Saint Saint Nikon the Metanoeite

Nikon the "Metanoite" (Greek: Νίκων ὁ Μετανοεῖτε, Nikon ho Metanoeite (Nikon "Repent!" ); born circa 930, died 26 November, 998) was a Byzantine monk, itinerant preacher, and saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Nikon is best understood, according to historian Andrew Louth, as the heroic subject of his Life, a hagiography of the saint written after his death by a successor abbot of his monastery. Life focused on Nikon's mission to re-Christianize sections of the Byzantine Empire that had been lost in the early Muslim conquests, particularly the Emirate of Crete that existed from the late 820s to Byzantine reconquest in 961. Life describes Nikon's work on Crete and the central Greek mainland, telling of miracles he performed during and after his life. Nikon himself is represented as a missionary monk in the biography, one who was constantly preaching rather than constantly praying. Nikon, of Greek origin, was born in Pontus (modern north-eastern Turkey) or in Argos. When he was young, Nikon went to a monastery known as Khrysopetro ("Golden Stone") located on the borders of Pontus and Paphlagonia. He spent twelve years there, living an ascetic life of prayer and penance so extreme that his brothers tried to persuade him to lessen his regimen. His abbot, impressed by his spiritual discipline and worried that his newly-returned father would draw take from the ascetic life, sent Nikon out into the world to proselytize. Nikon traveled into Asia Minor and preached repentance there for three years. Following the expulsion of the Arabs from the island of Crete in 961 following the Siege of Chandax, Nikon began his mission on the island, seeking to persuade converts to Islam to revert to Christianity. The area had been a Muslim emirate since the 820s, and in that time Christianity there had declined.