Who Was St. Nectarios of Aegina? Slander, Suffering, and a Modern Saint

Few modern saints are as loved as St. Nectarios of Aegina. Churches bearing his name stand around the world, and Orthodox Christians ask his prayers above all in serious illness. Yet the story that made him beloved is a story of disgrace. A bishop of the Patriarchate of Alexandria was sent away from Egypt under a cloud of rumor, struggled to find work in Athens, and spent the rest of his life as a seminary director and the chaplain of a small convent, never cleared in his lifetime by the Church that had removed him.

What exactly happened in Cairo in 1890? Is the familiar account of jealous rivals and a deceived old patriarch a matter of record, or the shape a saint's life naturally takes in the retelling? Because Nectarios lived so recently, there are letters and official documents to check. This article tells his life as the Church remembers it and then sets it beside that evidence.

In brief

Anastasios Kephalas was born in Thrace in 1846, became a monk on Chios, studied theology in Athens, and served the Patriarchate of Alexandria, whose Patriarch Sophronios consecrated him Metropolitan of Pentapolis on January 15, 1889. In 1890 he was removed from his duties in Cairo and left Egypt. A 1994 archival study shows that the official papers gave a vague or harmless reason, while patriarchal circles privately spoke of insubordination and immorality; no trial was held, and the Greek government's own representative in Egypt reported that other trustworthy sources called it a conspiracy. In Greece he was a preacher, then director of the Rizarios Ecclesiastical School (1894 to 1908), and founder of a convent on Aegina that was not recognized while he lived. He died in a pauper's ward in Athens on November 8, 1920. The Ecumenical Patriarchate numbered him among the saints on April 20, 1961, and in 1998 the Patriarchate of Alexandria restored his name and asked his forgiveness. His feast is November 9.

Thesis: The main outline of St. Nectarios's life, including his removal without trial and his long rehabilitation, is unusually well documented for a saint; the documents support the Church's verdict that he was wronged, while his miracles, his incorrupt body and many famous anecdotes rest on the testimony of devoted witnesses and should be presented as such.

The life as the Church tells it

The Orthodox Church in America's life of the saint begins with a poor boy from Selymbria in Thrace who went to Constantinople at fourteen to work for a tobacco merchant. Having no one else to write to, he wrote a letter to Christ asking for an apron and shoes; a neighboring merchant who offered to post it read the address, was moved, and sent him money anonymously.¹

He became a monk on Chios with the name Lazarus, and at his ordination as deacon received the name Nectarius. In Egypt he was elected Metropolitan of Pentapolis. According to the same account, other bishops grew jealous of his sermons and his reputation and told Patriarch Sophronios that he was plotting to become patriarch himself. The patriarch "wrote an ambiguous letter of suspension," and in Athens the only explanation anyone could read was that he had been removed "for reasons known to the Patriarchate." He went without money or lodging until a friend found him a post as a provincial preacher, where people sometimes laughed and whispered during his sermons. In 1894 he became director of the Rizarios seminary in Athens.¹

On Aegina he restored an abandoned monastery, gathered nuns under a blind abbess named Xenia, and served as their confessor. The OCA life reports that he told them, "I am building a lighthouse for you, and God shall put a light in it that will shine forth to the world." In September 1920 a nun brought him, gravely ill, to the Aretaieion, a state hospital for the poor, where the intern could not believe that a bishop would arrive with no cross and no money. He died on the night of November 8. When his sweater was laid on the bed of a paralyzed man in the next bed, the life says, the man got up glorifying God. Years later his body was found incorrupt.¹ The Church's troparion for his feast calls him one "who appeared in these last times as a true friend of virtue."²

The primary historical evidence

The fullest scholarly account in English is a 1994 Durham University master's thesis by P. M. K. Strongylis, a graduate of the Athens theological school, who worked in the archives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Patriarchate of Alexandria, the Archdiocese of Sinai, the Greek communities of Egypt, the Rizarios school and the Aegina convent.³ He writes as a believer who regards the accusations as slander, but he cites documents with dates and archive numbers and reproduces many in Greek. He also leans on the 1985 biography by Metropolitan Titos Matthaiakis, which this article could not consult. What follows depends on Strongylis unless another source is named.

