITES), monk, ascetic writer, St. (ca. 1749–1809). One of the most important figures of recent Orthodox history, Nicodemus was born in 1749 on the island of Naxos in the Aegean Sea. He embraced the monastic life on Mt. Athos in 1775, and was early associated with the kollyvades movement (qq.v.), exiled members of which influenced his decision to take up monastic life on the Holy Mountain. His principal accomplishment in a life of great literary output was his edition in collaboration with Macarius of Corinth of the great anthology of 4th-14th c. ascetic literature on prayer (qq.v.). This collection in five volumes published in Venice, the Philokalia (1782), together with Paisii Velichkovsky’s (q.v.) publication of a slightly different collection under the same title in Church Slavic, Dobrotolyiubie (1792), and later in Romanian, was arguably the most important publishing event in the Orthodox Church in the past two centuries. It signaled the beginning of a revival in monastic spirituality and patristic (qq.v.) learning that is still in process.

Nicodemus’s other voluminous writings included commentaries on the Scriptures (q.v.), the liturgical year, guides to the life of prayer (Handbook of Spiritual Counsel), and for confessors, an anthology and commentary on Canon Law (q.v.) (the Pedalion, or Rudder). He edited and translated into contemporary Greek a number of important Eastern and Western Christian writers, including Symeon the New Theologian (q.v.), Ignatius of Loyola, and Lorenzo Scupoli. He also insisted upon the necessity of frequent communion at a time when this was unpopular.