THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
existed. In the Jeltovodsky monastery, to which he had fled from a malevolent stepmother, he became familiar with the service of the church. From his twentieth year he had been married and had served as priest, first in a village, then in Moscow. After ten years of matrimony, when death had deprived him of his children, he induced his wife to enter a convent while he himself became monk on an island of the White Sea. Owing to disagreements with his abbot he soon removed to another monastery of which he became abbot in 1643. During a visit to Moscow he made such a deep impression upon the young Czar Alexis, that in 1646 he was appointed archimandrite of the monastery of Nowosspassky in Moscow. In 1649, through the favor of the czar, he was advanced to the position of metropolitan of Novgorod, a position second only to that of the patriarch. In 1652 he became patriarch. He retained his office only six years actually (nominally fourteen years), during which he exercised a deep influence upon the history of the Russian church: namely, by effecting the union of the Minor Russian, the White Russian, and the Greater Russian Churches; by improving the liturgical books and the order of worship; and by promoting the Union of Brest, 1596, between the West Russian domain and Poland. Nikon convened numerous synods to consider formal ritual and practise. In view of the value of forms of worship as mediators of divine life, every change of form in what had been transmitted from the Fathers appeared as a menace to Christianity. Thus there arose the duty of removing every innovation by an energetic reform. In 1654 Nikon called a synod to take notice of numerous innovations and to revise the ritual on the basis of a return to the prescribed forms contained in the old Greek and Slavic books. Pictures painted after the Latin or " Frankish " manner were defaced and broken, so that Nikon was reproached as an iconoclast. He amended the church canon so as to promote his official independence and induced the czar to relinquish the right to appoint abbots and bishops and the privilege of appeal. He established and owned three great and rich monasteries. His influence with the czar was so great that he was called to be his official representative in the absence of that ruler. In fact, he was feared more than the czar himself, but by his severity and arrogance he made many opponents. Nobody, however, dared to attack him openly. It was Nikon himself who brought about his overthrow. He ignored the fact that he owed his power after all to the czar only and to his favor. The martial success of the czar had in the course of time increased his consciousness of power, and the effort to counteract the influence of the patriarch was made by others about the throne. Because of an apparent insult of the czar Nikon resigned his office in 1658 and retired to the monastery of the Resurrection, but the czar did not call him back as he had expected. All his efforts to secure a personal interview were in vain. After the synod of 1660 the question of the election of a new patriarch was discussed. In spite of the most violent opposition of Nikon and his appeal to the pope he was deprived of his office and exiled to the monastery of Therapontius by the White Sea.
In 1675 he was removed to the monastery of Cyrillus. Under Czar Theodore he was allowed to return to his own monastery, but on the way thither he died. (N. Bonwetsch.)
Bibliography: J. V. Bacmeister, Beytrage zur Lebensgeschichte des Patriarchal Nikon, Riga, 1788; W. Palmer, The Patriarch and the Tsar, vols, i.-iii., 6 vols., London, 1871—76; Philaret, Geschichte der Kirche Russlands, ii. 22 sqq., 119 sqq., Frankfort, 1872; Makarij, Geschichte der russischen Kirche, xi. 162 sqq., and vol. xii., St. Petersburg, 1882-83; A. H. Hore, Eighteen Centuries of the Orthodox Greek Church, pp. 563 sqq., New York, 1899; R. Seeberg, Aus Religion und Geschichte, p. 332, Leipsic, 1906.
NILES, WILLIAM WOODRUFF: Protestant Episcopalian bishop of New Hampshire; b. at Hatley, P. Q., May 24, 1832. He was educated at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn. (A.B., 1857; tutor 1857-58) and at the Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown, Conn., from which he was graduated in 1861. He was ordered deacon in 1861 and advanced to the priesthood in 1862. He was rector of St. Philip's, Wiscasset, Me. (1861-64), professor of Latin in Trinity College (1864-70), and rector of St. John's, Warehouse Point, Conn. (1868-70). In 1870 he was consecrated bishop of New Hampshire. He is a member of the board of managers of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He was likewise a member of the committee for revising the Prayer Book and marginal readings in the Bible, and in 1866-67 was editor of The Churchman.
Bibliography: W. S. Perry, The Episcopate in America, p. 205, New York, 1895.
NILUS: The name borne by a number of Eastern monks and ecclesiastics.
1. Nilus of Sinai: A pupil and friend of Chrysostom, d. about 430. The Greek menologium asserts that he came of a noble family, reached high civil offices, even that of exarch, and made a brilliant marriage, but gave up all his advantages to lead the life of an anchorite on Mount Sinai with his son Theodulus, while his wife and another child entered an Egyptian convent. He was a prolific author. His extant works (MPG, Ixxix. 81-1280) include numerous letters and shorter compositions, and twelve or fourteen longer treatises dealing either with the Christian life in general or with special ascetic relations and duties. To the former class belong the Peristeria ad Agathium, a treatise on the pursuit of virtue and the avoidance of vice, and the Tractatus de oratione, the most important of this group; the Tractatus de octo spiritibus malitice, probably a free adaptation of the similar work of Evagrius Ponticus; Tractatus ad Eulogium de vitiis quae opposita sunt virtutibus, probably spurious; De octo vitiosis cogitationibus, regarded as a compilation by a later imitator of Nilus; Capita xxvii de diver sis malignis cogitationibus; and a homily on Luke xxi. 36. The works pertaining to the monastic life are seven narratives of the killing of some monks of Sinai by the barbarians and the carrying off of his son; a eulogy of the Nitrian hermit Albianus; a eulogy of the ascetic life as the only true continuation of primitive Christianity; a letter of instruction and warning to Magna, a deaconess of Ancyra; and De monachorum praestantia, a comparison of the hermit and the cenobite, to the advantage of the former.