Glorification 1992

The formal glorification: on 20 June 1992 the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church numbered John Jacob among the saints, as St. John (Ioan) the New of Neamț, the Chozebite, with his feast on 5 August — one of a group of native Romanian saints canonized by the Romanian Church in 1992, the year in which it undertook a broad glorification of its own holy men and women.

Tradition: Romanian Orthodox (20th-c. hermit of the Judean desert; glorified 1992)

The Act of the Holy Synod

The finding of the relics in 1980, received by the Romanian Orthodox Church as a divine sign of John Jacob’s sanctity, set in motion the process that culminated twelve years later in his formal glorification. On 20 June 1992 the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church proclaimed his canonization, numbering him among the saints under the title Cuviosul Ioan cel Nou de la Neamț, “Ioan Hozevitul” — St. John the New of Neamț, the Chozebite — and fixing his feast on 5 August, the day of his repose (Romanian synodal Life, Viața Sfântului Cuvios Ioan Iacob de la Neamț; parohia-sf-ioan-iacob-hozevitul.ro, “Viața Sfântului Ioan Iacob Hozevitul,” which dates the canonization to 20 June 1992 and gives the title and the feast; “Blessed John (Jacob) of Neamts,” orthochristian.com/106787.html, which places the Synod’s decision in June 1992). The date and the title are consistently reported across the Romanian sources.

The epithets are worth unpacking. “Cel Nou” (“the New”) distinguishes him from the earlier St. John and marks him precisely as a modern saint — a saint “of our days,” as the Romanian devotional tradition insists. “De la Neamț” binds him to the great Moldavian monastery of his tonsure and its Philokalic tradition (see St. Paisius Velichkovsky). “Hozevitul” (“the Chozebite”) binds him to the Judean desert monastery of St. George of Choziba where he died and where his relics rest — so that his very name holds together the two poles of his life, the Romanian homeland he left and the desert exile in which he was sanctified.

The Romanian Canonizations of 1992

John Jacob’s glorification did not stand alone. It belonged to a broad program of canonizations undertaken by the Romanian Orthodox Church in 1992, in which the Church, having gained its freedom with the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, formally glorified a series of its own native saints — figures whose veneration had grown among the Romanian faithful but who had not previously been entered by synodal act into the calendar (general history of the 1992 Romanian canonizations; and see assessment.md). The Romanian Church in 1992 also instituted a Sunday of the Romanian Saints, gathering the commemoration of its native holy men and women, as part of the same assertion of the sanctity born on Romanian soil and among Romanians abroad. [Disputed: the precise list and the several dates of the 1992 Romanian canonizations are given with some variation in the sources; what is firm and directly relevant here is that John Jacob was among the saints glorified by the Romanian Holy Synod in 1992, by the act of 20 June, and that this belonged to a wider recovery and formalization of Romanian sanctity in that year.]

The setting illuminates the significance of his case. John Jacob was, on the common Romanian reckoning, the first Romanian saint of the twentieth century to be glorified — a modern hermit, dead only thirty-two years, canonized within living memory and on the strength of recent and well-documented evidence (egumenita.ro, describing him as “the first Romanian saint of the 20th century”; and see the-sources-for-his-life.md). His glorification thus carried a particular weight for the Romanian Church emerging from Communism: a sign that holiness had continued to be born among Romanians into the present age, and even among Romanians exiled far from the homeland in the deserts of the Holy Land.

What the Glorification Claims

As with every glorification, it is important to be precise about what the Church’s act does and does not assert. In canonizing John Jacob the Romanian Church did not certify a forensic finding about his relics or adjudicate the details of his biography; it received and ratified the veneration of the faithful, recognizing in his life, his writings, and the signs attending his relics an authentic manifestation of Orthodox holiness, and it authorized his liturgical commemoration (cf. the treatment of ecclesial recognition in St. Xenia of Petersburg: Methodology). In John Jacob’s case, unusually, the biography the Church ratified is also one the historian can largely recover — so that here the ecclesial act of recognition and the documentary record stand in easy agreement, rather than the tension that marks the thin-sourced cases. The glorification of 1992 is the Church’s formal seal on a holiness already manifest in a well-attested life, a substantial corpus, and a widely loved cult.

See Also

• Feast and Veneration — the feast of 5 August and his liturgical commemoration
• The Incorrupt Relics — the 1980 finding that precipitated the glorification
• St. Paisius Velichkovsky — the Neamț tradition named in his title
• St. Xenia of Petersburg: Methodology — on what a glorification claims
• Assessment — the 1992 canonizations in context

References

• Viața Sfântului Cuvios Ioan Iacob de la Neamț (Hozevitul) — the Romanian synodal Life, in Viețile Sfinților for August. (The glorification of 20 June 1992; the title and feast.)
• “Viața Sfântului Ioan Iacob Hozevitul.” parohia-sf-ioan-iacob-hozevitul.ro. (Canonization 20 June 1992 as “Cuviosul Ioan cel Nou / Hozevitul”; feast 5 August.)
• “Blessed John (Jacob) of Neamts, the New Chozebite.” Trans. from pravoslavie.ru. orthochristian.com/106787.html. (The Holy Synod’s decision of June 1992; feast 5 August.)
• egumenita.ro, notice to Hrană Duhovnicească. (“The first Romanian saint of the 20th century.”)