Daniel the Hesychast was a Moldavian monk, hermit, and spiritual father of the fifteenth century, remembered above all for his role in the flowering of hesychast prayer in Moldavia. Tradition calls him "the Father of the Moldavian Hesychasts," and according to Archimandrite Ioanichie no spiritual father in Moldavia during his lifetime was more renowned, nor any teacher of prayer more skilled. He is commemorated on December 18.
Born in Moldavia at the beginning of the fifteenth century, he was baptized with the name Dumitru. At the age of sixteen he entered the monastery of Saint Nicholas at Radauti and was tonsured a monk under the name David, with Saint Leontius of Radauti as his spiritual director. He later served at the monastery of Saint Laurence in the district of Vicovu de Sus, where he received the Great Schema and the new name Daniel, together with a blessing to withdraw into solitude.
Drawn to the eremitic life, Daniel spent years in seclusion. By tradition he lived for a time near the Neamts Monastery before carving a hermitage cell, with an adjacent chapel, into the rock near the Putna creek. After his spiritual child, Stephen the Great, built the Putna Monastery—consecrated in 1470—Daniel withdrew further, hewing another cell beneath the Soim (Falcon) Cliff near the Voronets Monastery, where he is said to have lived for about twenty years as a spiritual guide and healer to those who sought him.
When he was more than eighty years old, in 1488, Daniel moved to the Voronets Monastery and was chosen as its igumen. Under his abbacy Voronets reached the height of its spiritual life and was long regarded as Moldavia's lavra of hesychasm. He died in 1496 and was buried at the monastery, where his tomb continues to be venerated. The Romanian Orthodox Church glorified him in 1992.