Egypt, 1885 to 1890

Strongylis dates his tonsure at Nea Moni to November 7, 1876 (the OCA says 1875), his ordination as deacon to January 15, 1877, and his Athens theology degree to 1885.⁴ Patriarch Sophronios ordained him priest in Alexandria on March 23, 1886, and consecrated him bishop on January 15, 1889. Pentapolis, in Libya, was by then a titular see; in practice Nectarios was the patriarch's representative in Cairo.⁵ The Patriarchate of Alexandria's own account confirms the January 15 date.⁶

Clerical letters show tension with the patriarch's circle from December 1889. {{strong: A first patriarchal communication, accepted on May 3, 1890, curtailed his pastoral work in Cairo, and a second, confirmed on July 11, 1890, came with a certificate of discharge that attributed his departure to Egypt's climate and allowed him to exercise his episcopal ministry elsewhere.}} More than nine hundred Cairo Greeks signed a farewell letter to him, and he left Egypt in October.⁷ No church court tried him.

The other side of the story survives in one important document. In January 1894, when his appointment to the Rizarios school was held up by rumors about his character, the Greek government asked its representative in Egypt, John Gryparis, why he had left. Gryparis replied that the patriarch had at first been pleased with him but came to see his independent way of acting as insubordination; that patriarchal sources also gave moral reasons; and that other sources, equally trustworthy, regarded him as the victim of a conspiracy and slander. He added that even people within the Patriarchate thought him an effective cleric.⁸ Learning of the report, Nectarios wrote to Sophronios in March 1895 asking which tribunal had tried him and where his accusers, witnesses and evidence were.⁹

His position remained irregular for years. In a letter of September 1903 to Patriarch Photios of Alexandria and Ecumenical Patriarch Joachim III, quoted on the Alexandrian Patriarchate's website, he wrote that he found himself "απολελυμένος" ("discharged") and belonging to none of the autocephalous Churches, while the Holy Synod in Greece regarded him as a "παρεπιδημών Αρχιερεύς," a visiting hierarch (our translation).⁶

Greece, 1891 to 1908

In Greece he became a diocesan preacher in Euboea in 1891. The local church committee restricted his celebrating, and when Christians in Chalkis campaigned to make him their archbishop, a rival candidate published an article in 1893 arguing that a bishop who had left his see could not be chosen. That year he was moved to the province of Phthiotis and Phocis.¹⁰ He was appointed to the Rizarios school in 1894; the OCA gives March 8.¹ He taught and published widely, including a Theotokarion of hymns to the Mother of God (1905; enlarged 1907), the collection that, by common account, contains the much-loved hymn "Agni Parthene" ("O Virgin Pure"), and a two-volume study of the causes of the schism between East and West (1911 to 1912), written against papal claims.¹¹ He submitted his resignation from Rizarios on February 7, 1908, and the ministry accepted it on March 24, 1908. The OCA says he served until December 1908.¹²

Aegina, 1904 to 1920

In 1904 he settled a small group of women seeking the monastic life at a ruined monastery on Aegina, and in October he wrote to them that Metropolitan Theokletos of Athens had given his verbal consent. Theokletos later changed his mind, and the convent was never officially recognized while Nectarios lived. Strongylis records a petition of 1913 that went unanswered, a second in 1914 that drew a canonical rebuke, and yearly visits by a clerical investigator. In one episode a woman whose daughter had fled to the convent to escape a forced marriage accused Nectarios of immorality before a magistrate in Piraeus, who searched the convent with police; according to the convent's records the girl was examined by a professor of obstetrics and the charge collapsed. The convent was recognized only in 1924, by royal decree and by Archbishop Chrysostomos Papadopoulos of Athens.¹³

Nectarios ordained, or blessed, two nuns for liturgical service (one of them, by a later account, at Pentecost in 1911), and how to describe that act is still argued. Writing in 2005, the Catholic scholar Phyllis Zagano stated that he "ordained two women deacons in 1911."¹⁴ The Greek theologian Evangelos Theodorou, in a 1954 study quoted by Strongylis, reported from a surviving nun that she had been ordained at the Liturgy on Pentecost 1911 with the laying on of hands and the prayers for a deacon; but he also recorded that when people were scandalized, Nectarios explained to Metropolitan Theokletos that their service had a subdiaconal character, needed because the convent had no clergy of its own.¹⁵

Death and recognition

Nectarios was admitted to the Aretaieion hospital as a poor cleric and died there at 10:30 p.m. on November 8, 1920, at seventy-four. Accounts variously name cancer, bladder disease or, in Strongylis's judgment, kidney failure.¹⁶ When his grave was opened in May 1921, the nuns reported his body whole and fragrant, as they did at later openings; by about 1940 only the bones remained. The relics were formally translated on September 2, 1953.¹⁷

In 1959 Metropolitan Prokopios of Hydra laid before the Church of Greece a file of twenty-three miracles compiled at the convent, and the Synod forwarded the request to Constantinople. {{very-strong: On April 20, 1961, the Ecumenical Patriarchate issued a patriarchal and synodal act (no. 260) numbering Nectarios among the saints, to be honored on November 9.}} The Church of Greece announced it in an encyclical of June 30, 1961.¹⁸

