Saint Daniil of VoronețThe eighteenth of December is the feast-day in the Orthodox Church of Saint Daniil the Hesychast, who is rightly venerated as one of the great Southern Europeans alongside Saint Teodosii of Tărnovo and Saint Paisii of Neamț who contributed to a rediscovery of the Jesus Prayer and the discipline of hesychasm in the early modern Orthodox Church. Saint Daniil is commonly called the ‘father of the Moldavian hesychasts’.
Saint Daniil was born Dumitru in a small village near Rădăuți at the beginning of the fifteenth century. His parents were poor peasants who lived on the land belonging to the monastery of St Nicholas in that town. He was a contemporary of Saint Ştefan ‘cel Mare’. His parents gave Dumitru to the monks of Saint Nicholas Monastery in Rădăuți to be educated when he was 10 years old. We are told in his hagiography that he quickly memorised the Horologion and the Psalter. When he was 16, he entered the monastery himself, and was tonsured a monk with the name of David. His spiritual father was Saint Leontie of Rădăuți, the great Romanian bishop whose life we celebrate on 1 July. After years of ascetic struggle and spiritual warfare he was appointed to the priesthood.
At some point, the monk David went to the Monastery of Saint Laurence near the commune of Vicovu de Sus. He fulfilled his daily obediences, and during the night he prayed, kept vigil and wove baskets. He took on the Great Schema and with it the monastic dame of Daniil. Feeling the need of greater solitude in his pursuit of Christ, Saint Daniil eventually obtained from his abbot permission to live in solitude in the wilderness. At some point before 1450, he came to live near Neamț Monastery on the Secu River. However, people discovered where he lived, and they began to visit him, seeking wisdom or aid. Further fleeing into the wilderness, Saint Daniil sought refuge in northern Moldavia, along the upper banks of the Putna River. Here he found a cliff face. He built himself a cell by carving a room out of the rock. He dwelt underground, and in a chamber aboveground on the cliff face he carved out for himself a complete chapel for prayer: including an altar, a cross-in-dome and a narthex.
When Saint Ștefan was on the run after the assassination of his father Bogdan II in October of 1451, he took refuge in this area. He discovered the chapel and cell of the holy Daniil, and the elder holy man sheltered and advised him, and furthermore prophesied that in time the hunted man would himself become prince of Moldavia.
Much of what is holy in Saint Ștefan’s highly-sæcular life may be attributed to the influence of Saint Daniil the Hesychast upon his spiritual child. Daniil hated bloodshed and war, and mourned for those whose lives were taken in war. And yet such things happen in the fallen world, and this was not a happy time for the Moldovan people: the Turks incessantly attacked Moldavia, and the Moldavian princes themselves killed each other and went to war with each other. He strictly enjoined the prince under his care to erect monasteries on the battlefields where much blood had been shed, so that there might be mourning and prayers even for his fallen enemies in battle – and he also enjoined the prince to pray for them himself, for the sake of his own soul. As we know from Ștefan’s hagiography, he did indeed submit to Daniil in this obedience.
It was thus under these directives that Putna Monastery was established near Daniil’s cell in 1470. Saint Daniil then removed himself to another cell, also carved out of rock at Șoim Cliff [that is, ‘Falcon Cliff’], near the Voroneț in the vicinity of Suceava. In 1488, after a Moldavian victory against a Turkish invasion, Saint Ștefan also built a monastery at Voroneț, and Saint Daniil – then over 80 years of age – was elected by the monks to head this monastery as its abbot. To this obedience he, we may imagine reluctantly, submitted – but he fulfilled this obedience as he fulfilled all of those he had prior, in a spirit of self-giving love.
On account of this, God favoured Saint Daniil with the gifts of wonderworking and discernment, and he spent his last days of life in the monastery guiding the monks and performing works of healing for both monastics and laity. Many came to him for this healing, and for spiritual advice, and to confess their sins. Saint Daniil reposed peacefully in the Lord in 1496, and was buried at Voroneț Monastery. He was glorified formally by the Church of Romania on the twentieth of July, 1992.
In addition to the hagiography above, which is largely taken from the resources provided by the Orthodox Church in America on the great hesychast, my good friend Fr Dcn Aaron Taylor at Logismoi has compiled an enviable collection of other sources on the life of Saint Daniil. I think it is fitting to quote from these sources to provide an assessment of Saint Daniil’s significance. The following was written by Archimandrite Ioanichie (Bălan) in 1996:
By the holiness of his life, Saint Daniel the Hesychast showed himself to be a Christ-bearer and a great teacher of silence and the Jesus Prayer or even from his youth. During his lifetime there was no hesychast and spiritual father in Moldavia more renowned than he, nor any doer and teacher of prayer more skilled. For this reason all the abbots and spiritual fathers of northern Moldavia, as well as the high officials of the National Council (the Sfat), had him as their spiritual father.Venerable father Daniil, spiritual father of many monks and wonderworking lover of peace, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!
Apolytikion for Saint Daniil the Hesychast, Tone 8:
By a flood of tears you made the desert fertile,
And your longing for God brought forth fruits in abundance.
By the radiance of miracles you illumined the whole universe!
O our holy father Daniil, pray to Christ our God to save our souls!
Cell of Saint Daniil at Putna
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