Neophytus of Crete

Holy Hierarch Martyr Neophytus of Crete was metropolitan of Wallachia in the years 1738-1753, of Cretan origin, killed by poison, according to tradition, because he defended the people against Prince Matei Ghica. He departed to the Lord on 16 June 1753, commemorated as a hierarch martyr. He was canonized by the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church. He is commemorated on 16 June.

Born in Crete, he was called to Wallachia by Prince Constantin Mavrocordat (third reign, 1735-1741), as tutor of his children. In January 1737 he was ordained titular metropolitan of Myra in Lycia, and a year later, "with the counsel of all the honourable boyars and all the clergy", he was elected metropolitan of Wallachia. Though of another nation and language than his flock, he worked tirelessly for the spiritual and material advance of the Romanian people, like his predecessor Saint Anthimos the Iberian. He supported the full use of Romanian in worship: he re-⁠established the Metropolis's printing house in Bucharest, where he printed fourteen service books in several editions, as well as books of instruction, most in the language of the people. To support Orthodox Christians under the Ottoman yoke, he helped Patriarch Sylvester of Antioch print an Arabic Psalter in Bucharest in 1747. He founded and endowed the Metropolis library, for which he built a house and to which he left by testament his collection of printed books and manuscripts.

He supported the hesychast revival begun by Saint Basil of Poiana Mărului, whom he called to present his teaching before the patriarchs Matthew of Alexandria, Sylvester of Antioch and Parthenius of Jerusalem, then in Bucharest; they bore witness to the orthodoxy of his teaching. In 1739 he addressed to priests, monks and faithful a Pastoral Letter at the start of Great Lent, urging them to confess more often and to receive Communion. He also wrote two short treatises in Greek, On the Anointing with Myrrh and On the Communion of the Holy Mysteries for Those Who Were Tempted in Dreams. He supported schools, being named by charter "steward of the teachers", founded a Romanian school at Buliga Skete in Pitești and a school with Romanian, Greek and Slavonic instruction at Pătroaia Skete, with free tuition for peasants' children. He built or restored churches, among them Saint Eleutherius the Old in Bucharest. He cared also for the Orthodox of Transylvania, ordaining several priests for them, among them the Holy Confessor Moise Măcinic of Sibiel. The Patriarchate of Constantinople gave him the title of locum tenens of the throne of Caesarea in Cappadocia, which from 1776 became permanent for the metropolitans of Wallachia. He definitively introduced in the dating of documents the counting of years from the Nativity of the Lord, and was the main supporter of abolishing "rumânia", or serfdom: he was the first to free all the peasants on the Metropolis's estates.

His pastoral zeal also showed when he supported the demands of the people oppressed by Prince Matei Ghica (1752-1753): according to the chroniclers, he put himself at the head of the people and went to the sultan's envoy, to whom they complained of all the prince's abuses. Angered, Matei Ghica secretly ordered him poisoned. Metropolitan Neophytus departed to the Lord on 16 June 1753, as a hierarch martyr, after almost fifteen years of shepherding, and was buried beside the metropolitan cathedral in Bucharest.