Nikander of Pskov was a sixteenth-century Russian ascetic who spent the greater part of his life as a hermit in the wilderness near Pskov, where he became revered as a wonderworker. According to the synaxarion he was born on July 24, 1507, in the village of Videlebo in the Pskov lands, into the peasant family of Philip and Anastasia, and was named Nikon at baptism. From childhood he longed for solitary prayer, drawn by the example of earlier wilderness-dwellers of the Pskov region.
By tradition Nikon was inspired in particular by Saint Euphrosynus of Pskov, founder of the Spaso-Eleazar Monastery, and by Euphrosynus's disciple Saint Savva of Krypetsk. To learn to read the Scriptures he entered the service of a Pskov resident named Philip, who arranged for his education. He received monastic tonsure with the name Nikander at the Krypetsk Monastery, where he served in the offices of ecclesiarch and cellarer before withdrawing to live alone in the wilderness.
Nikander settled in a remote place by the River Demyanka, between Pskov and Porkhov, where he lived for decades in solitary prayer and fasting. The sources relate that he made annual confession during Great Lent at the Damianov Monastery and received the Great Schema eight years before his death. He died on September 24, 1581, during the invasion of the lands by the army of the Polish king Stephen Bathory; a peasant found him reposed on his bed with his hands crossed upon his chest, and clergy who venerated him came from Pskov to perform his burial.
In 1584 a monastery was established at the site he had sanctified by his long ascetic labor, known as the Annunciation-Nikandrov Hermitage, which became a center of his veneration in the Pskov region. His glorification took place under Patriarch Joachim in 1696, and he is commemorated on September 24, the day of his repose, with a further celebration of the uncovering of his relics.
