Nikon I, Serbian Patriarch was the archbishop of the
Serbian Patriarchate of Peć
Serbian Patriarchate of Peć (, ''Srpska patrijaršija u Peći''), or simply Peć Patriarchate (, ''Pećka patrijaršija''), was an autocephaly, autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Patriarchate that existed from 1346 to 1463, and then again from 155 ...
and the Serbian patriarch from 1419 to 1435.
Nikon was on the throne of the Serbian Church during the reign of
Stefan Lazarević
Stefan Lazarević ( sr-Cyrl, Стефан Лазаревић, 1377 – 19 July 1427), also known as Stefan the Tall (), was a Serbian ruler as prince (1389–1402) and Despot (court title), despot (1402–1427). He was also a diplomat, legislat ...
and after.
Stefan had taken a direct interest in selecting Nikon to head the Church. The earliest mention of this Serbian hierarch was noted in 1419 in the "Praise to Prince Lazar" written by Antonije Rafail, a writer of Greek origin who fled to Serbia from the Ottoman Empire. One eulogy-praise was written in 1424 by order of Patriarch Nikon. In the spring of 1426, at a state Sabor held in
Srebrenica
Srebrenica ( sr-cyrl, Сребреница, ) is a town and municipality in Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is a small mountain town, with its main industry being salt mining and a nearby spa.
During the Bosnian War in 1995, Srebr ...
, Stefan selected and appointed
Đurađ Branković
Đurađ Vuković Branković ( sr-Cyrl, Ђурађ Вуковић Бранковић, ; 1377 – 24 December 1456) served as the Serbian Despot from 1427 to 1456, making him one of the final rulers of medieval Serbia.
In 1429, Branković was form ...
as his successor. Patriarch Nikon was also present at the assembly. The following year (1427), the new ruler of Serbia, Đurađ Branković, forbade Serbian Patriarch Nikon to attend the
Council of Florence
The Council of Florence is the seventeenth ecumenical council recognized by the Catholic Church, held between 1431 and 1445. It was convened in territories under the Holy Roman Empire. Italy became a venue of a Catholic ecumenical council aft ...
on 6 July 1439 on the grounds that he mistrusted the motives of that council and questioned the principle of
papal supremacy
Papal supremacy is the doctrine of the Catholic Church that the Pope, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, the visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful, and as priest of the ...
.
The last mention of Patriarch Nikon is from 1435 in a record of the manuscript
Triodion
The Triodion (, ; , ; , ), also called the Lenten Triodion (, ), is a liturgical book used by the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches. The book contains the propers for the fasting period preceding Pascha (Easter) and for the we ...
transcribed by Deacon Arsenije.
Literature
* „Никон (патријарх српски)” (Nikon, Serbian Patriarch) Народна енциклопедија (National Encyclopedia). Загреб: Библиографски завод. 1927 (Zagreb: Bibliographic Institute, 1927)
* Вуковић, Сава (Sava Vuković, 1996). Српски јерарси од деветог до двадесетог века (Serbian Hierarch from the Ninth- to the Twentieth-century). Евро, Унирекс, Каленић (Evro, Unireks, Kalenić).
* Поповић, Јелена Р. (Jelena P. Popović, 2014). „Положај Српске Православне Цркве у последњим деценијама српске Деспотовине” (Position of the Serbian Orthodox Church during the last decades of the Despotate, PDF). Богословље: Часопис Православног богословског факултета у Београду (Bogoslovlje: Journal of the Orthodox Theological Faculty in Belgrade), edition 73 (1): 151—160.
See also
*
List of heads of the Serbian Orthodox Church
This is a list of heads of the Serbian Orthodox Church, since the establishment of the church as an autocephalous archbishopric in 1219 to today's patriarchate. The list includes all the archbishops and patriarchs that led the Serbian Ortho ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nikon I
Patriarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church