Pachomius of Peri

Pachomius was a hieromonk and abbot of Peri Monastery in northern Maramureș in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and a patriarchal exarch of the Orthodox Romanians of northern Transylvania. 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.

According to the Paterikon he came from the Oaș Land and was a relative of Dragoș Vodă, the first prince to cross into Moldavia. He entered monastic life young at one of the hermitages in the area and soon received priesthood. He was full of zeal for the confession of Christ and the defence of the Orthodox faith. He became known in all the villages of Maramureș and the counsellor and spiritual father of the Romanians there, whom he visited and guided.

In the second half of the fourteenth century, when the sons of Sas Vodă, Baliță and Drag, founded the monastery at Peri, dedicated to the Holy Archangel Michael, Pachomius was named abbot. In 1391 the monastery became stavropegic, that is under the patriarchate directly, and Patriarch Antony of Constantinople named Pachomius patriarchal exarch over the Orthodox Romanian villages of northern Transylvania. He thus had the right to oversee the priests and faithful of Maramureș, Ugocea, Bărcău, Arva, Sălaj, Almaș, Ciceu, Unguraș and the Bistra Valley.

He went from village to village, consecrating new churches, appointing priests, judging church disputes, encouraging the peasants and defending the faith. He also guided the monasteries of Ieud, Bârsana and Peri, where dozens of monks struggled. The Paterikon sees in them bulwarks of Orthodoxy in northern Transylvania, under Catholic pressure. Pachomius reposed in peace in the first decades of the fifteenth century, leaving numerous monks and priests.