Peon the Hermit of Mount Ceahlau

Peon was a hieroschemamonk and hermit who made Ceahlău something like a Romanian Athos, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 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.

He had taken his vows at Silvester's Skete, north of Ceahlău. Full of zeal, he lived as a hermit for many years on the crest of a nearby hill, called to this day Peon's Hill. Wishing to follow the great Egyptian and Sinaite desert fathers, he then made himself a hut on the summit of the mountain and lived there more than ten years, praying unceasingly for the world and enduring the winter cold, the winds and temptations. A few disciples came, and he became spiritual father of all the hermits around the mountain. Seeing their zeal, he set a bell and a wooden semantron on the summit and ordained that they be sounded every day and at midnight, to rouse the monks to prayer. From this practice come the names of the two peaks, Toaca and Panaghia.

He also set the feast of the mountain, on 6 August, the Transfiguration, as on Athos, and raised a small wooden church above, where the Liturgy was celebrated. On that day once a year all the hermits and faithful of the area gathered: all-⁠night vigil, Liturgy, Communion, a common meal, then each went down to his cell. The Paterikon notes that Ceahlău is the only mountain in the Carpathians and the Balkans with a feast day, like Athos. For a long time the mountain was called Peon's Mountain, popularly Pionul.

Toward old age he settled in Silvester's hermitage at the foot of the mountain, renewed it from the foundations and gathered up to thirty monks in its community. From him it is called to this day Pionul Monastery. He fell asleep in peace after passing the age of eighty.