Theodora of Sihla

Theodora of Sihla, Teodora or Bohdanna of the Carpathians is a Christian ascetic and Romanian Orthodox saint, commemorated on 7 August.

Life

Born in Vânători-Neamț, Neamț County during the reign of Vasile Lupu, she was the daughter of the chief armourer of Neamț Citadel, the boyar Ștefan Joldea. In her youth, she was married off against her will. Being childless, both she and her husband decide to embrace monasticism, he withdrawing to under the name Elfterie, and she to.
Foreign invasions prompt her to retreat into the Buzău Mountains, where she lived for nearly a decade. From here she went firstly to Neamț Monastery, where she was guided towards, in the. With the guidance of Sihăstria's abbot, and with the blessing of the hermitage's egumen, she ascended the mountains to become an anchorite in the Sihla wilderness. The word "sihlă" means thick forest of young trees; thicket. Over a century later, Calistrat Hogaș described the hermit's environment:
Theodora initially lived in a cottage in a rocky part of Sihla, left to her by an elderly monk. Oral tradition recounts that nuns fleeing from foreign invasions came across the saint's cottage, who relinquished it to move into a cave, even more remote than her initial abode.

Posthumous legacy

After her death, the body of the St. Theodora remained in the cave in which she had spent the greater part of her hermitage. The knowledge of her life and death is said to have reached her husband, who left Poiana Mărului and came to spend the last decade of his life at Sihăstria, close to his wife's resting place. Around 1725, was founded in her memory.
She remained buried there until circa 1828-1834 when, during the Russian occupation of the Romanian Principalities, she was translated to Pechersk Lavra in Kiev.
The Romanian writer Calistrat Hogaș wrote about her in his book "Pe drumuri de munte":
The Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church proclaimed the canonization of St. Theodora of Sihla on 20 June 1992, establishing her commemoration on 7 August.