Nikon of the Black Mountain (born 1025, died 1105) was a

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

soldier, monk and author. Born at

Constantinople la, Constantinopolis ota, قسطنطينيه , alternate_name = Byzantion (earlier Greek name), Nova Roma ("New Rome"), Miklagard/Miklagarth (Old Norse), Tsargrad ( Slavic), Qustantiniya (Arabic), Basileuousa ("Queen of Cities"), Megalopolis (" ...

around 1025 to a family of '' archontes'', Nikon served in the army under

Constantine IX Constantine IX Monomachos ( grc-x-medieval, Κωνσταντῖνος Μονομάχος, translit=Kōnstantinos IX Monomachos; 1004 – 11 January 1055), reigned as Byzantine emperor from June 1042 to January 1055. Empress Zoë Porphyrogenita ...

(). He never received a formal education and considered himself "simple, uncultivated and completely ignorant". Acting on a vision of the

Virgin Mary Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother of ...

, he retired to a monastery on the Black Mountain founded by Luke, the former metropolitan of

Anazarbos Anazarbus ( grc, Ἀναζαρβός, medieval Ain Zarba; modern Anavarza; ar, عَيْنُ زَرْبَة) was an ancient Cilician city. Under the late Roman Empire, it was the capital of Cilicia Secunda. Roman emperor Justinian I rebuil ...

, who also tonsured him. After the death of Luke, Nikon incurred the displeasure of his brother monks by striving to enforce rigid discipline. He was eventually forced to leave. He tried to establish his own monastery, but ultimately settled in the monastery of Simeon Stylites the Younger on the Wondrous Mountain. In 1084, the

Sultanate of Rum fa, سلجوقیان روم () , status = , government_type = Hereditary monarchyTriarchy (1249–1254) Diarchy (1257–1262) , year_start = 1077 , year_end = 1308 , p1 = B ...

conquered

Antioch Antioch on the Orontes (; grc-gre, Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Ὀρόντου, ''Antiókheia hē epì Oróntou'', Learned ; also Syrian Antioch) grc-koi, Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Ὀρόντου; or Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπ� ...

and the monastery of Saint Simeon was sacked. For safety, Nikon moved to the monastery of the ''Theotokos tou Roidiou'' (Virgin of the Pomegranate), probably identical with the Simanaklay monastery in modern Kazmaca close to

. There he died between 1100 and 1110. Nikon produced two major compilations of ecclesiastical texts: the ''Pandektai'' (Pandects), a collection of conciliar and patristic writings on canon law for wandering monks, and the ''Taktikon'', a collection of forty chapters of authoritative texts on liturgical problems. The ''Pandektai'' was written while he was still on the Black Mountain. It contains one episode cited to the ''

Euthymiac History The ''Euthymiac History'' ( grc, Εὐθυμιακὴ ἱστορία, Euthymiakē historia; la, Historia Euthymiaca) is a Chalcedonian ecclesiastical history preserved today only in fragments quoted in other works.Peter Van Nuffelen and Lieve Van ...

'', which is one of only two surviving excerpts from this otherwise

lost work A lost work is a document, literary work, or piece of multimedia produced some time in the past, of which no surviving copies are known to exist. It can only be known through reference. This term most commonly applies to works from the classical ...

. The ''Taktikon'' includes a '' typikon'' initially intended for the community he founded, but they rejected it and the community disbanded. The ''typikon'' was taken up by the monastery of the Virgin of the Pomegranate. From the 13th century, the ''Taktikon'' was the main authority in Russian monasticism. Both Nikon's works were early translated into

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

and Slavonic. The Arabic translation of the ''Pandektai'', entitled ''al-Ḥāwī al-kabīr'', was then translated into Ethiopic under the title ''Maṣḥafa Ḥāwi'' in the 16th century.

Notes

Sources

* * * * * {{Authority control 1020s births 1100s deaths 11th-century Byzantine military personnel 11th-century Byzantine monks 11th-century Byzantine writers