Basil of Poiana Mărului

Venerable Basil of Poiana Mărului was born in 1692 at Poltava, then in the Tsardom of Russia, and fell asleep on 25 April 1767 at the Poiana Mărului skete, in Wallachia. He was a monk of Slavic stock, abbot and spiritual father of Saint Paisius Velichkovsky, and had a large part in the renewal of Orthodox monasticism in the Romanian Lands. The Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church canonized him at its session of 4 and 5 March 2003, with his feast on 25 April.

Beginnings

From youth he was drawn to monastic life. Paisius Velichkovsky says of him that from youth he lived with divine zeal in the wildernesses, with great zealots of monastic life. He spent time in the hermitages of Russia and Ukraine, then came to the Romanian Lands and settled with other monks at the Dălhăuți skete. He was ordained priest and for nearly twenty years led the Dălhăuți skete as abbot. He gathered around him a community of more than forty hermit monks, Moldavian, Wallachian, Transylvanian and Russian, and formed a renowned spiritual school.

Poiana Mărului

About 1730 to 1733 he withdrew with twelve disciples to the Poiana Mărului skete, in the Buzău Mountains, founded by the prince Constantin Mavrocordat in a forest of broadleaf and conifer trees at the foot of Mount Ulmușor (943 m). He built a church and cells there. He led the skete as abbot and established hesychast monastic rules of Athonite origin, following the teachings of Saint Basil the Great, of Nil Sorsky and of Dimitry of Rostov, setting store by obedience, humility and prayer. In the time of his abbacy the Poiana Mărului skete had direct influence on several monastic settlements in the Buzău Mountains: Dălhăuți, Bonțești, Trăisteni, Pometul Borșatanului, Rogozu, Cotești and Valea Neagră, today in Vrancea county, as well as Rătești, Ciolanu, Cârnu and Găvanu, in Buzău county. The renewal of monastic life at Poiana Mărului drew many monks and faithful from the Buzău and Vrancea regions and even from other countries.

The father of Paisius

On the advice of the monk Ignatius, who had told him of the hesychast zeal found in the monasteries of the Romanian Lands, the rasophore Platon Velichkovsky, the future abbot Paisius of Neamț, stopped in Great Lent of 1743 at the Dălhăuți, Trăisteni and Cârnu sketes, which were in the spiritual care of Abbot Basil. The abbot had a formative influence on him, teaching him the prayer of the heart. In the summer of 1746 Platon left for Mount Athos, to perfect his monastic experience. In 1750, while on pilgrimage on Athos, Abbot Basil tonsured him a monk with the name Paisius.

Writings and repose

He copied a number of manuscripts in Slavonic and wrote several original works in Church Slavonic: forewords to books of Saint Gregory the Sinaite, of the blessed Philotheus the Sinaite and of Nil Sorsky, an addition to the work of Nil, and writings preserved in copies, among them answers to questions, gathered from Holy Scripture, on abstaining from forbidden foods under the monastic vow, printed at Neamț Monastery in 1816 with the blessing of Metropolitan Veniamin Costachi. He made a Slavonic version of the Spanish allegorical and religious work Desiderie. Fifty-⁠eight manuscripts written by his hand have been identified. His work was translated into Romanian and copied in dozens of manuscripts that circulated in the church and monastic centres of the Romanian Lands.

He died on 25 April 1767, and the place where he was buried is no longer known.