Wooden Church of Putna (Dragoș Vodă Church)

The wooden church of Putna stands in the cemetery of Putna village, Putna commune, Suceava County, about 1 km from Putna Monastery. It is dedicated to the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, celebrated on 21 November, and is also known as the Dragoș Vodă Church or Schitul Putna. An old tradition, recorded by the chronicler Nicolae Costin, links the church to Prince Dragoș and to its construction at Volovăț in the mid-fourteenth century. A dendrochronological study of 2002-2003, on samples taken by the architect Alexandru Baboș and analysed by Hans Linderson in Lund (Sweden), showed that the oaks used were felled after 1400, so the oldest part, the eastern half, dates from the first years of the fifteenth century. Also according to tradition, Stephen the Great moved the church from Volovăț to Putna, and the old beams still bear the numbering marks used when it was taken apart. In 1778, on the initiative of Archimandrite Vartolomei Măzăreanu, it became a parish church, with side apses and a narthex added, and in 1871 the narthex was extended. After the new brick parish church was completed in 1908, the wooden church became a chapel and museum. The church is built of oak and fir beams, has a trefoil plan and a tall shingle roof with wide eaves. Inside are a porch, narthex, nave and sanctuary. The medieval core, made up only of the nave and sanctuary, fits within a rectangle of 4.77 m by 8.25 m. The iconostasis dates from around 1760, and the royal icons bear the inscriptions „Anton Zugrav 1760” and „Ioan Zugrav, 1760”. The year 7089 (1580-1581) is written on the east wall of the sanctuary. The church is a class A historic monument with LMI code SV-II-m-A-05594. Research in the first decade of the twenty-first century reported damage to the iconostasis and the timber structure caused by damp and wood-boring insects.