Hermits of Mount Bisericani

The Hermits of Mount Bisericani were a group of fifteenth-⁠century monks who struggled in caves on the mountains of the Neamț region, around the hermit Joseph. Besides him the Paterikon names Simon, Methodius, Barnabas, Peter, Averchius, Herman, Pir and Grecu, and mentions nine more hermits whose names are forgotten. They are venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization; the sources available to us give no day of commemoration.

Joseph had taken his vows at Bistrița. Going to the Lord's Tomb, he lived in the wilderness of the Jordan, so that his name became known across Judea. Seventeen hermits gathered around him, fifteen Romanians and two Greeks, who lived in the caves on the Jordan bank and prayed without ceasing. When the Arabs invaded the Holy Land, Joseph took his disciples and came to Moldavia, to Bistrița. Loving stillness, he withdrew to a high mountain nearby, called from then on Joseph's Mountain and later Mount Bisericani.

There the monks lived in rock caves and in dugouts of wood and earth, and held the services in a large cave whose traces can still be seen. As the disciples multiplied, Joseph built a small wooden church, dedicated to the Annunciation, and cells around it. For this skete he established the unbroken order of services called akoimetic, after the model of the Stoudios Monastery in Constantinople: the monks were divided into three choirs, and each choir prayed in church for eight hours. The Paterikon says it was the only settlement in the country with such a rule. The faithful venerated Joseph as a saint even in his lifetime, and the skete was later called Bisericani, meaning that of the devout.

Simon, Methodius, Barnabas, Averchius, Pir and Grecu stayed in solitude to the end of their lives, each in his own cave. Pir and Grecu were from Palestine. They prayed alone during the week and on feast days gathered in Joseph's cave for the vigil. Toward the end of the century the seventeen passed to the Lord, and their relics were placed in the caves where they reposed. Their names live on in the names of the mountains: the mountains of Simon, Averchius, Methodius, Barnabas, Pir and Grecu.