He was canonized by the Georgian Orthodox Church as the Holy Father Nicholas the Catholicos of Georgia, his feast day marked on 18 February (N.S.

Nicholas was, thus, a younger brother or half-brother of Alexander II, who won the bloody competition for the throne of Kakheti after Levan's death in 1574.

His tenure was during the turbulent period of Georgia's history; the once flourishing medieval kingdom had been divided into several competing polities and the Georgian church had been split into the eastern and western counterparts, reflecting the country's political division, the eastern church being under the stewardship of Nicholas; his native Kakheti was threatened by the rival expansionism of the Safavid Iran and Ottoman Turkey.

The 18th-century author Timote Gabashvili reports that there was an icon of Catholicos Nicholas in the refectory at the Iviron monastery on Mount Athos.

Gabashvili also conjectured that another refectory, built at the Iviron at the behest of the Georgian prince Ashotan of Mukhrani, might have been Nicholas's death place.