Nicon the Monk of Raithu

easily inflammable over the foundation of Christ. For this reason, we have need here for the voluntary burning that comes through tribulation. For just as gold is purified in a furnace, so too does the soul receive its own splendor through the cauterizing fire of tribulation. Let us be on guard, brethren, lest by contaminating the first and second garment, in which we were clothed through baptism and repentance, we be cast out from that pure and radiant bridal chamber, and our lot be cast with the hypocritical demons. For are not the wicked authors hypocrites, who, being darkness, pretend to be light? Let us place our hope in Him who has willed to grant us purity through the burning of trials which we endure either voluntarily or by necessity. Our hope shall not be put off, and that which we expect shall be brought to its conclusion. And then shall appear the blessedness of those who have been proven by fire through patience, of which may we all be made partakers in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and power and adoration, with the Father who is without beginning, and the all-holy and good and life-giving Spirit, now and always, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

YEAR OF OUR LORD MXCI. NICON MONACHUS RAITHENSIS IN PALESTINA.

NOTITIA.

This Nicon represents a figure distinct from that great Nicon, the monk from Armenia, the apostle of the Armenians and Cretans during the tenth century of Christianity, of whom (if the learned are to be believed) there exists at the end of Balsamon, and also in vol. III of the *Bibliotheca Patrum*, a Latin fragment of an epistle to Enclistius (perhaps "Enclistus," the Recluse) along with a little book against the errors of the Armenians, which I published in Greek in *Constitutiones Apostolicæ*, lib. II, cap. 24. The reason for this conjecture is that our Nicon here cites a passage from the first *Invective* of Isaac the Catholicos against the Armenians, cap. 13, although, I suspect, his memory failed him, as he puts it under the name of an epistle of John of Nicaea to Zacharias the Catholicos. Now Isaac flourished in the twelfth century, namely, eight hundred years after the death of Constantine, as he himself says in cap. 14. To this is added the authority of one of the three Royal manuscripts, in which this Nicon is called "the monk of Palestine"; also another, which was formerly 1326, now 5027, where it is held, etc. ... and soon, "Had it occurred in time, we would have published it in this place." Furthermore, Saint Nicon is praised by Leo Allatius—to whose diligence and untiring labor we owe very many fragments of Greek ecclesiastical writers—in *De purgatorio*, etc., p. 746, within his *Narrationes Asceticæ*. I also happened upon an unpublished tract—which, God willing, may one day be edited—*De celebri schismate ob Josephum presbyterum*, containing these words: "These things are found in the second book of Saint Nicon, in one of the Epistles of Methodius"; this is, beyond doubt, our Nicon: for his *Pandects concerning the interpretations of divine precepts*, in 65 chapters, is divided into two books in Royal codex 2424, and the second book begins...

[This is the first page of the chain.]

BOOK CONTAINING THE LORD’S COMMANDMENTS, AS WELL AS THEIR INTERPRETATIONS; ADDITIONALLY, THE TEACHINGS FITTING AND CONGRUENT TO THEM.

(From Bernard de Montfaucon, *Bibliotheca Coisliniana*, p. 189.)

PROLOGUS OF THE PRESENT WORK.

^A Antiochus, that man who renounced the world in its entirety and lived for no small time in retirement in the monastery of the great Sabas in Jerusalem; while he occupied himself with and attended to himself, and had attained the knowledge of saving things according to that commandment, "Be still and know," having thus amassed the riches of the Spirit, and nor being sluggish in pouring them out liberally to those in need, having brought forth fruit hundredfold and multiplied the talent, so that as a faithful, prudent, and good servant he might receive the blessing from the benevolent Lord: this Antiochus, when at that time the beastly mind of the Persians and their bloodthirsty impulse dragged the whole Eastern region, which was subject to the Roman scepter, into their own empire with a miserable outcome; finding therein a providential occasion, he composed a sacred book from the divine utterances, as he himself in that book most clearly declares, and gave it such a title, and brought it into public view for the greatest benefit of those who from then until now have encountered it. Thereafter, another monk, unlearned in speech but not in knowledge according to Paul the divine herald, and who from his tender years had meditated day and night in the divine law, as the Psalmist David teaches, having become a fruit-bearing olive tree planted in the house of God, on ^B the mountain which is named Maurus, honored for a long time among the natives and the strangers, at the time when Constantine surnamed Ducas was administering the helm of the empire, having himself seized the occasion of the invasion of the impious Turks; and considering with himself that the divinely-transmitted oracles, according to the great and sublime Dionysius, are as it were the substance and faculties of our hierarchy, and that true destruction and the death of the soul are brought about not by hunger nor by thirst, but rather by the poverty of hearing the word of God; and that in such a condition of the times, sacred books could not be transported in great numbers, ^C since great fear was impending from region to region.

