Joseph the Hermit of the Buzau Mountains

Joseph was a hermit and priest of the Buzău Mountains who laboured at first in the hermitage of Fundătura and, toward the beginning of the fifteenth century, in a cave on the Bordei Valley near the village of Nucu, called to this day Joseph's Cave. 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.

The church in the cave is carved in stone and has pointed-⁠arch windows, which would date it to the thirteenth century. A fish, an ancient Christian sign, whose outline can still be made out above the entrance, has led some to think that the place was used by Christians as early as the fourth or fifth century, like other caves in those mountains.

Joseph lived in this cave for decades. He enlarged it and added two windows. He became a teacher of stillness, a priest and a guide of souls. The Paterikon says that his name was known far and wide and that many sick people were healed through his prayers.

Other hermits gathered around him, and the cave became the centre of a hermitage that took in the Bordei Valley and the mountains of Martirie, Cecilia and Crucea Spătarului. His disciples lived in small dugouts of wood and earth scattered across the valley; from them come the names Bordei Valley and Bordei Stream, still used today. After his repose the cave was inhabited by other hermits, who carried on the struggle.