Biography
Son of Theophanes and Pandia. Educated by a local priest, Father Galatone, known for his learning and piety. Even as a young man, Nicodemus was disgusted by the mis-spent lives of his contemporaries, and was drawn to the monastic life. He tried to join the monks in the San Mercurius abbey on Mount Pollino in the Calabria region of Italy; it was a hard, ascetic life for these monks, dressed in goat skins, going bare-foot in all seasons, surviving on chestnuts and lupins with a cave for shelter and some straw for a bed, and Nicodemus was initially turned away by the abbot, Saint Fantinus, who thought the young manâs health too frail for a monkâs life. But Nicodemus persevered, and Fantinus eventually relented and welcomed him to the community. Brother monk with Saint Nilus of Rossano. Feeling the need for greater solitude, Nicodemus withdrew to live as a hermit on Monte Cellerano in Locri, Italy. His reputation for wisdom and piety followed him, though, and he soon attracted several spiritual students, and organized them in to a colony that lived separately but met once a week. However, his community became too well known; there were too many would be students, too many lay visitors, and too many incursions by Saracen invaders. The monks dispersed to various monasteries. Nicodemus moved first to a house in Gerace, Italy, and then to a monastery near Mammola, Italy where he spent the rest of his life. His reputation for holiness was such that, upon his death, the monastery w Born: early-10th century in Cirò, Catanzaro, Italy Died: • 25 March 990 in the monastery at Mammola, Calabria, Italy (a house then renamed San Nicodemo) of natural causes • interred in a tomb in a small oratory at the monastery • oratory re-built into a large church by Normans in 1080 • relics transferred to the church of Mammola in 1580 • his chapel was re-built and decorated in the city of Mammola in 1884 • relics surveyed and re-enshrined on 12 May 1922