Introduction
In the eighteenth century, when much of the Orthodox East was passing through troubled times — Russia after the reforms of Peter the Great, Ukraine under the pressure of the Unia, Athos in decline, Byzantium long fallen — Moldavia was blessed with a spiritual flowering whose depth we today scarcely suspect. Not one monastery alone, but two hesychast hearths shone in the same epoch, separated by only a few dozen kilometers, each with its own saints, its own labor, its own fruit. One stood in the north of the country, hidden in a beech forest among the Bucovinian mountains: Sihăstria Putnei, the skete of the Putna Monastery of Stephen the Great. The other, in the heart of Moldavia, at the foot of the Neamț mountains: Neamț Monastery, an ancient foundation that under Elder Paisius Velichkovsky would become the greatest Philokalic center of Orthodoxy in its time.
For today’s Orthodox reader, both lines are largely hidden. The name of Saint Paisius of Neamț is heard, but often without concrete historical content. The names of the Venerable Silas, Paisius, and Nathan of Sihăstria Putnei are practically unknown outside Bucovina, even though the Church glorified them as saints in 2016. This article is not about correcting an error, but about discovering together a patristic richness that the centuries and contrary times have almost completely buried.
We shall see that Moldavia of the eighteenth century did not receive hesychasm as something coming from outside, but preserved it and brought it to light on its own soil. The two hearths are not rivals, and neither is superior to the other. They are two faces of the same labor of the Holy Spirit, two parallel and simultaneous paths through which Christ spiritually clothed one corner of the world.
This article seeks to bring both into the light.
Indicative chronological table
To make it easier to follow the two lines throughout the article, here are the principal moments, set in parallel. The reader who wishes only the narrative thread may pass directly to the first section; the table below is only a chronological support.
| Year | The Putna Line | The Neamț Line |
|---|---|---|
| 1692 | Birth of St. Basil of Poiana Mărului (Poltava) | |
| 1697 | Birth of St. Silas (region of Botoșani) | |
| 1701 | Birth of St. Paisius of Sihăstria Putnei | |
| 1713 | St. Basil comes to Wallachia (Dălhăuți) | |
| 1714 | Silas enters Sihăstria Putnei | |
| 1717 | Birth of St. Nathan (Pașcani) | |
| 1719 | Birth of St. Jacob of Putna (Rădăuți) | |
| 1722 | Birth of St. Paisius Velichkovsky (Poltava) | |
| 1730–33 | Basil renews Poiana Mărului | |
| 1731 | Metropolitan Antonie blesses Silas as steward at Sihăstria Putnei; Jacob of Putna enters Putna Monastery as a brother | |
| 1736 | Metropolitan Antonie ordains Jacob of Putna a priest | |
| ~1740 | Metropolitan Antonie (retired to Kiev) counsels Platon Velichkovsky to come to Moldavia | |
| 1743–46 | Platon Velichkovsky, disciple at Dălhăuți, Trăisteni, Cârnu under Basil | |
| 1744 | Jacob of Putna becomes abbot of Putna Monastery | |
| 1745 | Jacob of Putna becomes bishop of Rădăuți | |
| 1746 | Velichkovsky leaves for Mount Athos | |
| 1750 | Jacob of Putna becomes Metropolitan of Moldavia | Basil tonsures Velichkovsky on Athos with the name Paisius |
| 1753 | Silas becomes abbot of Sihăstria Putnei (appointed by Jacob of Putna) | |
| 1754–58 | Construction of the stone church of Sihăstria Putnei | |
| 1758 | Consecration of the church by Bishop Dositheus Herescu, disciple of Silas | |
| 1760 | Jacob of Putna resigns the metropolitan throne and retires to Putna | |
| 1763 | Paisius Velichkovsky comes to Dragomirna with 64 disciples | |
| 1767 | Repose of St. Basil of Poiana Mărului | |
| 1768 | Nathan composes the Pomelnic (Diptych) of Sihăstria | |
| 1769 | The Dragomirna Philokalia (monk Rafail) | |
| 1770 | Nathan translates The Rule of Monastic Life | |
| 1775 | Austrian occupation of Bucovina; Sihăstria Putnei under Austrian rule | Paisius Velichkovsky leaves for Secu with 200 monks |
| 1778 | Repose of St. Jacob of Putna (May 15), after receiving the great schema from the Venerable Nathan on May 11 | |
| 1779 | Paisius Velichkovsky becomes abbot of Neamț | |
| 1783 | Repose of St. Silas (April 23) | |
| 1784 | Repose of St. Paisius (Dec. 16) and St. Nathan (Dec. 26) | |
| 1786 | Suppression of Sihăstria Putnei by Austrian order | |
| 1793 | Publication of the Slavonic Philokalia (Dobrotolubie) at St. Petersburg | |
| 1794 | Repose of St. Paisius Velichkovsky | |
| 1988 | Canonization of St. Paisius Velichkovsky by the Russian Orthodox Church | |
| 1990 | Discovery of the relics of the three Putna hermits | |
| 1992 | Decision of the canonization of St. Paisius Velichkovsky by the Romanian Orthodox Church (June 20–21) | |
| 1994 | Official proclamation of the canonization of St. Paisius Velichkovsky | |
| 2003 | Canonization of St. Basil of Poiana Mărului by the Romanian Orthodox Church | |
| 2016 | Canonization of the Putna Saints (Jacob, Silas, Paisius, Nathan) | |
| 2017 | Solemn proclamation of the canonization at Putna Monastery |
Seen this way, the table reveals the true richness of the eighteenth-century Moldavian century: two lines working simultaneously, in parallel, on the same root. When Velichkovsky came to Dragomirna (1763), Silas had been abbot at Sihăstria Putnei for ten years and the stone church had already been consecrated. When Velichkovsky reached Neamț (1779), the three Putna hermits had been laboring there for decades. The two hearths had touched, through Metropolitan Antonie, as early as the 1730s — and bore fruit together until the end of the century.
