NEOFITO, ENCLEISTRO. – A solitary “recluse,” as his name indicates. Born in Leucara (Cyprus) in 1134, but the date of his death is unknown. At a very young age he embraced the monastic life, which he later left after a thousand vicissitudes in order to shut himself away in a cave near Pafos.
That solitary place soon became the famous Encleistra monastery, where N. was ordained a priest and composed his Διέταξις. He then again sought greater solitude in the mountains, in the cell-reclusion Νέα Σιών. His works are not few, some of them published in Venice by Kiprianos in 1779; the fragment De calamitatibus Cypri has been published several times (PG 135, 495-502).
BIBL.: L. Petit, Vie et ouvrages de N. le Reclus, in Echos d'Orient, 2 (1898-99), pp. 257-68; H. Delchaye, Saints de Chypre, in Anal. Bolland, 26 (1907), pp. 161-297; J. Ch. Chatzéjannu, Ἰστορία καὶ ἄργα Νεοφύτου... Ἐγλώστου, Alessandria 1914. Emanuele Candal