Grigorie IV Dascălul

Grigorie IV Dascălul, known in Romanian church tradition as Sfântul Ierarh Grigorie Dascălul (Saint Hierarch Gregory the Teacher), was born in 1765 in Bucharest, in the Principality of Wallachia. His baptismal name was Gheorghe Miculescu. He was educated at the Princely Academy of Saint Sava in Bucharest, the principal school of higher learning in Wallachia in the late eighteenth century. Toward the end of that century he went to Moldavia and entered Neamț Monastery, then the foremost house of the monastic revival linked with Paisius Velichkovsky. There he was tonsured a monk and received the name Grigorie, and he was formed in the patristic, liturgical, and hesychastic culture of that community.

As a monk he became a translator and instructor, which earned him the byname Dascălul (the Teacher). He rendered Greek patristic, hagiographical, and ecclesiastical works into Romanian, helping to enlarge the body of church literature available in the vernacular in the Danubian Principalities. His combination of scholarship and monastic discipline made him one of the better-known learned clerics of Wallachia and Moldavia in the early nineteenth century.

In 1823 he was elected Metropolitan of Ungro-Wallachia, the senior Orthodox hierarch of the principality, with his seat in Bucharest. During his metropolitanate he promoted clerical education, the printing of church books, and the restoration of churches, and he sought to maintain canonical order among the clergy. His time in office coincided with political upheaval: the close of Phanariote rule, the effects of the 1821 uprising in Wallachia, and the Russian occupation of the principalities in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-1829. Conflict with the occupying authorities resulted in his removal from Bucharest and his being sent to Chișinău in Bessarabia. He subsequently resided at Căldărușani Monastery.

He died on 22 June 1834 at Căldărușani Monastery and was buried there. Romanian Orthodox tradition remembered him as a scholarly bishop who endured exile amid political pressure on the Church. The Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church canonized him in 2005 and appointed 22 June as his feast day. He is venerated as a holy hierarch and monastic teacher of the Romanian Orthodox Church.