I. The Moldavian hesychast tradition before the eighteenth century
To understand how two hesychast hearths of such spiritual power could arise simultaneously in the eighteenth century, we must first look back. The soil of Moldavia was not bare ground when Saint Basil of Poiana Mărului came from Ukraine, nor when Saint Paisius Velichkovsky arrived at Dragomirna. It was a land on which hesychasm had already been plowed and sown for nearly four centuries.
Saint Nicodemus of Tismana and the beginnings
The hesychast tradition came into the Romanian Lands through the Athonite line, by way of Saint Nicodemus of Tismana (†1406), an indirect disciple of Saint Gregory of Sinai. Of his work, ecclesiastical sources preserve the memory that “at the hesychast school of St. Gregory was formed also St. Nicodemus of Tismana, who was then at the Serbian Hilandar Monastery and who settled before 1370 in Wallachia, founding the monasteries of Vodița and Tismana, and others in Moldavia through his disciples.” Thus Nicodemus transmitted the spirit of the prayer of the heart that he himself had received on Athos through direct line with the great hesychast fathers of the fourteenth century.
This chronological detail — the year 1370 — is essential. It places the entrance of hesychasm into the Romanian Lands less than two decades after the Constantinople synod of 1351, which dogmatically confirmed the teaching of Saint Gregory Palamas. In other words, hesychasm arrived here in the full golden generation of its tradition, through men who had received it from those who had received it directly from Saint Gregory of Sinai and Saint Gregory Palamas. The Romanian Lands were not a late destination of hesychasm. They were one of its earliest institutionalized destinations outside Athos.
Nicodemus founded at Tismana a spiritual school whose disciples would spread into Moldavia as well. “As in Moldavia, near Tismana there is a cell carved in the rock where, it is said, the founder of the monastery, Nicodemus, sometimes lived as a hermit.” Thus the same spiritual model — a coenobitic monastery + an eremitic skete alongside it — that would be found centuries later at Putna with Sihăstria Putnei, at Neamț with Sihla, at Bistrița with Bisericani.
Two ancient hesychast hearths in Moldavia: Putna–Voroneț–Rarău and Neamț–Bistrița–Bisericani
Beginning with the fifteenth century, two zones of great hesychast density formed in Moldavia, both relevant to the theme of this article, since it is precisely on these hearths that the two hesychast lines of the eighteenth century would arise.
In the north, the Putna–Voroneț–Rarău zone: here labored Saint Lawrence of Rădăuți (called Leontius in the great schema) and Saint Daniel the Hesychast, secret counselor of Voivode Stephen the Great of Moldavia. After 1460, Saint Daniel took shelter in the Putna forests, first in a wooden hut, then in a stone cell which he himself carved. In 1466 he chose together with Stephen the place of Putna Monastery, and at the consecration of the church in 1470 he was considered the second founder. After this, he withdrew to Voroneț, where he spent the last years of his life. His cell in the stone, carved in the Putna forests, endures to this day.
Here it is fitting to underline a detail of probable filiation, although not directly attested by documents: in the opinion of several historians, after 1470, when Saint Daniel the Hesychast moved to Voroneț, some of his disciples settled at Sihăstria Putnei, ascending the valley of the Putna stream. If this hypothesis is correct (and local tradition strongly supports it), then Venerable Silas of the eighteenth century was, through the very institution of the Sihăstria, spiritually related to Saint Daniel through a line of discipleship. In any case, the eremitic continuity at this place, from the end of the fifteenth century to the eighteenth, is documented in historical sources.
In central Moldavia, the Neamț–Bistrița–Bisericani hearth: here labored Saint Joseph and Saint Cyriac of Bisericani, the hermitage being, according to tradition, founded by Saint Joseph and his disciples after they had been forced to leave the Jordan Valley. Sources record that “the ruler of Moldavia, Bogdan the Blind, built for them in 1512 the ‘skete of Joseph,’ which later was called ‘the Monastery of Bisericani.’” Of the community here, sources record that in the seventeenth century “up to 400 schema-monks lived around it” — a number that shows we are not dealing with isolated cases of individual holiness, but with an entire collective spiritual culture.
Continuity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are difficult times for Moldavian hesychasm, but they do not interrupt it. In the same source we find recorded: “in the skete of Putna, Spiridon, the monks Palladius and Eustace, and in the region of Neamț, Cyriac the Hesychast. Also in Moldavia, for their renewing ideas in matters of hesychia, we recall the Metropolitans George I and Theoctist II, then Serghius the Hesychast, Pachomius, Zosimas, Moses, Pachos Spiridon, Job the Hermit.”
For the line that concerns us here — the Putna line — it is essential to observe that the first abbot of Sihăstria Putnei known by name, Abbot Lazarus, was a disciple of Saint Metropolitan Dositheus of Moldavia (1671–1686). Thus, even from the seventeenth century, the skete near Putna was organically linked to the great Moldavian metropolitan line. Metropolitan Dositheus was not only the great translator of liturgical books, but also a guardian of the Philokalic tradition. His disciples — among them Lazarus — carried this spirit forward into the forests of Bucovina.
In the same hearth would also labor Saint Theodora of Sihla (seventeenth–eighteenth centuries), a hermitess of the Neamț region, whose relics today rest at the Kiev Caves Lavra. Her cell in a cave, warmed only by prayer, is to this day a place visited by pilgrims.
