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St. Nikon Metanoeite

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Saints and feasts

St. Nikon Metanoeite

Surnamed Metanoite, Confessor

Nikon, called Metanoeite from his summons to repentance, was a monk and preacher active in Armenia, Crete and Greece. Butler emphasizes prayer, a change of heart and perseverance in good works.

Sources

The life below remains the existing Butler-based reading, with its edition citation. The profile preserves the feast date and source title already listed in the library. Additional personal dates and historical details are shown only when separately documented.

Name associated with his preaching: Metanoeite, a summons to repentance
Butler explains this name through the opening appeal of his sermons.

Butler sourceAlban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XI (November), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; November 26, “St Nicon, Surnamed Metanoite, Confessor,” pp. 516-518.

Butler’s Lives of the Saints (1846)Alban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XI (November), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; November 26, “St Nicon, Surnamed Metanoite, Confessor,” pp. 516-518.

The reading

ⓘ Butler source

Alban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XI (November), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; November 26, “St Nicon, Surnamed Metanoite, Confessor,” pp. 516-518.

Nikon came from Pontus and entered a monastery while young. Butler describes a long formation in penance and prayer before his superiors sent him to preach. His ministry took him through Armenia and later to Crete.

The name Metanoeite recalled the summons to repentance with which he began his sermons. Butler emphasizes that this meant a change reaching the heart and its habits, rather than a passing expression of sorrow. Nikon encouraged prayer, self-examination, works of mercy and the abandonment of occasions of sin.

After years of preaching and strengthening the churches in Crete, he continued his ministry in parts of Greece. Butler remembers both the seriousness of his teaching and the gentleness with which he offered it. His life ended in a monastery in the Peloponnese. This reading leaves the edition’s exact sequence of political events and the proposed death year unasserted, while preserving its account of a preacher formed by religious life.

Historical note

An original Novena Regina reading adapted and summarized from the cited pre-1962 sources. This is not a transcription of Butler’s words.

Butler spells the name Nicon. The reading does not adopt the notice’s full political chronology or exact death year.

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