Gabriel of Cozia

Gabriel was a hieromonk and the first abbot of Cozia Monastery, appointed in 1388 by Prince Mircea the Elder. He was a disciple of Saint Nicodemus of Tismana. 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 first lived as a hermit in the Olt Valley, then entered the community of Tismana Monastery, where he learned the craft of the spiritual life. He was known in those parts for the holiness of his life. When Mircea the Elder finished building Cozia in the Nucet clearing, on the site of an old hermitage, he made Gabriel the first abbot and spiritual father of his foundation. Cotmeana Monastery and the hermitages of the Olt Valley were also entrusted to him. In the two monasteries he gathered up to forty monks.

Gabriel gave the community a rule of spiritual life, kept strictly. The prince's deed of gift provides that the order of the place should be the one set by Father Gabriel, with nothing added or taken away, and that after his death the abbot should be chosen only by the brothers from among themselves. He established common life, with daily Liturgy and weekly confession. On feast days the hermits of the Olt Valley came to Cozia and received Communion.

He was a valued spiritual father to the monks and hermits of the Olt country, one of the first counsellors of Mircea the Elder, who often visited him and followed his advice, and a spiritual father to the villagers below the mountains, on both sides of the Carpathians. He reposed in peace in great old age, leaving many disciples.