Vucol, Gideon and Herman of Mount Ceahlau

Vucol, Gideon and Herman were three hermits who struggled for thirty years in caves carved beneath the summit of Ceahlău, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and fell asleep in the first decades of the seventeenth century. They are named in the Romanian Paterikon and venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization; the sources available to us give no day of commemoration.

They had taken their vows at the hermitage of Ceahlău and at Pionul Monastery. Trained in community in the monastic life, they received the schema and withdrew into the depths of the forests of the Durău stream valley, where many hermits struggled. Then they carved three nearby caves in the rocks below the summit of Ceahlău, where they laboured in fasting, prayer and longing for God.

Their rule: day and night their minds were on God, through unceasing prayer and hope of the good things to come. All week they stayed alone in the mountain, seeing no human face, and ate only once a day, after sunset. On feast days they gathered at the cell of a hermit-⁠confessor, served the Liturgy and communed. What they needed they received through their disciples from the monastery of their vows.

The Paterikon calls them three lights on Mount Ceahlău, who prayed for themselves and for the salvation of the world. Their caves can still be seen and bear their names: Vucol's Cave, Gideon's Cave and Herman's Cave. Having reached old age, they passed to the Lord in peace in the first three decades of the seventeenth century.