[4][5][8] He spent twelve years there, living an ascetic life of prayer and penance, so extreme that his brothers tried to persuade him to lessen his regimen.

[5] His abbot, impressed by his spiritual conferences and worried that his newly returned father would draw him from the ascetic life, sent him out into the world to preach.

Following the expulsion of the Arabs from Crete in 961 by Nikephoros Phokas, he became active as a missionary preacher on the island, struggling to return recent converts of Islam back to Christianity.

The people in the region were, quoted from Nikon's biography, not Islamic, but rather Christians who had been corrupted "by time and long fellowship with the Saracens."

While in Lacedaemonia, Nikon constructed three churches and a monastery and continued his preaching and teachings, which were reportedly confirmed by miracles.

Within the province of Lakonia he exerted considerable influence on both clergy and laity, founding a large number of churches.