Iakovos

Iakovos was a hymnographer and copyist monk of the New Skete of the Monastery of St Paul on Mount Athos, who reposed in 1869. He is venerated by the faithful without synodal canonization. He was called the Neaskitiotes, that is, of the New Skete.

He worked closely with Gregory, Metropolitan of Adrianople. He was entrusted with completing the service with commentary of the hieromartyr Cyril VI, Patriarch of Constantinople, whose archdeacon Gregory had been. He also wrote the service and life of Gregory's brother, the new martyr Theodore of Byzantium, who died at Mytilene on 17 February 1795, and in 1856 he copied and completed that service. In 1843, at the urging of Bishop Anthimos of Trajanoupolis, he composed the service of the five new martyrs of Samothrace who suffered in 1836 at Makri in Thrace. He also wrote an account of the martyrdom of the twenty-⁠six monks of Zographou, killed in the time of Michael VIII, and a eulogy of the saints of Vatopedi.

He was in contact with great spiritual figures of the Athos of his time, among them Archimandrite Sophronios Kalligas, abbot of the Monastery of St Paul from 1844 to 1882.