{{strong: On January 15, 1998, the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Alexandria under Patriarch Petros VII restored his name to its hierarchy and asked his forgiveness.}} Bishop Meletios of Naukratis, writing on the Patriarchate's website, describes the act as erasing an unjust penalty and an expulsion carried out "άνευ δίκης και απολογίας" ("without trial or defense"), and the Patriarchate now keeps January 15 as a feast of his restoration.⁶ An English version of the act widely reproduced online asks the saint "to forgive both us, unworthy as we are, and our predecessors," but it is dated September 15, 1998; the Patriarchate's sources give January.¹⁹

What can we actually verify?

(a) Contemporary or near-contemporary documentary evidence

A great deal: his ordinations and consecration, the patriarchal communications and certificate of 1890, the Gryparis report, his own letters, his appointments and publications, the petitions about the convent, the 1961 act and the 1998 decision. Most are known in English only through Strongylis's translations and summaries.³

The documents establish that he was removed without trial, that the reasons given on paper and in private differed, and that the discharge left his episcopal standing intact. The precise charges were never tested, and the patriarchal side survives mainly in a diplomat's summary. {{debated: That jealousy over a possible succession to the patriarchate was the motive is a reasonable inference from the letters, but it is an inference.}}

(b) Later hagiographical tradition

Much of the familiar life comes from biographies written by admirers decades later and from interviews with elderly people who knew him, collected in the 1980s. The letter to Christ, the lighthouse saying and the scene with the hospital intern belong here. They may preserve real memories, but none is documented at the time. Small disagreements show the tradition moving: sources give November 8 or 9 for his death and 1875 or 1876 for his tonsure.²⁰

(c) Reported miracles

The healing of the paralyzed man, the incorruption of his body, and the thousands of healings attributed to his prayers are reported by the nuns, by local witnesses such as an Aegina doctor who saw the body in the early 1930s, and by the file of twenty-three miracles placed before the Synod.¹⁷ Historians cannot verify them, and this article reports them as reports. The OCA life itself notes that Archbishop Chrysostomos had the body left in the sun and reburied so that it would decay.¹

The Orthodox position

The Church's recognition of a saint is a matter of common tradition and liturgical practice, not a dogmatic definition of every detail in a life. The Church says it recognizes holiness God has already revealed; the 1961 act confirmed a veneration that had grown among ordinary believers for forty years. Orthodox Christians ask his prayers because the faithful departed are alive in Christ (see Why Do Orthodox Christians Pray to Saints?).

Nothing in that faith requires believing that every anecdote is exact, or that his accusers were wicked men. What the Church holds up is his response. Scripture blesses those of whom people "say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake" (Matthew 5:11, NKJV), and it describes Christ as one "who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return" (1 Peter 2:23, NKJV). By the documents' own testimony Nectarios protested his innocence privately and firmly, but he did not split the Church or seek revenge. Orthodox theology calls the goal of the Christian life theosis, union with God by grace (see What Is Theosis?), and the Church sees in him a man made Christlike by humiliation rather than by success.

The Alexandrian decision of 1998 belongs to the same witness: a patriarchate formally admitted that its predecessors had wronged a bishop. The Church does not claim that its hierarchs never sin.

The strongest objections

"The story is one-sided"

A skeptical historian will point out that almost everything we know comes from people who loved him, including a scholar who calls the charges calumny. The accusers' papers are thin, and an inquiry that never happened cannot clear anyone.

This is fair, and the case for his innocence is circumstantial. But it is strong. The certificate of discharge, issued by the very people who removed him, left him free to serve as a bishop, which is hard to square with a serious moral offence. The one outside account, by a diplomat with no evident stake in the matter, reports trustworthy sources calling him slandered. The charge of immorality brought later on Aegina failed on examination. Thirty years of public ministry in Greece produced no substantiated scandal. And in 1998 the institution that removed him concluded that it had been wrong.

"Miracles and relics distract from Christ"

Many Protestants honor the saints while rejecting prayer to them. The Augsburg Confession (1530) teaches that "the memory of saints may be set before us, that we may follow their faith and good works," but that "the Scripture teaches not the invocation of saints or to ask help of saints, since it sets before us the one Christ as the Mediator, Propitiation, High Priest, and Intercessor."²¹ A healing cult around a tomb, on this view, turns the gospel into a search for wonders.

