On the wall of a cave opened in the rock above the Dâmbovița, beside a grave hollowed out at its rear, a name and a year are cut into the stone: “Ioanichie, Schemamonk, 1638.” The cave hangs in the sheer face of Cetățuia Hill, within the bounds of Cetățeni village in Argeș County, and it has never been possible to reach it except by lowering oneself on a rope.
That inscription is nearly all we have about the man who died there. The Church keeps his feast on July 26.
What the Paterikon Says
The earliest written account of real weight is that of Archimandrite Ioanichie Bălan in Patericul românesc (The Romanian Paterikon), in the chapter devoted to saints and venerable monastics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Bălan was a disciple of Saint Cleopa Ilie and the man who committed his conversations to writing. He also traveled through the country’s hermitages, gathering what could still be recovered from the memory of their communities. His account of the hermit of Cetățuia fits on a single page, and every line is measured.
Bălan begins with the place. Between Târgoviște and Câmpulung, in the Dâmbovița Valley, rises a high hill known locally as Cetățuia Hill or Negru Vodă’s Hill. A skete had stood on its summit since the beginning of the fourteenth century. From the thirteenth to the eighteenth century, so many hermits struggled on its southeastern slope and along the stream below that the valley took its name from their cells: Valea Chiliilor, the Valley of the Cells. Their names were lost, Bălan writes, with one exception.
Of Ioanichie, he says that he is believed to have belonged to the nearby skete, where he may have struggled toward the end of the sixteenth century. Even the monastery in which he received the tonsure is not known with certainty.
He then voluntarily enclosed himself in a cave cut into the face of the mountain and remained there, unknown to men, for more than thirty years. If he died in 1638, his withdrawal can have taken place no later than about 1607; the year 1601, repeated in later texts, rests on no evidence. Once a week his disciple lowered bread and water to him on a rope because the place was so steep. From time to time, the abbot of the skete brought him the Holy Mysteries.
Having attained the measure of holiness and foreknown his end, he dug his own grave at the rear of the cave. He lay down in it and gave his soul into the hands of the Lord.
As the years passed, his name was forgotten, and no one descended to the cave again because the cliff was too difficult. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the abbot of the skete lowered himself on a rope and found the bones whole and reverently arranged at the rear of the cave, yellow and fragrant, covered by a spider’s web. Above the grave, the name and the year had been carved into the rock.
That is the entire account.
What He Did There
Bălan gives one sentence and moves on: how he struggled, how many temptations he endured, and what measure he attained, God alone knows.
It is worth pausing over this sentence because it is the most honest line in the whole text. A man lived for thirty years in a hollow in the cliff, with no witnesses to his struggle, and the writer of his life three centuries later refused to say what happened there. Anything he might have written would have fitted equally well any of the nameless hermits in the valley below, and for that very reason would have told us nothing about Ioanichie himself.
The texts written after Bălan did not show the same patience. They speak of mysteries revealed to him, the unseen warfare he conquered, and virtues numbered by God. These are true things about eremitic life in general; in this particular case, they rest on nothing.
What can be said about him may be counted on one’s fingers. He chose a place that could be reached only by rope. He received bread once a week and the Holy Mysteries from time to time. He remained there for more than thirty years. He dug a grave at the rear of the cave in which he lived and lay down in it.
The Cliff
The valley below him was full of cells. Most of them could be reached on foot. The climb was hard, but it could be made.
Not so his cave. Bălan returns twice to this detail: first, to explain why the disciple lowered bread on a rope; and then, to explain why no one descended to the cave after Ioanichie’s death. The place was too steep.
Here lies the one thing that can be read about his resolve. From a valley filled with places of ascetic struggle, he chose the one that could be reached only by rope. That cliff kept people away for thirty years, as he wished. Then it kept them away for another three hundred, which no longer depended on his will.
Three Centuries
After 1638, the sources say nothing more about him for three hundred years.
His name was lost. The foundation above passed through ruin and restoration, served at one point as a shelter for livestock, and was restored and consecrated again in 1923. No one knew what lay only a few dozen yards below the church.
