Bessarion of Fagaras

Bessarion of Făgăraș, born in 1779 in the Făgăraș Land, was an archimandrite and the founder of Cocoș Monastery in northern Dobruja, where he was abbot for thirty years. He fell asleep in the summer of 1862. He is named in the Romanian Paterikon and venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization; the sources available to us give no day of commemoration beyond the summer of that year.

He entered the community of Neamț Monastery in 1796, learned monastic life there and received tonsure. For nearly twenty years he held the obedience of printer and brought out numerous service and teaching books from the lavra's presses. After receiving priesthood, in 1826 he went to Athos with his disciples Gerontius and Isaiah. They stayed seven years in hermit life, in fasting and prayer day and night. Wishing to found on Athos a skete for Romanian monks, but unable to, he was urged to return to the country. Hearing of the hermit places in northern Dobruja and the dwellings of hermits at Niculițel, Taița, Celic and below the Cocoș hill, they settled there.

The Paterikon notes that in that part of Dobruja was the oldest hesychast hearth of the country, from the fourth to sixth centuries: there stood the cities of Dinogetia, Noviodunum and Vicina, Daco-⁠Roman martyrs suffered in the third and fourth centuries, and at Niculițel stood one of the oldest monastic centres in the Romanian lands. Bessarion came to renew the monastic life there, fallen into ruin because of foreign occupation.

In 1833 he founded Cocoș Monastery, dedicated to the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple, near Niculițel, and gathered monks from the area, from Moldavia and from Transylvania. He was abbot and spiritual father for thirty years, teaching, counselling and guiding monks, hermits, parish priests and believers from the villages of Dobruja. Believers held him as a saint even in his lifetime, saying he healed the sick by prayer. Cocoș Monastery, with an Athonite rule, became for the Romanians of Dobruja a spiritual refuge, with pilgrims even from Transylvania. Bessarion fell asleep in the summer of 1862, leaving a numerous community and hundreds of spiritual children.