Orthodox Christians agree that Christ is the one Mediator and that saints work no healing apart from him; his own troparion gives glory "to Him who through you grants healing to all."² They differ from the Augsburg Confession in holding that the saints' prayers belong within Christ's mediation, as the prayers of living Christians do. The site's guide Do Orthodox Christians Worship Icons? covers relics, and Can Miracles Really Happen? the wider question.

"The deaconess ordinations are being used for a modern agenda"

Supporters of restoring the female diaconate cite Nectarios as a saint who ordained deaconesses; others insist he only appointed subdeacons. The prayers reportedly used were those of the diaconate, yet Nectarios himself, under pressure, described the service as subdiaconal. Honestly put, he blessed two nuns for a real liturgical ministry in a convent without clergy, and what to call it was disputed in his own day. On the wider history of women's service in the early Church, see Paul and Women in the Church.

What we can say confidently

• He was born in 1846 and consecrated Metropolitan of Pentapolis on January 15, 1889.
• He was removed from his duties in Cairo in 1890 without a church trial, with a certificate that left his episcopal standing intact.
• Patriarchal circles privately alleged insubordination and immorality; a Greek diplomat reported that other reliable sources considered him slandered.
• He directed the Rizarios school from 1894 to 1908 and founded the Aegina convent, recognized only in 1924.
• He died in Athens in November 1920 and was numbered among the saints by the Ecumenical Patriarchate on April 20, 1961; his feast is November 9.
• In 1998 the Patriarchate of Alexandria restored his name and asked his forgiveness.

What remains disputed

• The exact charges against him in Egypt and the motives of those who brought them.
• Whether the two nuns he blessed (one in 1911) were deaconesses or subdeaconesses.
• Several dates and details: his tonsure (1875 or 1876), when he left Rizarios, the day of his death (November 8 or 9), and the cause of death.
• The month of the Alexandrian decision: the Patriarchate's sources say January 15, 1998; English reproductions say September 15.
• The early anecdotes, the incorruption of his body and the miracles, which rest on the testimony of devoted witnesses.

Conclusion

Many believers first meet St. Nectarios as a saint of wonders, at a sickbed. The documents point to something quieter: a gifted bishop who lost his see, his income and his good name before he was forty-five, who asked for justice and did not receive it, and who spent his last three decades teaching young priests, writing hymns to the Mother of God, carrying stones for a convent that his own archbishop would not recognize, and hearing confessions. He did not live to see himself cleared.

For Orthodox Christians that is why he matters. The Church's verdict came slowly, first from the people who prayed at his grave, then from Constantinople, and at last from Alexandria itself. Christ's judgment is not the judgment of committees, and the Church that confesses its saints must also confess its sins. "My strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9, NKJV): few modern lives show it more plainly. The site's Lives of the Saints hub gathers others.

Notes

1. Orthodox Church in America, "Saint Nectarius Kephalas, Metropolitan of Pentapolis," Lives of the Saints, November 9, oca.org. The same text appears on the website of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, "St. Nektarios the Wonderworker, Bishop of Pentapolis," antiochpatriarchate.org. ↩
2. Orthodox Church in America, "Saint Nectarius Kephalas, Metropolitan of Pentapolis: Troparion and Kontakion" (Troparion, Tone 1), oca.org. ↩
3. P. M. K. Strongylis, "Saint Nectarios of Pentapolis' Life and Works: A Historical-Critical Study" (MA thesis, University of Durham, 1994), 11-12, 200-204, Durham E-Theses, etheses.durham.ac.uk/5140. ↩
4. Strongylis, 14, 24-25, 31, 36. ↩
5. Strongylis, 39-40, 62-64, citing the 66th Codex of the Patriarchate of Alexandria, 394-95. ↩
6. Bishop Meletios of Naukratis, "Διπλή εορτή στο Πατριαρχείον Αλεξανδρείας" (A double feast at the Patriarchate of Alexandria), Patriarchate of Alexandria, patriarchateofalexandria.com, January 15, 2016. Translations from the Greek are ours. ↩
7. Strongylis, 77-83, citing the archives of the Patriarchate of Alexandria and Matthaiakis, 46-47, 56-57. ↩
8. Strongylis, 79, 149-50, translating Gryparis's letter of January 28, 1894, from Matthaiakis, 48-49. ↩
9. Strongylis, 151-52, translating Nectarios's letter to Patriarch Sophronios of March 11, 1895. ↩
10. Strongylis, 92-101, 200, citing the Chalkis newspaper Evripos (1892-93). ↩
11. Strongylis, 144 (the Theotokarion, Athens, 1905; second, enlarged edition 1907) and 184-85 (the study of the schism). On "Agni Parthene" as part of the Theotokarion (the blog does not say which edition): John Sanidopoulos, "The History of the Hymn 'O Virgin Pure' by St. Nektarios," Mystagogy (johnsanidopoulos.com), April 7, 2011. ↩
12. Strongylis, 133-35; Orthodox Church in America, "Saint Nectarius Kephalas" (December 1908). ↩
13. Strongylis, 133, 158-62, 169-72, 178-80, citing Matthaiakis, 90, 140-43, 161, 229-31. ↩
14. Phyllis Zagano, "'Grant Her Your Spirit,'" America, February 7, 2005 (archived at web.archive.org). ↩
15. Strongylis, 165-68, quoting E. Theodorou, Η "χειροτονία" ή "χειροθεσία" των διακονισσών (Athens, 1954), 95-96. Strongylis himself calls the women subdeaconesses. ↩
16. Strongylis, 181; OrthodoxWiki (prostate cancer) and the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese's life (see note 20) give cancer; the OCA life gives "a disease of the bladder." ↩
17. Strongylis, 190-92, citing Matthaiakis, 93-94, 115-19, 312, 326. ↩
18. Strongylis, 193-96, reproducing the Greek text of the Patriarchal and Synodal Act no. 260 of April 20, 1961, and citing Church of Greece encyclical no. 1161 of June 30, 1961. ↩
19. "Nectarios of Pentapolis," OrthodoxWiki, orthodoxwiki.org, section "Decision of the Church of Alexandria"; Despina Sotiriou, "Η 'συγγνώμη' του Πατριαρχείου Αλεξανδρείας στον Άγιο Νεκτάριο," Orthodox News Agency (ope.gr), January 15, 2022. ↩
20. American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese, "St Nectarios of Aegina 1846-1920," acrod.org (death on "the evening of November 9," feast "November 9/22"); compare notes 1 and 16 and Strongylis, 24, 181, 195. ↩
21. Augsburg Confession, Article 21, "Of the Worship of the Saints," trans. F. Bente and W. H. T. Dau, Triglot Concordia (St. Louis: Concordia, 1921), as reproduced at bookofconcord.org. ↩

