The life of Nikon and 199 Disciples
In battle once, surrounded and in danger of death, he called on Christ and was delivered; keeping the vow he had made in that moment, he set off in search of baptism, and after a period of prayer on the island of Chios was led, tradition holds, by an angel to a community of monks on Mount Ganos led by Bishop Theodosius of Cyzicus. There he was baptized, tonsured a monk, and after some years ordained and eventually consecrated bishop, inheriting Theodosius's community when the older man died.
Nikon led his monks first back to his native city, where he was reunited with his mother before her death, and then, joined by several of his former soldiers, on to Sicily, where they settled to live a life of prayer. Years later, during a renewed persecution, the governor Quintilian had nearly two hundred of the monks seized and beheaded; Nikon himself was subjected to prolonged torture that tradition says left him unharmed until he too was finally put to death. His body, left exposed, was later recovered and buried with honor after word spread of a healing worked at the place where it lay.
