The great fire of 1484 destroyed most of the first manuscripts made at Putna Monastery. After the marks of the fire were removed, other craftsmen – from among those brought by Stephen the Great from Neamț to Putna to create a scriptorium there – started copying other books, to replace the destroyed ones.
In this new series of manuscripts, the Gospel Book was entrusted to Palladius, a monk whose name, accompanied by the mention “writer,” appears in the Bistrița Monastery diptych. This skilled copyist wrote and illuminated the Gospel Book, following the one crafted by Gavril Uric at Neamț Monastery in 1436.
The high‑quality vellum; the golden titles; the golden and polychrome first letters; the frontispieces – some wide, other narrow – where circles and lines intertwine and crisscross in a tight mesh of gold and colors which looks as fresh as an enamel; the floral ornaments and the skillfully crafted borders – they all testify to the skill of the copyist, but also to the taste of the commissioner. The richness of this manuscript reflects, at a smaller scale, the wealth and stability of the entire country.
Finishing his work, Palladius penned the dedicatory note in Slavonic: “The right-believing Io Ștefan Voivode, Prince of the entire Moldavia, hath this Gospel Book made and written and bound for the Monastery at Putna in the thirtieth and second year of his reign, in the times of Archimandrite Paisius the Short, by the hand of great sinner and so-called Monk Palladius in the year 6997 <1489>. It was begun in the 3rd day of the month of September, and it was finished on the 23rd of March.”
