NICETA, DAVID of Paphlagonia. — This name occurs in manuscripts to designate a Byzantine writer of the ninth–tenth century, although already the ancient historians, such as Allatius in his Diatriba de Nicetis, asked themselves whether it referred to one or two writers.
The opinion of a single person generally prevailed, namely N. David, whom Loparev made bishop of Dadybra in Paphlagonia. Recently Vogt has maintained that a distinction must be made between N. of Paphlagonia, a disciple of Arethas of Caesarea and Photius, with whom he competed in eloquence and who lived under Leo VI (886–912), and N. David, a political figure whose activity continued until the Empire of Nicephorus Phocas and who distinguished himself by his opposition to Photius. Both were laymen. This opinion, which
the author intended to develop in the Corpus Bruxellense, seems the more probable.
N. David is the author of the biography of the patriarch St. Ignatius. The other writings would be the work of N. of Paphlagonia, namely the 20 panegyrical orations published by Combefis, to which Vogt added two others in honor of the apostles Peter and Paul, the exegesis of the poems of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and perhaps also the commentary on St. Luke, of which brief fragments remain.
The biography of St. Ignatius is reproduced in PG 105, 488–573. In the same volume (15–488, 575–78), other writings are collected. The homilies on Sts. Peter and Paul are found in Orientalia Christiana Analecta (71 [1931], pp. 24–96).