Michael of Kapsala

Michael of Kapsala was an elderly monk of Mount Athos who lived in the Garden of the Mother of God, high on the ridge of Kapsala. He is known from the book Athonite Fathers and Athonite Matters by St Paisios the Athonite, who said of him that he had holiness. The year of his repose is not known; he is venerated by the faithful, without a synodal canonization.

Paisios describes him as very devout and faithful to tradition, like the ancient abbas. He lived with great austerity, and the little he needed he earned by handiwork, carving wooden spoons. When someone gave him a blessing he accepted it, but he gave a blessing in return, besides the prayer he offered continually for that person.

His disciple was the monk Tryphon, who came from Romania in 1910 at the age of twenty-⁠five and reposed in 1978. One day Michael sent him to a monastery to deliver their handiwork and to ask the gardener for a cabbage. The gardener, angry about something, threw him only a stalk with two useless leaves. Michael put the stalk in the pot and made the sign of the cross over it, and after a while the disciple found a white head of cabbage in the pot. Paisios concludes that the elder had holiness, since otherwise the event cannot be explained.