Xenia of Agapia

Xenia was a schemanun at Agapia Monastery in the first half of the nineteenth century, known as the maker of verses, author of the first Romanian volume of church verse. 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 was from the Iași region, of a very devout family. Her parents raised her in the fear of God and sent her to school. When they wished to marry her off, the maiden renounced earthly things and entered monastic life. She first struggled a few years at Socola Monastery in Iași, under Abbess Elisabeta Costachi. When Agapia became a nuns' monastery and the Socola community moved there, she came too.

In the new monastery she laboured with the church services, night vigil, the reading of holy books and the Jesus Prayer. Her obedience was singing in the choir and caring for the church, and in her free time she composed verses for the praise of God and the consolation of the soul. She was known at Agapia and in the Neamț region for the holiness of her life and for her verses, and was called the maker of verses.

Her verses are songs of praise and spiritual consolation, divided into groups according to the Lord's great feasts, in the order of the yearly synaxarion. The book was finished in 1826 and contains 186 folios with over two thousand verses, with a preface. The Paterikon regards her as the first woman poet of our people's past and her verses as the first book of Romanian hymns.