The life of St Nikon Metanoite
He became a wandering preacher whose sermons all opened with the same plain summons, urging his hearers to repent because the kingdom of heaven stood near, a refrain that fixed itself to his name for good: Metanoeite, Repent. When the emperor Nikephoros Phokas won Crete back from Arab rule in 961, Nikon crossed to the island and spent years there working specifically to draw back into the Christian faith those who had converted to Islam under the old occupation.
From Crete his preaching carried him onward through Armenia, Euboea, Aegina, and across the Peloponnese, often on bare feet. He came at last to Sparta, where tradition holds his prayers turned back a deadly plague threatening the city; he settled nearby afterward and built a great church there in honor of Christ the Savior. Sparta took him for its own even before his death, and has kept him since as its protector, his relics still honored there.
He died on November 26, 998, remembered as a preacher who wore out his own feet carrying one message across an empire.
