Neophitus

Neophytos the Recluse, also known as Neophytos Enkleistos, was a Cypriot Orthodox monk, hermit, and writer of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. He was born in 1134 in the village of Kato Drys in the Lefkara region of Cyprus to a family of modest farming means. At the age of eighteen he left home to embrace monastic life and was tonsured at the monastery of Saint John Chrysostom at Koutsovendis in the Pentadaktylos mountains. Seeking both greater solitude and the holy places, he later made a pilgrimage to Palestine, visiting monasteries there before returning to his native island.

In 1159 he discovered a natural cave on a steep cliff several kilometres north of Paphos, which he enlarged and fitted as a hermitage, the Enkleistra. He lived there as a recluse for more than five decades, receiving the necessities of life through a small window and practising a severe ascetic rule. Disciples gradually gathered around him, and a small monastic community took shape. A church dedicated to the Holy Cross was added to the complex and decorated with frescoes that survive as outstanding examples of late Comnenian Byzantine painting.

Neophytos was a prolific author whose works include a monastic typikon for his community, scriptural commentaries, catechetical homilies, letters, and a brief historical account of the conquest of Cyprus by Richard I of England in 1191 and the ensuing establishment of Frankish rule. He consistently refused higher ecclesiastical office, remaining committed to the eremitical vocation. He died in 1214 at about eighty years of age and was buried in his hermitage.

The monastery that developed from his foundation, the Holy Monastery of Saint Neophytos near Tala in the Paphos District, remains an active Orthodox house and an important monument of Byzantine art and Cypriot history. It preserves his original cell, the painted cave church, and his relics. He is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, especially on Cyprus, and is commemorated on 24 January.