Preliminary conclusion
When Saint Basil of Poiana Mărului reaches Wallachia around 1713, and when, later, Saint Paisius Velichkovsky arrives at Dragomirna in 1763, they come to a land that was already a nursery of hesychast holiness for nearly four centuries. They do not bring hesychasm; they find it again. The testimony of Saint Basil himself, preserved by Velichkovsky, is that their pilgrimage in the Romanian Lands was made “in search of an authentic spiritual life.”
Within this old hesychast soil, in the eighteenth century two new hearths arise, each of great spiritual power. Of these two, this article speaks.
And here we must make a sober observation. Other smaller hearths may have existed as well — only known to God or attested fragmentarily. We name with certainty two major hearths because they were documented and gave saints recognized by the Church. But this does not mean that the Holy Spirit worked only in these two places: in the eighteenth-century Moldavian forests there labored, near Neamț, Saint Onuphrius of Vorona and Saint Theodora of Sihla; in Wallachia, around Saint Basil of Poiana Mărului, there functioned an entire network of skete-houses in Buzău and Vrancea; while the nameless hermits who labored in the mountains of Moldavia were, as in every century, far more numerous than those we know today.
Let us now look more closely at the two hearths from the Bucovina–Neamț area, which form the heart of this article.
II. The Line of Sihăstria Putnei
The setting and the roots
Sihăstria Putnei lies three kilometers from the Putna Monastery of Saint Stephen the Great, hidden in a forest of the Obcina Mare mountains. Its beginnings reach back into history to the middle of the fifteenth century, in the days of the holy Voivode Stephen the Great. The first inhabitant known by name was the monk Athanasius — a Tatar converted to Christianity, tonsured at Putna Monastery — who, longing for greater stillness, withdrew into the forest, and soon other hermits joined him. In the opinion of several historians, after 1470 — when Saint Daniel the Hesychast moved to Voroneț — some of his disciples settled here, ascending the Putna stream. Although this discipular filiation is not directly attested in documents, it is historically probable and shows the depth of Sihăstria Putnei’s rooting in the Moldavian hesychast tradition.
Saint Venerable Silas (1697–1783)
Saint Silas was born in the year 1697 in the region of Botoșani, of Orthodox parents, John and Joanna. He entered as a beginner brother at the Skete of Orășeni (commune of Cristești, county of Botoșani), from where, in the year 1714, at the age of seventeen, he came to Sihăstria Putnei. He was tonsured by Abbot Theodosius. After the latter’s repose, the new spiritual father of the skete, Abbot Dositheus, ordered that he be ordained deacon and priest, and shortly afterward tonsured into the great schema.
In October 1731, Metropolitan Antonie of Moldavia gives the Venerable Silas his blessing to assist (“as steward”) the elder Abbot Dositheus. This detail, documented historically, is of particular patristic importance: the same Metropolitan Antonie who was at that time forming the young Jacob of Putna at Putna Monastery (and who would ordain him priest in 1736) — and who, later, retired to Kiev, would counsel Paisius Velichkovsky to come to Moldavia — is also the one who places the Venerable Silas in the service of Sihăstria Putnei. We have here, from the 1730s onward, a direct hierarchical link between the two hesychast hearths that would arise from this spiritual sowing.
Here, alongside Sila, we should note an important calculation for the historical chronology we are reestablishing. Venerable Silas was already at Sihăstria Putnei from 1714. Saint Paisius Velichkovsky was born on December 21, 1722, in Poltava. In other words, when the future disciple of Basil of Poiana Mărului had not even been born, the Venerable Silas had already been living for eight years at Sihăstria Putnei. This is not about establishing a competitive priority, but simply about correcting the perception that the Moldavian hesychast tradition of the eighteenth century owed something primarily to Velichkovsky. Chronological reality says otherwise: when Velichkovsky arrived at Dragomirna in 1763, the Venerable Silas had already been abbot at Sihăstria Putnei for ten years, and the Sihăstria had been rebuilt in stone, consecrated, and spiritually strengthened.
Appointment as abbot. The encounter with Saint Jacob of Putna
In the autumn of 1753, after the repose of Abbot Dositheus, the hieroschemamonk Silas becomes abbot of Sihăstria Putnei. Ecclesiastical sources record an essential detail: the appointment was made “by Metropolitan Jacob of Putna of Moldavia himself.” We have therefore, from the very first moment, a direct hierarchical link with the one who would be canonized alongside the three hermits in 2016 as a Holy Hierarch: Metropolitan Jacob of Putna.
With the counsel, the urging, and the blessing of Metropolitan Jacob, Abbot Silas undertakes the labor that would define the skete for the next two centuries: the building of a new stone church. The old wooden chapel (which by then was a century and a half old) was moved to the apple orchard, around which a cemetery was laid out. The new church, of river stone, was built between 1754 and 1758, receiving the patronal feast of the Annunciation. It was consecrated in 1758 by Bishop Dositheus Herescu of Rădăuți, himself tonsured at Sihăstria Putnei and a disciple of Silas.
Here we begin to glimpse, through concrete names and dates, the entire Putna network of which we will speak below.
Besides the church, Silas built cells, refectory, cellars, a fountain, an apple orchard, and a wall around the whole. He adorned the church “with iconostasis, with icons, and with all the ornaments and necessities befitting the house of God.” But his most important work was spiritual: he multiplied the number of hermits and strengthened among them “the undying bond of love.” Under his abbacy, the monks of Sihăstria were of two kinds: “some were workers of the prayer of Christ, while others were diligent calligraphers and writers of books.”
