Herman of Neamt

Herman was a hieroschemamonk and the first abbot of Neamț Monastery, from 1320 to 1362. The Paterikon regards him as the founder of the first hesychast hearth in Moldavia. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization; the sources available to us give no day of commemoration.

Before the founding of the Romanian principalities, monks were formed in the small hermitages along the Carpathians or on Mount Athos. Herman laboured in his youth on Athos, together with his disciple Cyprian. Returning to his fathers' land with a few disciples, he found a secluded place in the Neamț mountains and began to live as a hermit there. In the early fourteenth century he founded a hermitage in the clearing, on the spot where Neamț Monastery stands today, and built a small wooden church dedicated to Saint John the Theologian.

In 1320 his disciples chose him as abbot and spiritual father. They lived together under one rule, in prayer and love. As word of the hermitage at Neamț spread through the villages, other lovers of stillness came, so that toward the middle of the century the community numbered up to forty monks.

He was a valued spiritual father and a teacher of the Jesus Prayer. His disciples later spread along the Eastern Carpathians. His hermitage, also called the Hermitage of Saint John the Theologian, was later renewed by Bogdan I, founder of Moldavia, and by his successors, becoming the first princely monastery of the Mușatin dynasty. Herman led the community until 1362 and reposed in great old age.