Just a few minutes away from the monastic precincts, under the crest of a small hill and in the middle of the parish cemetery, lies the wooden church dedicated to the “Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple”, also known as “Prince Dragoș’s Church”. It is visible from the national road. Its history is closely linked to that of the Putna Monastery.
The earliest mention of this place was made by chronicler Nicolae Costin at the beginning of the 18th century: “We also have heard, from ancient men, dwellers of this land, as the word passeth from man to man, that a church of wood at Olovăț was built by Voivode Dragoș and they say Prince Dragoș is buried there. And that same wooden church was removed by Voivode Stephen the Good, who did set it up anew at the Monastery of Putna, where it remaineth unto this day.”
A few years later, another chronicler, Ion Neculce, wrote: “And the feast of the church is the Entrance of the Mother of God. And Voivode Stephen built at Volovăț another church, made of stone, desiring to show devotion unto the Monastery of Putna, so that it should be called the first, as that church is of older time than the other monasteries of Prince Alexander the Great.”
This information was reproduced in a princely document issued by Prince Mihai Racoviță on March 17, 1723, thus confirming its credibility and proving the unreserved institutional acceptance of Stephen the Great’s gesture.
Recent dendrochronological research has confirmed the affirmations made in the country’s chronicles and in the above-mentioned document, which is that the church was built in the early days of the Moldavian mediaeval state, before 1400, and has indeed been proven to be the oldest church in Moldavia and the oldest wooden church in the country. Moving it to Putna has been precisely confirmed for the end of Holy Prince Stephen the Great’s reign.
The context of its relocation was special. In his last years, Saint Stephen sought to ensure a solid material basis for his “beloved monastery” and final resting place. He did it by donations and privileges granted to his foundation, which are mentioned in “the Great Privilege for the Putna Monastery~, issued on February 2, 1503. At that time, Putna Monastery held the largest princely meadow (braniște) among all Moldavian monasteries and one of the largest landholdings in the country. To formally affirm its primacy over other monasteries, however, a canonical argument based on chronology was needed. In Orthodox tradition, the canonical order of monastic institutions is determined by age—either the date of the earliest altar or the first documentary mention. Before Putna—built between 1466 and 1469—stood older foundations such as Neamț and Ițcani (founded before 1400), Bistrița, Moldovița, built by Prince Alexander the Good, and the original Probota, to name only a few. Stephen the Great found an elegant solution: he donated the wooden church located at Volovăț to Putna Monastery and relocated it near the monastery’s precincts.
As the great founder explicitly states in the “Great Privilege”—“We have bought it with our own silver, and we have given and recorded it for the holy monastery of Putna”—the wooden church from Volovăț was not simply moved from one place to another. In return, the people of Volovăț received a new stone church dedicated to the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, built between 1500 and 1502. The unusually long construction period—at a time when most churches were built in about a year— “may suggest that this was no ordinary undertaking”. Sensing the end of his life approaching, Stephen acted to secure both the material resources and canonical standing of Putna. His efforts bore fruit: in early 1503, he issued the “Great Privilege,” and later that year, the wooden church officially became part of the princely necropolis alongside the most precious treasures offered by Stephen, such as the holy relics, the painted and embroidered icons, and the illuminated manuscripts of the 15th and 16th centuries.
Regarding Stephen the Great’s contribution to the construction, present-day research has identified fir wood used in 1503 to repair or enlarge the wooden Volovăț church, originally made entirely of high-quality oak.
The church’s fate has followed the rise and decline of Putna over the centuries, although few details are known about its role within the monastery in the decades that followed.
The restoration of Putna Monastery by Metropolitan Jacob of Putna in the 18th century breathed new life into the wooden church as well. Monks lived in nearby cells, and the church served as one of the monastery’s altars. This is how it appears in a painted depiction dated between 1762 and 1768: a small, apse-less structure with a southern entrance. Historical documents record specific donations made for the support of this church.
Next to the wooden church, Metropolitan Jacob founded an elementary school in 1759. Except for a brief period when he served as abbot of Solca Monastery, Archimandrite Bartholomew resided here, at the “old monastery,” overseeing the church and its surrounding buildings.
Between 1760 and 1761, Archimandrite Bartholomew commissioned a Baroque-style iconostasis, painted by four Moldavian iconographers. Not long afterwards, he enlarged the church by adding two apses before 1768 and a porch in 1778. These changes were necessary under the new Austrian rule: the wooden church had become the parish church for the village of Putna, which in 1779 had 9 households and by 1780 had grown to 119.
The iconostasis commissioned in 1760-1761 by Bartholomew Mazereanu from his own funds and donations, according to the inscriptions on the festal icons, still survives in the church. It is a scaled version of the typical iconostases found in northern Moldavia during the late 18th century.
Archimandrite Bartholomew Mazereanu likely passed away in 1780, leaving the church without his support. As monastic communities throughout Bukovina were being closed and the village of Putna expanded rapidly near the monastery, the wooden church continued to serve as the village’s parish church.
The separation of the church from the monastic complex occurred gradually. In 1805, another wooden church located in the monastery’s garden was moved to the nearby village of Voitinel. In 1842, the ecclesiastical authorities forced the monastery to donate the orchard next to the wooden church to the parish—even though it had been willed to the monastery by Bartholomew Mazereanu. Putna Parish archived records from the Austrian period show that, until the mid-19th century, the parish lacked its own liturgical vessels, relying on those borrowed from the monastery. Until 1868, the monastics continued to serve the parish as village priests, and regular services were held until 1908, when a new stone church dedicated to the Nativity of the Mother of God was built nearby.
After the completion of the new stone church in 1908, the wooden church remained under the care of the parish community, and services continued there on the occasion of its feast day.
In the autumn of 2022, with the blessing and pastoral care of His Eminence Archbishop Calinic of Suceava and Rădăuți, the church was officially returned to the care and patrimony of the Putna Monastery.
The history of Prince Dragoș’ Church, the oldest wooden church in the country, is closely linked to that of the Putna Monastery.
