Архиепископ Никодим I

Dragić, M, Živojinović

Историјски часопис

60

97

112

0350-0802

https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=191826

2011-2020/03/10/15:14:23

Nicodemus, hegoumenos of Hilandar monastery (1311-13116) and Archbishop of the Serbian Church (1317-1324), is an interesting figure who appears in different roles: as a monk, theologian, writer, diplomat, politician and saint. Source material about him is rich and diverse, both by type (documentary and narrative) and by origin (Greek and Serbian). His birth date is unknown and the first mention of Nicodemus, as a young monk with the important function of the paraoikonomos of Hilandar’s Thessaloniki metochion of St. George, is from the year 1290. Since Nicodemus was Daniel’s disciple and given the fact that the former was succeeded by the latter, it is assumed that in the difficult years of Catalan menace (1307-1310) he had an important role in the defense of the Serbian monastic community on the Mt. Athos. While in the office of hegoumenos, Nicodemus saw to the growth of monastic estates in the vicinity of Thessaloniki and in the valley of the Strymon river. He also actively partook in deliberations of the Athonite Council of elders. As a representative of Kings Milutin and Dragutin he carried out a delicate mission in Constantinople at the court of Andronicus II, probably in the early 1312. In the first half of the 1316 he went to Serbia and from King Uroš II received help for the hermitage of St. Sabbas in Karyes. After the death of Archbishop Sava III (26 July 1316) Serbian Church was without a head for more than nine months, until Nicodemus was elected on 12 May 1317 as a compromise candidate – king’s favorite being Daniel. During his term, which lasted exactly seven years for he died on 12 May 1324, Nicodemus made efforts to enrich ecclesiastical libraries and particularly important is his translation, dating from 1318/19, of the Jerusalem Typicon of St. Sabbas the Sanctified, whose Greek original was acquired in Constantinopolitan monastery of St. John the Forerunner. As a politician he was no less prosperous, because he convinced King Milutin to allow the return of banished Stephen to Serbia. After Milutin’s death and the outbreak of the succession war, Nicodemus sided with Stephen (the eventual winner) and anointed him as King Uroš III. It is known that he built the churches of St. Demetrius in Peć (where he was buried) and of St. Sava the Serbian in Lizica. Shortly after his death he was canonized and in the early XVth century Bishop Mark of Peć wrote Service to Archbishop Nicodemus in which he had praised him as the persecutor of heretics and the defender of Orthodoxy.

hegoumenos, Archbishop, Hilandar, Nicodemus I, XIIIth-XIVth centuries