Saint Nicholas (793-868) was a disciple of the great theologian and teacher of spiritual life Saint Theodore the Studites (759-826). Both saints received their names from the monastery where they lived and where they were abbots at different times.
In 813, the second iconoclastic period (813-843) in the history of Byzantium began. Realizing that the iconoclasts would simply destroy the monastery, as they did with other monasteries, as they did with other monasteries where the veneration of icons was preserved, Theodore and Nicholas went into hiding, and the monks went underground.
Nicholas was Theodore's secretary, who guided the spiritual life of the brethren from exile with the help of special catechetical letters. For one of these letters denouncing iconoclasm, Nicholas and Theodore were seized and flogged in 819. They were inflicted with severe wounds, after which they barely survived. The persecutions they suffered before and after this were terribly cruel and numerous.
In 843, the Church Council in Constantinople restored the veneration of icons and proclaimed the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Theodore had by that time departed to the Lord, and Nicholas eventually returned to the leadership of the Studion Monastery. But the external well-being of the Church was accompanied by violations of the canons, this time by the Orthodox themselves.
Thus, Photius (820-896) was appointed to the patriarchate (858-867 and 877-886) from the laity, and for this reason another, acting patriarch Ignatius (797-877) was deposed. Saint Nicholas objected. He did not yield to either the personal requests or the threats of the emperor himself and the highest church hierarchy.
Although both Photius and Ignatius were later justified by the circumstances of the time, and even canonized by the Church as saints, Nicholas was determined to always serve God, „in sorrow and joy“, not to submit to the will of those in power in relation to the Church, and for that reason not to give in.
Beginning in 858, he was persecuted again, exiled, and forced to wander. He was under enormous pressure for a whole decade, when he was cruelly persecuted again. They tried to persuade him, bribe him, and then tortured him, not getting what they wanted. Only a year before his death was he able to return to the monastery. The Church honors his memory as an ascetic and a confessor.
“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends,” said the Lord in the Gospel (John 15:13). The fate of Saint Nicholas the Studite is an amazing, paradoxical and sorrowful example of the fulfillment of this commandment. He was persecuted by his brothers in faith and friends in сhurch service, he held to truth and righteousness for the sake of the spiritual benefit and the salvation of his neighbors.
You and I very often, having done some good deed, expect a reward from the Lord. If our circumstances do not improve, we become despondent. From the biography of Nicholas the Studite we learn what trials the ascetics were subjected to when they not only simply did good, but for the sake of the true faith performed a feat, became confessors, received, as it seemed, universal recognition, but the difficulties and persecutions did not cease at all. In these last times, Saint Nicholas the Confessor teaches us, Orthodox Christians, that while we are alive, another, deeply tragic side can always be revealed in life.