Sophia of Mount Ceahlau

Sophia was a schemanun and abbess, founder of Sophia Skete on the eastern side of Ceahlău, in the seventeenth century. She is named in the Romanian Paterikon and venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization; the sources available to us give no day of commemoration.

She grew up spiritually in the community of Topolița Monastery near Târgu Neamț. She withdrew to the Bistrița valley and lived for many years as a hermit with her disciples on the eastern side of the mountain, above the village of Răpciune. Seeing herself surrounded by many disciples and knowing that in the forests below Ceahlău many nuns lived without a monastery in which to glorify Christ, she resolved to found a skete. She raised a small wooden church dedicated to Saint John the Theologian, made cells around it, gathered more than twenty nuns and established the hermit rule.

Sophia Skete lasted on Ceahlău for almost two centuries. Sophia was a spiritual mother there for more than thirty years and raised many choice nuns. Some withdrew in time into the wilderness and struggled there in fasting and prayer; others spent only the holy fasts in solitude, then came down to the skete. In the area she was honoured for the holiness of her life by laity and monks alike.

Toward the end of the seventeenth century she passed to the Lord in peace, leaving behind a known hermitage of nuns. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the skete was left almost empty, and the wooden church was moved to Durău Monastery.