Neophytos the Recluse
Our Venerable Father Neophytos the Recluse, of Cyprus
Venerable · b. 1134, at Lefkara in Cyprus — d. 1219, at the Enkleistra near Paphos
Commemorated 24 January — Principal feast, transferred (1854) from his repose-day of April 12 to avoid Great Lent, 28 September — Commemoration of the uncovering of his relics (1750)
Neophytos the Recluse (1134–1219) — ho Enkleistos, "the Enclosed" — is among the greatest saints of Cyprus, called for his eloquence the "Chrysostom of the island." Born of a poor family at Lefkara and unlettered in youth, he entered the monastery of Saint John Chrysostom at Koutsovendis, learned his letters almost by grace alone, and after seeking the eremitic life in the Holy Land was led back to Cyprus, where in 1159 he found a cave in the hills above Paphos and made of it his Enkleistra ("Enclosure"), a hermitage dedicated to the Holy Cross. There, walled into his cell, he lived some sixty years as a recluse and yet became the teacher of a monastic community and of all Cyprus, leaving a vast body of homilies, biblical commentaries, hymns, and letters — among them a famous eyewitness lament over the calamities that fell on Cyprus with the Third Crusade and the conquest of the island by Richard the Lionheart (1191). He reposed on April 12, 1219; his relics were uncovered in 1750, and his Enkleistra remains a living monastery. His chief feast was transferred to January 24.
Origins and monastic beginnings
Neophytos was born in 1134 at Lefkara in Cyprus, of pious but very poor parents, and grew up without schooling, set to work on the land. Drawn from boyhood to the monastic life, at about eighteen he left home in secret and entered the monastery of Saint John Chrysostom at Koutsovendis, on the slopes of the Pentadaktylos in the north of the island. There he laboured for some five years in the monastery's vineyards, and there — the tradition insists — he learned to read and write almost by a gift of God, so that the unlettered peasant boy became in time one of the most prolific authors of the Byzantine Cyprus, his works running to some thousands of pages.
Longing for a stricter solitude, Neophytos set out for the Holy Land, intending to take up the hermit's life in the Judaean desert; but, finding no place open to him and understanding the refusal as God's will, he turned back toward Cyprus, and even attempted to sail to Mount Latmos in Asia Minor before providence fixed him at home.
The Enkleistra
In 1159, on the feast of the Forerunner, Neophytos came to the hills about an hour north of Paphos and found a natural cave that an earlier hermit had used. Over some fifteen months he enlarged and hewed it into a hermitage of several chambers — a cell, a chapel (the Bema), and a place for his own tomb, which he prepared with his own hands — and on 14 September 1159, the Exaltation of the Cross, he dedicated it to the Holy Cross and named it the Enkleistra, the "Enclosure." Ordained priest in 1170 at the bishop of Paphos's insistence, he took a single disciple, and gradually, against his first intention, a community formed about the recluse; the Enkleistra became a monastery, for which he wrote its rule.
In 1183 he had the walls of the Enkleistra painted by the artist Theodore Apseudes with a celebrated program of frescoes — among them the recluse himself shown between the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, a rare living self-witness in Byzantine art. As the fame of his holiness drew ever more visitors and disturbed his solitude, Neophytos in his later years excavated a higher and stricter cell above the first, which he called the New Zion, withdrawing into it in strict silence and communicating with the community below through a narrow opening, coming down only for the Sunday Liturgy.
The writings, and the lament for Cyprus
From his enclosure Neophytos poured out an extraordinary body of writing — the fruit of the literacy he had gained so late. It includes the Ritual Ordinance (Typike Diataxis), the rule of his monastery; the Panegyrike (Book of Homilies) and the Interpretation of the Commandments of Christ; commentaries on the Psalms, the Hexaemeron, and the Song of Songs; collections such as the Fifty Chapters and the Catechetical Discourses; and many homilies, hymns, odes, and letters. Among the most historically precious is his letter "Concerning the Misfortunes of the Land of Cyprus" (Peri ton kata choran Kyprou skaion), a first-hand cry over the sufferings of the island under the Third Crusade — the seizure of Cyprus in 1191 by Richard the Lionheart of England on his way to the Holy Land, and its passage under Latin rule. "Our land," he wrote, "has become like a sea shaken by a great storm and tempest." As the Latin Church pressed upon the Orthodox of Cyprus, Neophytos became a voice for the keeping of the Orthodox faith and tradition, and his writings are a primary source both for the spiritual life of his age and for the history of the crusading conquest.
Repose and relics
Neophytos reposed in his Enkleistra on 12 April 1219 (some accounts give 1214), after some sixty years of enclosed struggle, and was buried in the tomb he had hewn for himself, which was afterward sealed. His grave lay hidden for centuries until, in 1750, it was opened and his relics found, filling the cave, the tradition says, with a great fragrance; they are kept and venerated at the monastery. The Holy Monastery of Saint Neophytos at the Enkleistra, above Paphos, remains a living and much-visited house to this day.
Feast and commemoration
January 24 is the principal feast (church date; New Calendar civil January 24, Old Calendar civil February 6), transferred from his April 12 repose-day so as not to fall in Lent. September 28 commemorates the uncovering of his relics (Old Calendar civil October 11). He is especially honoured throughout the Church of Cyprus, whose great native saint he is.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 1
O glory of Lefkara and boast of the Cypriots, guardian of the monastery of the Enkleistra, our God-bearing father Neophytos: by fasting, by vigil, and by prayer, enduring enclosed within thy cave, thou didst receive divine grace, which thy shrine of relics now bestows upon the faithful. Glory to Him who crowned thee; glory to Him who glorified thee; glory to Him who through thee worketh healings for all.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Neophytos is shown as a monk in the schema, of grave and ascetic countenance, often holding a scroll; his most famous image is the twelfth-century fresco of the Enkleistra by Theodore Apseudes (1183), in which the recluse stands in prayer between the Archangels Michael and Gabriel — a portrait made in his own lifetime and by his own commission. The medieval frescoes of the Enkleistra are public-domain works of the twelfth century; the readily available photographs of them, however, are angled shots under modern photographers' licences and do not clearly and singly resolve the saint's figure, so — to keep the identity verification the icon policy requires — no image is stored here and the icon is noted as wanting (a clean, identity-verified reproduction of the Apseudes fresco of Neophytos between the archangels is the candidate to seek).
Disputed questions
- The date of his feast. Neophytos's repose falls on April 12, which frequently lies within Great Lent or Holy Week; for this reason his principal commemoration was transferred in 1854 to January 24 (a day already associated with his miraculous deliverance from a fall while hewing the upper hermitage). The monastery keeps him twice, on January 24 and on September 28 (the uncovering of his relics), and the original April 12 is also remembered. This entry ranks January 24 as the principal feast.
- The year of his death is given as 1219 in most sources, with 1214 also met; the entry keeps 1219.