Gabriel Uric

Gabriel Uric, also called Gabriel the Scribe, was a monk of Neamț Monastery in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a calligrapher, miniaturist and copyist of manuscripts. The Paterikon counts him among the first copyists of philokalic writings in our country. 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 was the son of the scribe Petru Uric, who wrote the princely charters at the court of Roman Mușat and Alexander the Good. He studied at the school of scribes at Bistrița and then worked in the chancery of Moldavia. When his father became a monk at Bistrița under the name Paisius Uricul, Gabriel entered the community of Neamț. Their monastic vows took place between 1407 and 1415, under Abbot Dometian; the 1407 commemoration book of Bistrița records the monk Paisius Uricul and his son, the monk Gabriel the Scribe.

Considering himself unworthy of priesthood, Gabriel devoted his life to copying patristic teaching, lives of saints and philokalic writings. He knew Greek and Slavonic and adorned his books with fine miniatures. For almost forty years he copied dozens of manuscripts at Neamț, of which a few survive: a Gospel book of 1429, in Slavonic and Greek, with exceptional miniatures, the Ladder of Saint John Climacus, the Pearl of Saint John Chrysostom and four volumes of compilations with patristic extracts.

By studying the Byzantine manuscripts brought to Moldovița by Alexander the Good, he laid the foundation of a school of calligraphers and miniaturists at Neamț and Bistrița. His disciples spread, above all in the time of Stephen the Great, through the Moldavian monasteries, at Putna, Moldovița, Voroneț, Probota and Tazlău, and to the princely chanceries. The Paterikon regards him as the channel through which the patristic and Byzantine tradition entered the Moldavian monasteries.