Our Holy Father Nikon the Withered.

Commemorated December 11 in the Orthodox Christian Menaion

From the Prologue

He was enslaved by the Tartars as a monk of the Kiev Caves, and spent three years in captivity, fettered, tortured and abused. When his kinsmen brought the money to ransom him from his owner, he refused, saying: 'If the Lord had wanted me to be free, He would not have given me into the hands of these lawless men.' Once he told his owner that Christ would free him in three days. The Tartar thought that this meant that his slave was going to run away, so he cut his tendons below the knee. On the third day, though, Nikon was indeed carried by invisible hands to Kiev. After a time, the Tartar came to Kiev and recognised his former slave. He repented and was baptised, and the former owner became the servant and disciple of his erstwhile slave. Nikon, called the Withered because of the great emaciation of his body, was a great visionary and wonderworker. He entered peacefully into rest in the Lord on December 11th, 1101.

From The Prologue From Ochrid by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich
©1985 Lazarica Press, Birmingham UK