This mention of the scriptorium of Sihăstria Putnei is crucial. We are far from the image of a skete with a few isolated hermits. We have an organized center of spiritual culture, with its own scribal labor. In 1768, the hieroschemamonk Nathan (of whom we will speak shortly) composes here a Pomelnic of Sihăstria Putnei. In 1770 two works are attested at Sihăstria: the hieroschemamonk Nathan translates from Slavonic a work called The Rule of Monastic Life, and in the same year a Ladder is also written here — namely the Ladder of Saint John of Sinai. The fact that this fundamental book of monastic spirituality was being copied at Silas’s monastery shows that there was no lack there of either books, or the will to preserve them, or systematic Philokalic labor.
The Venerable Silas was a spiritual father sought by many faithful from the villages, and also by monks, hermits, abbots and hierarchs. To all he gave counsel, “neither discouraging them, nor leaving them in spiritual indifference.” He came to be a renowned spiritual father, esteemed both by the faithful and by the rulers of Moldavia Constantin Cehan Racoviță and Grigore Calimachi. One of his disciples, the hieromonk Dositheus Herescu, would become in 1747 abbot of Putna Monastery, and between 1750 and 1789 bishop of Rădăuți.
Silas and the end of life under foreign occupation. The last eight years of Abbot Silas’s life were particularly hard. After the seizure of Bucovina by the Habsburg Empire (May 7, 1775), many restrictions were placed upon the Sihăstria. The customary gifts of the Moldavian rulers had ceased. The skete no longer had what was needed for the food of the monks and was forced to borrow money and provisions. In 1776, the elderly Abbot Silas wrote a petition addressed to the Emperor of Austria, asking for support for the skete in distress; the petition, however, never reached its destination. The aged hermits were, however, aided by the former Metropolitan Jacob of Putna, now retired to his monastery of profession, by Bishop Dositheus Herescu of Rădăuți, the disciple of Silas, and by the good Christians of the surroundings. Thus until the hour of his death, the Putna network held together under the pressure of occupation.
Knowing his earthly end was near, the Venerable Silas appointed the Venerable Nathan as guide of Sihăstria Putnei, and then asked forgiveness from all. On April 23, 1783, after having labored nearly seventy years at Sihăstria Putnei — an entire human lifetime in one place, without going out except for the disciples and the needs of the skete — the Venerable Silas peacefully gave his soul into the hands of the Lord whom he had loved and served his whole life.
Saint Venerable Paisius (1701–1784) — defender of Orthodoxy in Northern Bucovina
Saint Paisius of Sihăstria Putnei was born in the year 1701 and entered monastic life from his youth. Little is known of his early years. Sources from Sihăstria Putnei preserve however a testimony of his, dated May 30, 1765, after he had already become an inhabitant of the skete, from which we learn his earlier path: in the time of the reign of Constantin Cehan Racoviță (1749–1753 and 1756–1757) he was abbot of the Monastery of “Saint Elias” of Suceava, from where he was moved to Râșca Monastery, and from there to Sihăstria Putnei. Thus the Venerable Paisius was not a monk without experience, but a former abbot of a great monastery, chosen for his spiritual maturity, who comes to Sihăstria Putnei seeking the most eremitic order.
He had as spiritual father, first, the Venerable Silas — abbot of the Sihăstria. Then, in his last years of life, he had as spiritual father the Venerable Nathan, whom Silas had appointed abbot knowing his earthly end was near. The Venerable Paisius was close in age to Silas (b. 1697 vs. b. 1701), so the relation of discipleship was not a matter of generation, but of virtue and spiritual economy.
The Venerable Paisius was not abbot of the Sihăstria properly during the lives of Silas or Nathan. Of him the sources say that “he was a fervent man of prayer, supporting all in the Orthodox faith, especially in the time of foreign rule.” This is the point that defines his labor: the defense of Orthodoxy in Northern Bucovina under Austrian occupation.
To understand this labor, we must keep in mind the historical context. In 1774, Bucovina was seized by the Habsburg Empire. The new Catholic rule suppressed most monasteries and pressured the Romanian Orthodox villages to convert. Precisely in this period — the last years of Paisius’s life — he went from place to place through Bucovina, strengthening the Orthodox people in the right faith. Archimandrite Ioanichie Bălan preserves this image in his article on Doxologia: “Going from place to place, the Hieroschemamonk Paisius urged the Orthodox people to keep with holiness the right faith and not to fear confessing Christ in word and in deed.”
Paisius received from God the gift of foresight, which, “added to the other virtues, made him honored by all as a great spiritual father.” He passed peacefully to eternal life on December 16, 1784, at the age of 83 — only ten days before the Venerable Nathan.
Here it is fitting to make an important clarification, since many popular accounts create confusion on this point: the Venerable Paisius was never abbot of Sihăstria Putnei. The official sources of Sihăstria Putnei Monastery, Putna Monastery, and the Romanian Patriarchate are unanimous: “Although he was not abbot of the Sihăstria, he was a fervent man of prayer, supporting all in the Orthodox faith, especially in the time of foreign rule.” Confirmed abbots were only Silas (1753–c.1782) and Nathan (c.1782–1784). The labor of the Venerable Paisius was that of a great spiritual father, of prayer, and of defender of Orthodoxy in Bucovina under Austrian occupation — a ministry equally exalted, but not institutional.
Sihăstria Putnei was officially suppressed by order of the Austrian authority on August 26, 1786 — less than two years after the repose of the three hermits.
