Nikon from Black Mountain

Nikon vom Schwarzen Berg (* around 1025 in Constantinople , † around 1100 near Antioch) was a Greek monk and writer.

Life

Nikon was born in Constantinople around 1025 to respected parents. Under Emperor Constantine IX. Monomachus he did military service in the Byzantine army. He began his monastic life in the founding of the monastery of the Metropolitan Luke of Anazarbos in Cilicia. Then he moved to the Antiochian Patriarch Theodosios III. (c. 1057-1059), who ordained him priest and commissioned him to improve monastic discipline in Syria. Nikon became a monk in the monastery of the stylite Symeon d. J. on the Black Mountain north of Antioch. He spent a few years in the monastery of the Virgin of the Pomegranate, for which he wrote a typicon . He probably died on the Black Mountain a few years after Antioch was conquered by the Crusaders.

His writings are related to the monastery reform he carried out. Against Greek criticism, Nikon defended the orthodoxy of the Georgians and the Chalcedonian Armenians.

Works

• "Hermeneia" ( alias "Pandekten"), a Florilegium created around 1065, also translated into Church Slavonic, Arabic and Ethiopian.
• “Mikron Biblion”, a kind of canonical treatise, was written in 1088, also translated into Arabic.
• “Taktikon”, a collection of Nikon's typics and letters, written around 1100, also translated into Church Slavonic and Arabic.

literature

• Michael Kohlbacher: Unpublished fragments of the Markianos of Bethlehem. In: Michael Kohlbacher, Markus Lesinski (eds.): Horizons of Christianity. Festschrift for Friedrich Heyer on his 85th birthday (= Oikonomia. Vol. 34). Chair for the History and Theology of the Christian East, Erlangen 1994, ISBN 3-923119-33-X , pp. 137–166, here 143–149.
• Rumjana Pavlova, Săbka Bogdanova (Ed.): The Pandects of Nikon from the Black Mountains (Nikon Cernogorec) in the oldest Slavic translation (= comparative studies of the Slavic languages ​​and literatures. Vol. 6, 1–2). With an essay by Rumjana Pavlova, translated from Bulgarian by Renate Belentschikow. 2 volumes. Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2000, ISBN 3-631-36026-6 .
• Willem J. Aerts : Nikon of the Black Mountain, Witness to the first Crusade? Some remarks on his person, his use of language and his work, named "Taktikon", esp. Logos 31. In: Krijnie Ciggaar, Michael Metcalf (Ed.): Antioch from the Byzantine reconquest until the end of the Crusader principality (= East and West in the Medieval Eastern Mediterrean. Vol. 1 = Orientalia Lovaniensia analecta. Vol. 147) . Peeters Publishers et al., Leuven et al. 2006, ISBN 90-429-1735-0 , pp. 125-139, online .
• Willem J. Aerts: Nikon of the Black Mountain, Logos 31 (Translation). In: Krijnie Ciggaar, Michael Metcalf (Ed.): Antioch from the Byzantine reconquest until the end of the Crusader principality (= East and West in the Medieval Eastern Mediterrean. Vol. 1 = Orientalia Lovaniensia analecta. Vol. 147). Peeters Publishers et al., Leuven et al. 2006, ISBN 90-429-1735-0 , pp. 140-170, online .
• Willem J. Aerts: Lexicographics from the Byzantine Alexander poem and from Nikon on the Black Mountain. In: Erich Trapp , Sonja Schönauer (eds.): Lexicologica byzantina. Contributions to the colloquium on Byzantine lexicography (Bonn, July 13-15 , 2007) (= Super Alta Perennis. Studies on the effects of classical antiquity. Vol. 4). V & R Unipress, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-89971-484-5 , pp. 151-161, online .
• The tacticon of the Nikon from the Black Mountains. Greek text and Church Slavonic translation from the 14th century, edited by Christian Hannick in collaboration with Peter Plank - Carolina Lutzka - Tat'jana I. Afanas'eva. 1-2. Freiburg i. Br .: Weiher 2014. LXXIV, 1276 S. (MLSDV 62). ISBN 978-3-921940-58-7 .