Bibliography

Primary sources

• Ecumenical Patriarchate. Patriarchal and Synodal Act no. 260 (April 20, 1961). Greek text reproduced in Strongylis (below), 195-96.
• Gryparis, John. Letter to the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, January 28, 1894. English translation in Strongylis, 149-50.
• Nectarios of Pentapolis. Letter to Patriarch Sophronios of Alexandria, March 11, 1895. English translation in Strongylis, 151-52.
• Patriarchate of Alexandria, Holy Synod. Act restoring St. Nectarios (1998). English version as reproduced at OrthodoxWiki, "Nectarios of Pentapolis."
• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Orthodox Church in America. "Saint Nectarius Kephalas, Metropolitan of Pentapolis" (November 9), with Troparion and Kontakion. Lives of the Saints, oca.org.
• Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch. "St. Nektarios the Wonderworker, Bishop of Pentapolis." antiochpatriarchate.org.
• Meletios of Naukratis, Bishop. "Διπλή εορτή στο Πατριαρχείον Αλεξανδρείας." Patriarchate of Alexandria, patriarchateofalexandria.com, January 15, 2016.
• Sotiriou, Despina. "Η 'συγγνώμη' του Πατριαρχείου Αλεξανδρείας στον Άγιο Νεκτάριο." Orthodox News Agency, ope.gr, January 15, 2022.
• American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese of North America. "St Nectarios of Aegina 1846-1920." acrod.org.
• Matthaiakis, Titos, Metropolitan. Ο Άγιος Νεκτάριος Κεφαλάς Μητροπολίτης Πενταπόλεως (1846-1920). Athens, 1985. (Cited through Strongylis; not consulted directly.)

Other scholarship (including scholars who disagree)

• Strongylis, P. M. K. "Saint Nectarios of Pentapolis' Life and Works: A Historical-Critical Study." MA thesis, University of Durham, 1994. Durham E-Theses, etheses.durham.ac.uk/5140.
• Theodorou, Evangelos. Η "χειροτονία" ή "χειροθεσία" των διακονισσών. Doctoral dissertation, University of Athens, 1954. (Cited through Strongylis; not consulted directly.)
• Sanidopoulos, John. "The History of the Hymn 'O Virgin Pure' by St. Nektarios." Mystagogy, johnsanidopoulos.com, April 7, 2011.
• Zagano, Phyllis. "'Grant Her Your Spirit.'" America, February 7, 2005.

Sources from the traditions discussed (Protestant)

• Augsburg Confession (1530), Article 21. In Triglot Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, translated by F. Bente and W. H. T. Dau. St. Louis: Concordia, 1921. bookofconcord.org.