Throughout all those years, he was exactly what he is today. His holiness did not change when he was found, nor when he was proclaimed a saint; it had been wrought in the cave and completed in 1638. Canonization does not make saints. It recognizes them and permits their public veneration. Without that recognition, the saint loses nothing.
And in that valley there were dozens like him, whose names Bălan searches for and cannot find. In commemorating one, the Church honors them all. This is the only way in which they can still be honored.
The Rope
After three centuries, someone descended on a rope again and found him.
Bălan says only that it was the abbot of the skete, in the first decades of the twentieth century. Local tradition and the diocesan records give the year 1944 and the names: Abbot Pimen Bărbieru and the monk Isidor. These details are probably accurate, since witnesses were still alive when they were recorded, but they do not appear in the earliest written account. The relics were carried into the church of the skete.
They remained there only briefly. The communist regime came, and by official order the relics were buried in the monastery cemetery. A saint found after three centuries was placed back in the earth for another half-century, and his veneration ceased.
After 1990, the reestablished community found him a second time. The Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church decided on his canonization, and the local proclamation took place on September 26, 2009, with July 26 established as his feast day. On January 20, 2013, the relics were transferred to Negru Vodă Monastery in Câmpulung Muscel, where they remain today; particles were left at Cetățuia. The two foundations bear the same name and are often confused: one is the monastery in the rock at Cetățeni; the other is the old princely foundation in the town.
What cannot be supported must also be said. The claim that Ioanichie advised the rulers of Wallachia is now repeated everywhere, but it did not originate in the press. It comes from a prayer to the saint composed after his canonization, from which the press then adopted it. Bălan says nothing of the sort, and the texts repeating the claim do not agree among themselves. Some make him an adviser to Michael the Brave; others, to Matei Basarab, whose reign began in 1632. The latter version places this counsel during the very years of the cave, directly contradicting the Paterikon’s statement that Ioanichie lived unknown to men. Other texts move Valea Chiliilor into the Făgăraș Mountains, although it lies on the Dâmbovița at Cetățeni. Even the number of years grew in the retelling: Bălan writes “more than thirty”; later texts say thirty-seven or nearly fifty.
The Inscription
No one knows who carved it. Bălan says only that the letters were cut above the grave, without placing the chisel in anyone’s hand. Newer texts say that Ioanichie himself carved the year before he died, but this was added later.
If he died alone and unknown, as the Paterikon says, then either he wrote it before lying down in the grave, or the person who descended when the bread was no longer taken from the rope wrote it. Both possibilities stand, and neither can be proved.
The inscription preserves something else that the name alone would not tell us. “Schemamonk” means that he bore the Great Schema, the highest degree of monastic profession, with the strictest rule of prayer and the most complete renunciation of the world. Where and when he received it is unknown. Apart from his name and the year, this is the only fact about him to have crossed three centuries.
And that is all that is written there. Not a life. Not a teaching, nor even a prayer: a name, a rank, and a year. A name is the only thing the Church needs in order to commemorate someone; the year is for us, so that we may place him in time. Whoever carved the inscription left on the wall exactly enough for the man in the grave to be commemorated by anyone who might find him, and nothing more.
Whoever climbs the path today toward the church in the rock passes beneath the empty cave. A man entered there and did not come out: for the more than thirty years that he lived, and for another three centuries after he died, until someone descended on a rope and carried him into the church.
Holy Venerable Father Ioanichie, pray to God for us.
Sources
The foundational account is Archimandrite Ioanichie Bălan, Patericul românesc (The Romanian Paterikon), Sihăstria Monastery Publishing House, 2005, pp. 196-197, in the chapter devoted to saints and venerable monastics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The year 1944 and the names of those who descended into the cave, the reburial under communism, and the second finding after 1990 come from the records of the Archdiocese of Argeș and Muscel and of Cetățuia Negru Vodă Monastery, not from the Paterikon.
The local proclamation of the canonization on September 26, 2009, and the transfer of the relics to Negru Vodă Monastery in Câmpulung Muscel on January 20, 2013, are recorded by the Basilica News Agency and Ziarul Lumina.