Gordius the Hermit of Neamt

Gordius was a schemamonk and hermit in the forests of Neamț, one of the great hermits of the second half of the nineteenth century, who died in 1870. 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 came from northern Moldavia. He entered the community of Neamț under Abbot Dometian and did obedience for many years, zealous in fulfilling his monastic vows. Abbot Neonil (1843-1853), seeing his desire for stillness, sent him to Icoana Veche Skete, a few kilometres above the lavra. There he tasted the sweetness of stillness and prayer. Then, with his spiritual father's blessing, he withdrew into the forests nearby and lived alone for twenty-⁠two years, enduring cold, hunger, want and illness.

Bishop Narcis Crețulescu and other elders of Neamț, who knew him, said he had the struggle of the hermits of old. He recited the Psalter daily by heart, ate once a day, after sunset, crusts of bread soaked in the stream, slept a few hours a night and had no fixed dwelling. His cell was a dugout in the earth covered with timber, in which he stayed mostly in winter. In summer he walked through the forest from place to place, barefoot, dressed in an old coarse cassock, his only garment, and prayed unceasingly. Where night caught him, there he slept a little, then woke to prayer.

His end was this: some soldiers searching the forest for a band of robbers came upon him and, thinking he knew where they were but would not hand them over, took him to Piatra Neamț for questioning. There, weakened and old, he reposed in peace.