John Jacob the Chozebite
Our Venerable Father John Jacob the New Chozebite, of Neamț
Venerable · Priest · b. July 23, 1913, at Horodiștea in Moldavia — d. August 5, 1960, at the cave of St Anna in the wilderness of Chozeba
Commemorated 5 August — His repose in the cave above the wadi of Chozeba
John Jacob was a Romanian hermit of the Judaean desert, one of the last representatives of the ancient anchoritic life of Palestine and the most widely loved Romanian saint of the twentieth century. Orphaned as an infant and raised by his grandmother, he entered the great monastery of Neamț at twenty, went to the Holy Land in 1936, served for years as librarian at the Lavra of St Sabbas, and finally withdrew, about 1952, into a cave in the cliff above the wadi of Chozeba near Jericho — the cave in which, tradition says, St Anna had prayed for a child. He died there on 5 August 1960, aged forty-seven. When the tomb was opened on 8 August 1980 his body was found incorrupt, and it lies today, visible, in the monastery of St George the Chozebite. The Romanian Church numbered him among the saints in 1992.
Moldavia
He was born on 23 July 1913 at Horodiștea, in the county of Botoșani in northern Moldavia, the only child of Maxim and Ecaterina Iacob, poor peasants; he was baptised Ilie, for the prophet Elias. His mother died within six months of his birth, and his father was taken by the war and died in 1916. The child was brought up by his grandmother Maria, a woman of deep piety who had herself received the monastic habit, and from her he had his religion and his letters; she died in 1924, when he was eleven, and he was passed to an uncle who was not glad of the burden.
He was a solitary and remarkable schoolboy: he read the Fathers, he was first in his class, and he wished for nothing but the monastic life. On 15 August 1933, at twenty, he entered the monastery of Neamț, the greatest house of Moldavia and the seat of the Paisian tradition. He was set to the library, and in the sacristy and infirmary; the memory of the brethren was that he could put his hand on the right book for a man's trouble and often did.
He was tonsured on 8 April 1936 with the name John.
The Holy Land
Later that same year, with two companions, he made the pilgrimage to the Holy Land and did not return. He was received at the great Lavra of St Sabbas the Sanctified in the Kidron gorge — the house of Sabbas, John of Damascus and Cosmas of Maiuma, still keeping the office in the seventeenth century of its existence — and served there some seven years, again as librarian.
In 1945 he withdrew for greater solitude to a cave near the Jordan. He was ordained priest in 1947 and appointed igumen of the Romanian Skete of St John the Baptist on the Jordan, where he cared for the Romanian pilgrims and for a small brotherhood, and where his health — never good, and ruined by the desert — began to fail in earnest.
Chozeba
About 1952 he gave up the superiorship and went, with a single disciple, the monk Ioanichie, into the wilderness of Chozeba — the wadi Qelt, the ravine between Jerusalem and Jericho on the road of the Good Samaritan, where the ancient laura of the Chozebites had stood since the fifth century. High in the cliff face above the monastery of St George is a cave which tradition names as the place where St Anna prayed for the child who would be the Mother of God. In that cave, reached by a scramble along the rock, John lived his last eight years.
He kept the full rule alone: the whole psalter, the services, prostrations, a diet of the barest kind, and the fierce heat and cold of the Judaean desert. He wrote — a considerable body of verse and spiritual counsel in Romanian, which circulated among the pilgrims and was afterwards published — and he received those who climbed up to him, Romanians, Greeks, Arabs, Palestinians and Israelis alike, for he had a reputation in the whole district. His letters home to Moldavia, written under the communist regime that had closed Romania behind him, are among the most affecting documents of the Romanian church of that century.
He died in his cave on 5 August 1960, at forty-seven. His disciple and the monks of St George buried him there in the rock.
The relics
Twenty years later, on 8 August 1980, the tomb was opened. The body was found whole and incorrupt, the habit intact — a thing without recent precedent in that country, and reported at once by the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The relics were brought down to the monastery of St George the Chozebite in the wadi, where they lie in a glass shrine in the church, uncovered, and are venerated by every pilgrim who comes down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.
The Romanian Orthodox Church proclaimed his glorification in 1992, under the name John Jacob the New Chozebite, and the Patriarchate of Jerusalem keeps him among the saints of the Holy Land.
Feast and commemoration
August 5 (church date; Old Calendar civil August 18), the forefeast of the Transfiguration and within the Dormition fast — the day of his repose. He is kept by the Romanian Church, by the Patriarchate of Jerusalem (where his shrine is one of the fixed stations of the Judaean pilgrimage), and by the Orthodox Church in America's calendar; the Greek listings for the day carry him as Ὅσιος Ἰωάννης ὁ νέος Χοζεβίτης. Romanian parishes of the diaspora keep his day with particular attachment, as the feast of a man who left Romania and never came back.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 8 (common of a venerable father)
In thee, O father, was the divine image preserved with exactness; for taking up thy cross, thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, which passeth away, and to care for the soul, which is immortal. Wherefore doth thy spirit rejoice with the angels, O venerable John.
Iconography
John Jacob is painted as a desert hermit-priest: gaunt, dark-bearded and young — he died at forty-seven and his images keep him so — in the monastic schema with the black klobuk, holding a scroll or a cross, and very often set against the sheer ochre cliff of the wadi of Chozeba with the monastery of St George clinging to it below and the mouth of his cave above. A distinctive Romanian type shows him standing in the cave opening itself. Photographs of him survive, and the icons are visibly portraits.
All images of him are modern — he died in 1960 and was glorified in 1992 — and are the copyrighted work of living iconographers. No storable image exists or can exist for this reference, and he is recorded among the wanted icons with that explanation.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with John the Chozebite, the sixth-century ascetic of the same wadi who became bishop of Caesarea in Palestine and is commemorated on October 3. The epithet is the same because the place is the same; the two men are separated by fourteen centuries. The later saint is distinguished in Romanian and Greek usage as "the New" Chozebite.
- The date of his glorification. Generally given as 1992 (the synodal act of the Romanian Patriarchate); the proclamation in the Holy Land followed. His name was recognised by the Patriarchate of Jerusalem in the same period.
- His writings. The Romanian verse and counsels attributed to him circulated in manuscript among pilgrims before publication, and the corpus as printed contains material of varying certainty; the letters are secure.