Part of Saint Stephen the Great’s duty as a founder was the endowment of Putna with books, precious objects, vestments, liturgical objects, or different properties.
The first set of books was commissioned by Stephen the Great at Neamț Monastery in 1467. He requested the copying of twelve Menaia, books containing the services of the saints for every month of the year. Only the Menaion for November, handwritten by Monk Cassian, has remained in Putna’s library. Five Menaia are in the Rumjancev Museum in Moscow, and six have been lost.
The series of manuscripts given by Stephen the Great to his necropolis continued with the Leastvitsa, “The Ladder of Divine Ascent”, written by Saint John Climacus in the 7th century and copied in 1472 by Monk Basil.
The Ladder of Virtues
The content of the book is a witness to Saint Stephen’s ideal for the monastics of his foundations. This ideal is the same for monks and Christians: sanctification as fulfilment of man’s destiny. Each of the thirty chapters or thirty steps required of the monks to reach this ideal includes advice on a vice or a virtue. The work ends with a Letter to the Shepherd, which is a small treatise on how the abbot of a monastery should be.
The Ladder of virtues is illustrated on this page of St John Climacus’ Leastvitsa copy, commissioned in 1472 for the Putna Monastery by St. Stephen the Great.
Another treasure from the beginnings of the monastery, of which only a small section has survived, is the musical manuscripts in psaltic notation by Eustatius the Protopsaltes and his disciples. Although most of them are in Russia today, Putna has a 16th‑century Anthologion that includes many of his compositions.
The writing of books in Slavic continued during the reign of Bogdan III, throughout the 16th and 18th centuries. Among them were: liturgical books; Psalters; Horologions; sermons and teachings of Saints John Chrysostom, Ephraim the Syrian, Dorotheus, and other Holy Fathers; interpretations of the Gospels; hagiographies; law codes.
Romanian manuscripts
Almost all Romanian-language manuscripts surviving in the library of the Putna Monastery date back to the 18th and 19th centuries. More than half of them were written, and in many cases translated, by three great men of letters of the 18th century: teacher and monk Evlogius of Iassy (helped by his son, George), Saint Nathan Dreteanovski, and Archimandrite Bartholomew Mazereanu. They worked with the blessing and under the guidance of Saint Jacob of Putna.
Monk Evlogius left us numerous translations of the lives of saints; Saint Nathan wrote monastic diptychs, mainly of Putna and of Sihăstria Putnei, and Archimandrite Bartholomew translated dozens of teaching and liturgical books from Slavic into Romanian.
Diptych of the Putna Monastery written in 1756 by Saint Nathan Dreteanovski.
In 1764, Archimandrite Bartholomew created a register of all the documents of the Putna Monastery, Katastichon of all the Documents of the Holy Putna Monastery, which is the first ever known archiving endeavor in Romanian history.
As for the spirit in which these books were written—a ministry for the salvation of the brethren—we have a written testimony from Archimandrite Batholomew in a Panikhida Service Book that he translated: “Reverend fathers of the Holy Putna Monastery: Rejoice in the Lord! Again, with all my humility, I beseech you to receive this humble effort of mine [ …], and when you officiate the Panikhida, I humbly ask you to ease my sin‑burdened soul with your holy prayers and to remember my name together with my parents’ names.”
Printed books
In addition to manuscripts, the old library of the Putna Monastery also contains approximately 740 books printed between the 17th and 19th centuries. The vast majority are in Romanian, but there are also 42 copies in Church Slavic and a few others in Latin and Greek.
Bible, 1688. The title page with a dedicatory inscription made by the Prince of Wallachia, Constantin Brâncoveanu, for Metropolitan Dosoftei of Moldavia.
Some of them have historical value, containing interesting handwritten notes. Among the few Romanian books from the 17th century, the most valuable are those printed by Holy Metropolitan Dosoftei of Moldavia between 1681 and 1686; some of them are the copies on which this great scholar proofread the books published at the print workshop he had founded.
Pages from the Anthologion written by Eustathius the Protopsaltes of Putna Monastery, 1511.
