Cyriacus the Hermit of Neamt

Cyriacus was a hieroschemamonk and hermit on the mountain near Neamț Monastery that bears his name, a contemporary of Saint Daniel the Hermit, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 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.

He lived first in the Neamț community, as confessor and teacher of the Jesus Prayer, loved and sought after by many. Then he withdrew to stillness on the western mountain and made himself a hut of wood and earth, where he struggled alone in fasting and prayer, in cold and toil, enduring, the Paterikon says, many temptations. Later a few disciples came, and together they raised a small wooden church, where they served, communed and glorified Christ. The settlement was called Cyriacus's Hermitage, and the mountain is called to this day Cyriacus's Mountain, popularly Chiriacu.

He remained on this mountain more than thirty years. Tradition credits him with the gifts of wonder-⁠working and foresight. Toward old age many monks gathered around him, living in dugouts and cells scattered over the whole mountain. Only on feast days, at the sound of a bell, did the fathers gather at the elder's cell and sing Matins and the Divine Liturgy together.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century he gave up his soul into the Lord's hands and was buried on the mountain. His disciples continued the struggle in that hermitage, by the same rule, until the founding of Pocrov Skete in 1714.