Saint Venerable Nathan (1717–1784) — the metropolitan’s spiritual father
Saint Nathan was born in the year 1717, originating from Pașcani. He was first an inhabitant and ecclesiarch at Putna Monastery itself, where he was ordained deacon and then priest. Here we should mark an important detail: he was tonsured into monasticism with the name Narcissus by Metropolitan Jacob of Putna himself, retired to Putna, the metropolitan whose “close collaborator he had been earlier,” having the obedience of ecclesiarch of the voivodal church.
His cultural activity, especially before receiving the great schema, was remarkably prolific. “He wrote diptychs for the Metropolia of Moldavia (1754), Putna Monastery (1756), the skete of Doljești in the region of Neamț (1758–1763), the church of Saint Demetrius of Suceava (1762), Bisericani Monastery (1762).” This activity shows us the real magnitude of his labor: the Venerable Nathan was not a minor monk in a forgotten skete, but a leading ecclesiastical scholar of mid-eighteenth-century Moldavia, working directly for the most important ecclesial centers of the country. In 1768, at Sihăstria Putnei, he composes the Pomelnic of the Sihăstria. In 1770, he translates and writes The Rule of Monastic Life.
Desiring greater prayer and stillness, sometime between 1762 and 1768, he withdrew to Sihăstria Putnei, where he received the great schema with the name Nathan. Knowing his earthly end was near, the Venerable Silas appointed Nathan as guide of Sihăstria Putnei. He was abbot until his repose, on December 26, 1784, ten days after the Venerable Paisius.
After the Austrian occupation (1775) and the establishment of the cordon that severed the bonds between Bucovina and Moldavia, the Venerable Nathan undertook a hard labor to maintain the life of the skete under wretched conditions. Sources preserve a series of letters sent by him in the years 1782–1783 asking for material support — precious witnesses for the spiritual history of those years.
Concerning Nathan, ecclesiastical sources record: “He was the spiritual father of Metropolitan Jacob of Putna; in Bucovina, as a spiritual father, this elder was of notoriety.” More: feeling his end near, after Easter of 1778, Metropolitan Jacob of Putna went to Sihăstria Putnei and, on May 11, 1778, received tonsure into the great schema by the hand of his spiritual father, the Venerable Nathan, taking the name Euthymius. “After four days, on May 15, 1778, he peacefully passed to Christ the Lord” and was buried in the porch of Putna Monastery, “as a monk, without vestments or hierarchical insignia.”
Thus, the great Metropolitan of Moldavia died with the great schema received from his spiritual father at Sihăstria Putnei. This spiritual measure of Nathan — called to tonsure into the great schema the retired metropolitan himself — speaks more than many detailed biographies.
The Putna metropolitan network: a hidden web
Now we can lay together all the threads and see the true scope of the Putna line. We are not speaking of an isolated skete with three hermits, but of an entire spiritual network integrated into the backbone of the Metropolia of Moldavia. Here it is summarized:
Metropolitan Jacob of Putna (1719–1778) is the hierarchical nucleus of the network. Born on January 20, 1719, in a family of good Christians from northern Moldavia (Rădăuți), he entered as a brother at Putna Monastery at age twelve (1731). His spiritual father was Metropolitan Antonie of Moldavia (1730–1740) — a detail of particular patristic importance, to which we shall return below. At seventeen (1736) he was ordained priest by Metropolitan Antonie himself. At twenty-five he was appointed abbot of Putna (1744), and a year later bishop of Rădăuți (1745). In 1750 he became Metropolitan of Moldavia. Under his abbacy at Putna and then his episcopal and metropolitan pastoring, the entire spiritual life of Bucovina passed through his hand.
Metropolitan Jacob appoints Venerable Silas as abbot of Sihăstria Putnei in 1753. He also blesses the building of the stone church (1754–1758), which would be consecrated by Bishop Dositheus Herescu, disciple of Silas. In parallel with the work at the Sihăstria, the Venerable Silas “would also support the work of renewal of Putna Monastery, being considered one of its eighteenth-century founders.” Under his abbacy, the Venerable Silas became a renowned spiritual father, esteemed both by the faithful and by the rulers of Moldavia: Constantin Cehan Racoviță and Grigore Calimachi.
The Venerable Nathan was called to Iași by Metropolitan Jacob in 1754 — then ecclesiarch at Putna — to compose together the diptych of the Metropolia of Moldavia. Jacob also ordained him hieromonk, and in 1755 gave him the obedience of spiritual father, which he would fulfill all his life. At the end of life, the metropolitan himself received the great schema from the hand of his former close collaborator, become spiritual father at the Sihăstria.
Bishop Dositheus Herescu of Rădăuți (1750–1789) is a direct disciple of Silas, tonsured at Sihăstria Putnei. He consecrates the stone church of the skete in 1758. Later, after 1775, he would be the hierarch who bore the responsibility of the Church in Bucovina in the first years of Austrian rule, having to carry the heaviest burden of direct confrontation with the Catholic authority. He was chosen by the Venerable Silas as the hierarchical successor capable of defending Orthodoxy.
This network — Jacob of Putna, Silas, Paisius, Nathan, together with Bishop Dositheus Herescu — forms a single Putna spiritual family. And the canonization of the four, decided in 2016 by the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church and solemnly proclaimed on May 14, 2017 as “The Putna Saints,” is the official recognition precisely of this spiritual unity.
Their common confession of Orthodoxy is no accident. Metropolitan Jacob was himself a great defender of the faith. In the time of the Phanariot rulers, Moldavia was being drained by heavy taxes laid upon the population: the văcărit (a tax on cattle, so burdensome that “even a poor old woman, spinning at the distaff, had to pay money to the văcărit, although there were no longer any cows among the inhabitants”), the pogonărit (a tax on cultivated land, levied on each pogon — approximately half a hectare) and the vădrărit (a tax on wine, levied on each vadră — approximately ten liters). These were levies designed to wring out everything the peasants still had, for the benefit of the princely court.
