Putna Monastery

Putna Monastery lies in the village of Putna, in the valley of the river of the same name, 33 km north-west of the town of Rădăuți. Stephen the Great laid the foundation stone on 10 July 1466, and the church, dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God, was consecrated on Sunday, 3 September 1469, by Metropolitan Teoctist. The enclosure, towers and fortifications were completed in 1481. In Stephen's time the monastery had a school for copying manuscripts, one for embroidery and one for church music, and the Putna chronicles came from this milieu. Stephen's church was devastated during the fighting of 1653 and pulled down, as its foundations had been damaged. The present church was built in 1653-1662 on the plan of the old one: the work was begun by Vasile Lupu and completed by Gheorghe Ștefan and Eustratie Dabija, as recorded by the inscription in the narthex. It has five rooms (porch, narthex, burial chamber, nave and sanctuary) and is girded on the outside with a twisted cable moulding. Metropolitan Iacob Putneanul restored the monastery in the eighteenth century, the architect Karl Romstorfer rebuilt the roof in 1901-1902, and the present painting was executed in 2001-2010 by the brothers Mihail and Gavriil Moroșan. Stephen the Great (died 2 July 1504) is buried in the burial chamber, on the right-hand side towards the south wall, under a marble canopy. Beside him, at floor level, lies the tombstone of Princess Maria Voichița, and on the north side the stone of Princess Maria of Mangup (Maria Asanina Palaiologina, buried in 1477) and that of two of Stephen's sons, Bogdan and Petru. The narthex holds the graves of Bogdan III, of his sister Maria (Cneajna), of Prince Ștefăniță and of Maria, first wife of Petru Rareș, and the porch those of Metropolitans Teoctist I (died 1478) and Iacob Putneanul. Archaeological research found 24 burials in the church, of which 12 tombstones survive today. Stephen the Great was canonised in 1992, and the canonisation was proclaimed at Putna on 2 July 1992. The complex is a class A historic monument (LMI code SV-II-a-A-05595) and comprises the church, the chapel of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul (1759), the Treasury Tower (1481), the princely house rebuilt in 1982-1988, the gate tower known as the Eminescu Tower, because Mihai Eminescu spent the night there during the festival of August 1871, the monks' cells and the enclosure wall. The monastery museum occupies a building put up in 1975-1976 and opened on 6 June 1976; it holds Byzantine and Moldavian embroidery, including the tomb cover of Maria of Mangup and the epitaphios of 1490 given by Stephen the Great, as well as manuscripts, early printed books, icons and metalwork. The monastery is home to a community of monks, and its feast day is 15 August.