to pass through, they could barely keep their own lives in safety; above all, because books of this kind had grown to a great number through the additions of commentaries by the holy and God-bearing Fathers. He composed this one volume out of the near-total divine Scripture—like an industrious bee gathering spiritual flowers—which is a collection of divine laws, with those commentaries of the divine Fathers added to it that are appropriate and fitting to them. He proposed it as a common harbor, useful and salutary for souls that are in danger of being miserably submerged into the deep of ignorance; or, to speak truly, for those who wander in the darkness of this life, he lit a torch appearing from afar and ethereal, so that he might draw forth from the chasms those whom the Lord watches over; leading them out, I say, from those lowly, earth-crawling, and intricate heresies, and from the deep gloom that dwells in the darkness of ignorance and error, raising them to the sublimity of religious dogmas, and guiding them by the hand to the light of truly divine knowledge. ^A And the great Dionysius calls the traditions "God-given utterances," ^B and [he says] that a true destruction and death of the soul is not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the word of the Lord; and [he notes] how they were unable at that time to burden themselves with many holy books, as they were moving from country to country in great fear, and were able to save only their naked souls. And especially because these [books] had increased in number due to the teachings of the holy and God-bearing Fathers at various times, he—like an industrious and hardworking bee—collected spiritual flowers from almost the entire divine Scripture, and arranged the present book as a compendium of the divine commandments, and furthermore, as a summary of the teachings of the divine Fathers that harmonize with and follow them. Having named it this, he offered it as a common harbor, soul-profiting and saving for those who are in danger of being miserably swallowed up in the deep of ignorance, or, to tell the truth, for those wandering in the darkness of this life, having kindled a torch, far-shining and heavenly, to lead them out of the chasms and [void]—and the Lord watches over these, I say, from the low-crawling, impassioned, and many-stranded heresies, and from the deep blindness of the darkness of ignorance and error—drawing them up to the height of God-beloved dogmas, and guiding them by the hand to the light of truly unerring and divine knowledge.

Furthermore, this narration, being wonderfully corrupt, we have often rendered into Latin by conjecture. That monk truly mentioned here, who flourished in the time of Constantine Ducas, is Nicon, as the Coislinian codex CXXII teaches.

INTERPRETATIONS OF THE DIVINE COMMANDMENTS

That is, explanations by the Holy Fathers and Councils of the Precepts of our Lord Jesus Christ. (See *Patrologia*, vol. CVI, col. 1359)

ON THE FAST OF THE THEOTOKOS

(The Sermon of Explanations concerns feasts, fasts, genuflexions, etc. It is therefore likely that this fragment *On the Fast of the Theotokos* was taken from the same sermon 57. Bandini, in *Bibl. Laurent.*, vol. II, p. 605, notes that the ascetic chapters of this same Nicon are preserved in the Laurentian manuscript codex.)

ANNO DOMINI MXCV.

ANASTASIUS ARCHBISHOP OF CAESAREA IN PALESTINE

NOTITIA

(Oudin, *De script. eccles.*, II, 850.)

Anastasius, Archbishop of Caesarea in Palestine, lived around the year 1090. He wrote a treatise *On the Fast of the Most Holy Mother of God*, and [argued] that it should be observed as legitimate, [derived] from a manuscript codex of the Royal Library of France, which Joannes Baptista Cotelerius produced in Greek and Latin in *Veterum Monumentorum Ecclesiae Graecae*, vol. III, page 432, from Nicon’s *Pandect*. ^A In this little work *On the Fast of the Most Holy Mother of God*, page 458, Anastasius, on the authority of Saint Nicon whom he cites, says that a double name is given to this fast, and that it is called indiscriminately the Quadragesima or the Fast of the Holy Apostles, as well as [that of] the glorious Mother of God: [it has] two names; the former, indeed, because the greater part of this Quadragesima was extended from the eighth day of the feast of Pentecost up to the feast of the Holy Apostles, with moderate intervals of fasting granted by the indulgence of the Fathers, [and] from this feast to the Kalends of August; the latter, however, because all of this Quadragesima was ultimately observed in honor of the Mother of God, and was terminated at the feast of her Dormition. Therefore, this [author] flourished and wrote after Saint Nicon the Armenian, who was famous from the year 961 and finally paid the debt of human nature on the 26th of November, 998. ^B And hence, we conclude that this Anastasius, Archbishop of Caesarea, did not exist some decades of years after the death of Saint Nicon, nor [is he] earlier than the year 1090, of whom, I believe, mention is made only by Joannes Baptista Cotelerius, who edited his *Treatise* in Greek and Latin in the third volume of the aforementioned work.

ANASTASIUS OF CAESAREA ON THE ARTZIBURIUM AGAINST THE FALSE RELIGION OF THE ARMENIANS.

(See *Patrologiae* vol. I, col. 655, in the notes of Cotelerius to the *Apostolic Constitutions*.)