Gerasimus of Neamt

Gerasimus was a monk of Neamț Monastery in the second half of the nineteenth century, who feigned madness for Christ and lived more than twenty years in an abandoned cell above Vovidenia Skete. He is named in the Romanian Paterikon, from the account of Archimandrite Cleopa Ilie, and venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization; the sources available to us give no day of commemoration, and the year of his repose is not known.

After doing the humblest obediences of the monastery for many years, he began to behave like a madman, out of love for Christ: he dressed poorly, spoke without order, went barefoot. He did all this to hide his secret life. Before his end he told a father a prophecy: in the last times Neamț Monastery will be desolate, Agapia will sink and Văratec will burn.

Seeing his life, the abbot assigned him an abandoned cell at the forest's edge, above Vovidenia, where he lived alone more than twenty years, in poverty, humility and hidden struggle. By day he read the Psalter in the cell, and at night he went into the forest to pray with tears. At dawn he returned to the cell and slept a little. He received his food from the community: daily he came with a wooden pail to the refectory, took his food for a day and returned.

One day the abbot noticed that he had not come for food, nor the second day. Two monks went to the cell, entered through the window, as the door was locked, and found him asleep in the middle of the cell. He held in his hand a paper, written in pencil, asking the fathers and brothers' forgiveness for all the offences caused, asking them not to cease praying for him and saying he had been able neither to please Christ nor to avoid scandalizing people. The abbot understood that the hermit had feigned mental illness so as to be despised by people and to glorify God the more. He was escorted by the whole community and buried with honour in the monastery cemetery.