Saint Iachint of Wallachia

Iachint of Vicina (Romanian: Iachint; also rendered Hyacinth or Yakinthos) was a fourteenth-century hierarch who served as metropolitan of Vicina and then, from 1359, as the first Metropolitan of Ungro-Wallachia, the newly organized Church of the principality of Wallachia. He is venerated as a hierarch in the Romanian Orthodox tradition, which commemorates him on October 28.

By the accounts that survive, he was born toward the end of the thirteenth century and received his theological education in Constantinople. Sources associate him with the defense of hesychasm during the controversies of the period and connect him with Saint Gregory Palamas. He was elected metropolitan of Vicina, a see in Dobrudja, following the death of Metropolitan Kiril in 1358.

In May 1359, by the act of Ecumenical Patriarch Callistus I (Kallistos I) of Constantinople and at the request of the Wallachian prince Nicholas Alexander (Nicolae Alexandru) Basarab, Iachint was transferred to Curtea de Arges, the capital of Wallachia, and recognized as the first Metropolitan of Ungro-Wallachia. The transfer, effected through patriarchal synodal documents, gave the young principality a canonically established metropolitan see in direct relation to Constantinople. He held the office until his death in 1372.