The Relics and the Healings

Some three years after his burial, Nikephoros’s relics were exhumed and — the tradition attests — found to be fragrant, a sign the Orthodox Church reads as a mark of sanctity. In the decades since, and with explosive intensity since his 2012 glorification, healings and answered prayers have been attributed to his intercession. This file reports the relics and the healings as the tradition attests them, under strict METHODOLOGY §3.5 attestation-pinning.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox (20th-c. Cretan monk; glorified 2012)

The Exhumation and the Fragrant Relics

According to the customary Greek monastic practice of exhuming the remains of the dead some years after burial, Nikephoros’s relics were disinterred about three years after his 1964 repose — that is, around 1967 — and, the tradition attests, were found to be fragrant (Monk Simon, Nikephoros the Leper, Athens, 2007, via Orthodox Church in America, “Saint Nikephoros the Leper,” oca.org). In Orthodox tradition an unexpected sweetness or fragrance at the exhumation of a body — especially one that in life had suffered a disease notorious for its foul odour — is received as a sign of sanctity, and it was so received here: the reported fragrance of the relics is one of the concrete signs that seeded the veneration leading to his glorification (ibid.; on the fragrance in life, see The Fragrance of Holiness).

Per METHODOLOGY §3.5, this is reported as what the tradition attests — the consistent testimony that the exhumed relics were fragrant — and not asserted as an independently verified physical fact. What can be stated flatly is that the report of fragrant relics is early, attached to the ordinary and datable practice of exhumation, and is the sign the tradition itself names as pivotal in his path to glorification (Monk Simon, Nikephoros the Leper, 2007, via oca.org; on the logic of cult-signs and glorification, cf. St. Xenia: methodology).

The Posthumous Healings

The reputation on which Nikephoros’s contemporary cult chiefly rests is that of a healer — a wonderworking intercessor to whom the faithful turn, especially, in sickness. The tradition attributes to his intercession a large and growing body of reported healings and answered prayers, from the years after his death down to the present (Monk Simon, Nikephoros the Leper, 2007, via oca.org; Metropolitan Neophytos of Morphou, “St. Nikephoros the Leper,” Parts 1–3, orthochristian.com). The earliest and best-attested of these come from his own disciple Eumenios, who recounted specific instances in which, he said, Nikephoros had appeared to him and delivered him from danger or from sorrow — for example, saving him from “certain death” and dispelling his grief (John Sanidopoulos, “Saint Nikephoros the Leper Resource Page,” johnsanidopoulos.com; Metropolitan Neophytos of Morphou, orthochristian.com/164914; on Eumenios, see The Disciple Eumenios Saridakis).

These healing accounts are reported here, per METHODOLOGY §3.5, as the testimony of those who report them — pinned, where possible, to the named attestor (Eumenios above all) — and are not certified as adjudicated miracles. This is the disciplined form the repository requires: the honest statement is not “Nikephoros healed X” but “Eumenios (or the tradition) attests that, through prayer to Nikephoros, X was healed.” The distinction is not a hedge against the possibility of the miraculous but the proper acknowledgment that the adjudication of miracles belongs to the Church’s discernment and the experience of the faithful, not to the historian’s certification (METHODOLOGY §3.5; cf. §5).

The Patron of the Sick and Infectious

Nikephoros’s healing reputation has crystallized, in the contemporary Church, around infectious disease — fittingly for a saint who bore leprosy. He is invoked as a patron against infectious and incurable illness, and this dimension of his cult became especially prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic, when monasteries and parishes offered prayers to him against the coronavirus (OrthoChristian, “Monasteries, churches offering prayers to St. Nikephoros the Leper against coronavirus,” orthochristian.com/129430; Basilica.ro, “Patron Saint of Infectious Diseases, Saint Nikephoros the Leper included in Romanian Orthodox Church’s calendar”). The Romanian Orthodox Church’s inclusion of him in its calendar as a patron of the infectious is a marker of how far and how fast this healing cult has spread beyond Greece (Basilica.ro; see A Healer-Saint of Our Time). These are reported as the shape of the living cult — what the faithful bring to him and how the Churches have received him — again as attestation of veneration rather than certification of cures.

What the Relics and Healings Establish

Read under the methodology, the relics and healings establish something real and something bounded. They establish, as fact, that a genuine and vigorous cult exists — that the report of fragrant relics is early and pivotal, that named witnesses (Eumenios first) attested posthumous help, and that the faithful across several Churches now invoke Nikephoros as a healer, so much so that he has entered new calendars within a decade of glorification (OrthoChristian; Basilica.ro; Monk Simon, Nikephoros the Leper, 2007). They do not, of themselves, certify the supernatural causation of any particular cure; that reading is the Church’s, expressed in the glorification and in the continuing prayer of the faithful (see Glorification 2012). The collection reports the cult as the cult, and pins the miracles to their attestation — which is exactly the treatment the reality of a recent, well-witnessed, but still testimonial cult calls for (METHODOLOGY §3.5).

See Also

References

  • Monk Simon (Monachos Simon). Nikephoros the Leper: The Radiant Athlete of Patience. Athens, 2007. (Exhumation c. 1967; the fragrant relics; the healings. Cited via the English digests below.)
  • Orthodox Church in America. “Saint Nikephoros the Leper.” oca.org/saints/lives. (The fragrant relics; miracles at his intercession.)
  • Metropolitan Neophytos (Masouras) of Morphou. “St. Nikephoros (Tzanakakis) the Leper,” Parts 1–3. orthochristian.com/164755, /164914, /165072. (Eumenios’s accounts of posthumous help; the healing cult.)
  • John Sanidopoulos. “Saint Nikephoros the Leper Resource Page.” johnsanidopoulos.com. (Eumenios’s specific accounts of Nikephoros appearing and helping.)
  • OrthoChristian. “Monasteries, churches offering prayers to St. Nikephoros the Leper against coronavirus.” orthochristian.com/129430. (The invocation against infectious disease.)
  • Basilica.ro. “Patron Saint of Infectious Diseases, Saint Nikephoros the Leper included in Romanian Orthodox Church’s calendar.” basilica.ro/en. (Reception as patron of the infectious in the Romanian calendar.)
  • METHODOLOGY.md §3.5, §5, this repository. (Attestation-pinning of miracle accounts; the Church’s discernment.)