Metropolitan Jacob, together with the other hierarchs of the country, brought about their abolition one by one: the pogonărit (August 5, 1755), the vădrărit (August 25, 1756), the văcărit (1757). Moreover, he bound by an episcopal anathema the rulers of the country never to return to these taxes. This act of fearlessness against the Phanariots was to cost him the metropolitan throne: in 1760, the pressures upon him to lift the anathema becoming ever stronger, Saint Jacob preferred to resign rather than to be a partaker in oppression and withdrew to Putna. The force of his act, however, remained: no later metropolitan — not even Gabriel Callimachi, the brother of the prince — dared to lift the anathema. Unlike Wallachia, where the văcărit was still levied for another forty years, in Moldavia it never returned. In the people there have remained two verses that portray Saint Jacob precisely through this deed: “Jacob the metropolitan, / Who has bound the văcărit.”
The same attitude, transposed into another register, would be that of the Venerable Paisius of Sihăstria Putnei in Bucovina under Austrian occupation: the walking “from place to place” to confess Christ.
The metropolitan as hesychast. Beyond all these public struggles, Saint Jacob remained in his depths a hermit. This is seen above all in his writings on prayer. In the preface of the Anthologion printed at Iași in 1755, the metropolitan wrote:
“Divine prayer, bringing the light of Christ into our souls, and scattering from it the fog that harms it, makes it afterwards much more luminous than the sun, for it is truly known that he who speaks with God is above death and corruption.”
These words, written in the midst of metropolitan ministry, show how the one who fought the Phanariots over the văcărit was, in his depths, a man living the life of prayer. Of his work in greater detail — his life, teachings, eight-year retirement at Putna, and end with the great schema at Sihăstria Putnei — we shall dedicate a separate article.
Metropolitan Antonie of Moldavia — the common root of the two hearths
We have already glimpsed, in the preceding sections, the figure of Metropolitan Antonie of Moldavia (1730–1740). It is time to gather his role together, for he constitutes the hidden link that joins, at the hierarchical level, the two hesychast hearths of which we are speaking.
Metropolitan Antonie:
- blessed in 1731 the work of the Venerable Silas as steward at Sihăstria Putnei (the Putna line);
- was the spiritual father of Jacob of Putna, ordaining him priest in 1736 (the Putna line);
- after his retirement to Kiev (after 1740), met the young Platon Velichkovsky and counseled him, by direct urging, to come to Moldavia to be formed spiritually (the Neamț line).
This detail is of particular patristic importance. The two lines — Putna and Paisian — have their spiritual filiation interwoven through a single person: Metropolitan Antonie. There is therefore no opposition of filiation between them — there is, on the contrary, a hidden unity in the person of a metropolitan who guided both, without imposing one institutional form upon them.
This fact confirms the basic thesis of the article: the two hearths are not rivals, but complementary. On the Moldavian soil of the eighteenth century, the Holy Spirit worked through a plurality of faces, but on a single spiritual root — and that root was the Moldavian hesychast tradition transmitted through hierarchs such as Dositheus of Moldavia, Antonie of Moldavia, and Jacob of Putna.
The end of the line. The discovery of the relics
The three hermits passed to the Lord at a distance of months and days from one another: Silas on April 23, 1783, Paisius on December 16, 1784, Nathan on December 26, 1784. Just three years after their deaths, on August 26, 1786, Sihăstria Putnei was officially suppressed by order of the Austrian authority. The Habsburg Empire, after the annexation of Bucovina, suppressed all the monasteries and sketes here “with the exception of Putna, Sucevița and Dragomirna,” and from their estates constituted the Greek-Oriental Orthodox Church Fund, under imperial control. The inhabitants of the Sihăstria were transferred to Putna Monastery, together with the liturgical objects.
The skete remained abandoned for over two centuries. The stone church, raised by the Venerable Silas, slowly fell into ruin under the rains, the snows, and the silence of the forest.
And yet God does not forget what historians and men forget. According to the testimony preserved by the community of Sihăstria Putnei, at the beginning of Great Lent in the year 1990, a Putna monk, withdrawn to the site of the former skete, saw a heavenly light above the narthex of the old ruined church, a light that encircled the church and then became invisible. A short while later, on April 24, 1990, when the work of restoration of the Sihăstria began, “in the narthex of the old church were discovered the graves of the three venerable ones: Silas, Paisius and Nathan, in which their bones were found, yellow as wax and giving off a sweet fragrance.”
First was found the grave of the Venerable Silas, on the right side of the church, on the outside, with the inscription: “Here lie the bones of the Hieroschemamonk Silas, who reposed in the year 1783, April 23.” A handsbreadth deep in the earth were his relics. In the same way were discovered those of the Venerable Paisius. The grave of the Venerable Nathan was not found, but his relics were identified beside those of the other two.
Sihăstria Putnei was rebuilt beginning in 1990 and reconsecrated on September 29, 1996. On June 6–7, 2016, the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church decided the canonization of the three venerable ones with feast day on May 16. On May 14, 2017, at Putna Monastery, in the presence of Patriarch Daniel, took place the solemn proclamation of the canonization of the Putna Saints: Saint Hierarch Jacob of Putna, Metropolitan of Moldavia, and the Venerable Saints Silas, Paisius and Nathan.
