Eulogius, Pimen, Misael, Basil and Paisius of Agapia Veche

Eulogius, Pimen, Misael, Basil and Paisius were five schemamonks and hieroschemamonks of the Agapia Veche hermitage, whose relics were found in 1838 in the old cemetery called the Fathers' Orchard. They lived between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. They are venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization; the sources available to us give no day of commemoration.

Between Euphrosynus's clearing and Mount Scaunele lies a clearing with old fruit trees planted by the founders of Agapia Veche. It is called the Fathers' Orchard. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was a cemetery there in which the monks of Agapius's monastery and the hermits of the surrounding mountains were buried. In the graves, in chance excavations, coffins were found made from oak trunks, hollowed out like a casket, with a brick under the head and, in some, a lead cross at the neck bearing the dead man's name. Local tradition says that among the hermits of the Neamț Mountains, especially at Agapia Veche, there were many men of holy life, whose bodies, taken out of the graves after a long time, were carried as relics to other lands, among them Russia and Greece.

In 1838 five names of monks were identified: Eulogius, Pimen, Misael, Basil and Paisius. Their bodies lay in oak coffins, with heavy lead crosses on the chest, and the bones were yellow and fragrant. They struggled at Agapia Veche, in the community and in the surrounding mountains, until the middle of the eighteenth century, when schemamonks wore heavy lead crosses and were buried in hollowed coffins. Metropolitan Dosoftei knew some of them in life, and heard of others; he writes that he saw the life and way of many Romanians, but they were not sought out.

Their deeds are not known, the Paterikon says. But the crosses and coffins show a harsh ascetic struggle. All were practitioners of the Jesus Prayer and lived in stillness and spiritual joy, guarding the mind from thoughts and wearing the body down with abstinence and vigil.