III. The Line of Neamț Monastery — a contextual sketch
The other hesychast hearth of eighteenth-century Moldavia is formed on a thread that is new in its appearance in the Romanian Lands, but of a much greater geographical and international scope. About the two saints of this line — Saint Basil of Poiana Mărului and Saint Paisius Velichkovsky, in connection with his encounter with Saint Basil — we have written at length in separate articles, to which we refer the reader for more detailed knowledge. Here we present only the essential markers, necessary to understand the parallel with the Putna line.
Saint Basil of Poiana Mărului (1692–1767)
Born in Poltava, in the Russian Tsardom, taking refuge in Wallachia in the time of Constantin Brâncoveanu, the Venerable Basil settles at Dălhăuți Monastery (near Focșani), where he becomes abbot. Under his leadership he gathers a community of over forty monks “Wallachian, Moldavian, Transylvanian, and Russian,” and forms a true spiritual school of hesychast living. Between 1730 and 1733 he renews the Skete of Poiana Mărului in the Buzău Mountains, where he would remain until the end. Around him is born a hermit network in the mountains of Buzău and Vrancea: Dălhăuți, Trăisteni, Cârnu, Bonțești, Rătești, Ciolanu, Cotești, Valea Neagră — more than fifteen establishments. He writes introductory words to the great Philokalic fathers (Gregory of Sinai, Philotheos of Sinai, Hesychius the Hermit, Nilus of Sora), texts that would circulate in tens of manuscripts in the Romanian Lands. In 1750, on pilgrimage to Athos, he tonsures Platon Velichkovsky into monasticism, giving him the name Paisius. He passes to the Lord on April 25, 1767 — the exact place of his burial is not known, the hiddenness to the end of the great teacher of the prayer of the mind. Canonized by the Romanian Orthodox Church in 2003.
Saint Paisius Velichkovsky (1722–1794)
Born also in Poltava, a disciple of the Venerable Basil in the Wallachian sketes (1743–1746), then dweller on Athos for seventeen years, where he founds the Skete of Saint Prophet Elias. In 1763 he returns to Moldavia with 64 disciples, receiving from Metropolitan Gabriel Callimachi the Dragomirna Monastery, where the community grows to 350 monks. Here, in 1769, his disciple Rafail finishes the first Philokalia in the Romanian language — a 626-page manuscript, more than a century and a half before the printed edition of Father Stăniloae. After the Austrian occupation of Bucovina (1775), he moves with 200 monks to Secu, and in 1779 to Neamț Monastery, where the community reaches approximately 700 brothers. Here unfolds his most extensive work: two teams of translators work without interruption to revise and translate the Philokalic writings into Slavonic and Romanian. The total number of manuscripts copied in his time amounts to approximately 300, of which 44 were composed by him personally. In 1793, at St. Petersburg, appears Dobrotolubie — the first Philokalia in the Slavonic language, the only of his works printed during his lifetime. He passes to the Lord on November 15, 1794. Canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1988 and by the Romanian Orthodox Church in 1992 (proclamation 1994).
Later radiation
The saint’s labor does not end with his death — only then begins its widest radiation. The hundreds of disciples spread throughout the Orthodox world. Some reach Russia, where they renew the Russian monasticism nearly extinguished after the reforms of Peter the Great: the schemamonk Theodore at Sanaxar, Father Leonid (Lev Nagolkin) at Optina — through Paisian lines, indirect but real, the entire Optina renaissance (Macarius, Ambrose) has its source here. The Philokalia translated by Paisius would become one of the favorite books of Saint Seraphim of Sarov. In Moldavia, the Paisian tradition continues through Neamț Monastery, Sihăstria-Neamț, and Văratec — and would give in the twentieth century Father Cleopa Ilie and Hieroschemamonk Paisius Olaru.
Such, therefore, is the historical dimension of the Neamț line: a labor with international impact, known today in the entire Orthodox world. About the details of the life and teaching of Saints Basil and Paisius Velichkovsky, the reader can find separate articles on OrtodoxWay. For the present article, it is enough to retain that this line, however great, was not the only hesychast flowering of eighteenth-century Moldavia. Parallel to it, in the forest of Bucovina, there labored simultaneously a hearth much less known today: Sihăstria Putnei. For this very reason, having looked at the two lines separately, we may now set them face to face, to see more clearly their complementarity.
IV. Two faces of the same labor
With both lines before us, we may view them in parallel — not to establish a hierarchy of holiness, but to see how the same Spirit works in different vessels, according to the gifts of each.
The Neamț line is expansive: manuscripts, translations, disciples sent abroad, monastic renewal in the Slavic world. It has international origin (Basil and Velichkovsky are both from Poltava), a mixed community (Romanians, Russians, Ukrainians, Transylvanians), an academy of translations, a printed edition of the Slavonic Philokalia.
The Putna line is hidden: prayer in the Bucovinian forest, eremitic continuity, silent saints. All four canonized saints of the Putna line are Romanian by blood (Silas from Botoșani, Paisius from Moldavia, Nathan from Pașcani, Jacob of Putna from northern Moldavia), formed on Moldavian soil. Alongside them, as an important spiritual figure of the network though not included in the 2017 canonization, stands Bishop Dositheus Herescu of Rădăuți, the direct disciple of Silas. They have no systematic atelier of translations, no printed edition. They have instead diptychs, copies of The Ladder, translations from Slavonic (The Rule of Monastic Life of Nathan).
The difference is not one of quality, but of historical function. The Putna line preserved the old Moldavian tradition. The Neamț line brought a new synthesis in which the Russian, Ukrainian, Athonite and Romanian monastic experience was fused into one work. Both were necessary. One illumines through the transmitted word; the other through holiness preserved in hiddenness.
The two lines are strictly contemporary. The two great elders — Silas at Sihăstria and Paisius Velichkovsky at Dragomirna then at Neamț — lived in parallel, in the same Moldavia, for twenty years.
It is possible they never knew each other directly. The distances and circumstances were what they were. But it is noteworthy that Metropolitan Jacob of Putna — who was the nucleus of the Putna network and who had received Velichkovsky at Putna on the latter’s return from Athos in 1763 — forms the bridge between the two hearths. And the hesychast tradition transmitted reverberations from one side to the other, through pilgrims, manuscripts, and monks who traveled between the centers.
Both lines bear, in different ways, witness to Orthodoxy in times of pressure. The Neamț line refuses Catholic authority and leaves Bucovina for Secu with 200 monks (1775). The Putna line stays in place: the Venerable Paisius walks from village to village “urging the Orthodox people to keep with holiness the right faith.” Neither flees from hardship. Neither compromises.
In the economy of the Church, the two labors supported each other, even though those who fulfilled them did not know each other directly. There where Saint Paisius was copying, at Neamț, the chapters of Saint Gregory of Sinai in his nights of labor, the Venerable Silas was living, at Sihăstria Putnei, the same prayer of the heart. There where Saint Paisius was printing, at St. Petersburg in 1793, the first Slavonic Philokalia, the Venerable Paisius of Sihăstria Putnei had already been nine years with the Lord, after walking through Bucovina strengthening the Orthodox people.
Two simultaneous labors. Two witnesses. The same Christ.
V. Continuity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
The two lines had very different fates after the eighteenth century.
The Paisian line continues visibly through the numerous disciples spread throughout Russia (Sanaxar, Optina, Sarov), who renew Slavic monasticism extinguished after the reforms of Peter the Great. In Moldavia, the Paisian tradition continues through Neamț Monastery, Sihăstria-Neamț, and Văratec. In the twentieth century, this tradition would give the greatest fathers of modern Romanian monasticism: Archimandrite Cleopa Ilie (†1998) and Hieroschemamonk Paisius Olaru (†1990).
The Putna line enters, after 1786, into an eclipse of two centuries. The Sihăstria suppressed, the inhabitants scattered, the stone church falling into ruin under Austrian rule (1775–1918), then under the communist regime (1948–1989). And yet the spirit of the Putna line is not extinguished. The same kind of hidden, eremitic holiness, without great printed books but with deep prayer, is preserved in the wilderness of Moldavia through the nameless hermits who labored in the caves of Buzău, Vrancea, and Neamț in the twentieth century.
In 1990 comes the discovery of the relics of the three Putna hermits. In 1996 the church of Sihăstria Putnei is reconsecrated. On June 6–7, 2016, the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church decides the canonization of the three venerable ones together with Metropolitan Jacob of Putna. On May 14, 2017, at Putna Monastery, in the presence of Patriarch Daniel, takes place the solemn proclamation of the canonization of the “Putna Saints.”
The fact that God preserved the relics of the three venerable ones yellow and fragrant for two centuries under the ruins, in order to reveal them precisely in the moment when Orthodox Bucovina was most vulnerable (after four decades of communism), is no hagiographic accident. It is a sign given to the Church: nothing is forgotten with God.
Conclusion
We have walked together through two hesychast hearths which, on the same Moldavian soil of the eighteenth century, shone simultaneously. At Sihăstria Putnei, in the Bucovinian forest, the Venerable Silas, Paisius and Nathan, under the blessing of Metropolitan Jacob of Putna, preserved a continuous tradition. At Dragomirna, then at Secu, then at Neamț, Saint Paisius Velichkovsky founded the Philokalic center that would transform Orthodox monasticism of the whole world.
Two lines, simultaneous, autonomous, of equal spiritual worth. We should not oppose them. We should not confuse them. We should know both, honor both, love both. For through both worked the same Holy Spirit.
The spiritual richness of a generation is not measured by how many books were printed, but by how many saints there were. And the eighteenth-century Moldavian world was rich in both. The Philokalia translated by Saint Paisius Velichkovsky is one of the greatest patristic inheritances of the Orthodox East. The yellow and fragrant relics of Saints Silas, Paisius and Nathan of Sihăstria Putnei are the witness that holiness can lie hidden two centuries in the earth without losing its radiance.
The Putna Saints have returned to us through the discovery of the relics in 1990 and the canonization of 2016 precisely because the Church has need of the witness of their hiddenness. In a time in which the value of a life is often measured by visibility, they remind us that Christ works both in the light and in the wilderness.
Two hearths. One labor. The same Christ.
The saints commemorated in this article
- Saint Hierarch Jacob of Putna, Metropolitan of Moldavia (†1778) — May 15
- Saint Venerable Silas of Sihăstria Putnei (†1783) — May 16
- Saint Venerable Paisius of Sihăstria Putnei (†1784) — May 16
- Saint Venerable Nathan of Sihăstria Putnei (†1784) — May 16
- Saint Venerable Basil of Poiana Mărului (†1767) — April 25
- Saint Venerable Paisius of Neamț (Velichkovsky) (†1794) — November 15
Selective bibliography
- Archimandrite Ioanichie Bălan, Patericul românesc (The Romanian Paterikon), 5th edition, Sihăstria Monastery Press, 2005
- Life of the Venerable Saints Silas, Paisius and Nathan of Sihăstria Putnei, Sihăstria Putnei Monastery (sihastriaputnei.ro)
- History of Romanian Hesychasm, OrthodoxWiki (summary after Father Dumitru Stăniloae)
- Life of Saint Venerable Basil of Poiana Mărului, Doxologia
- Saint Paisius of Neamț. Spiritual Words and Letters, Doxologia
- Putna Monastery and Sihăstria Putnei — Two Nurseries of Holiness in “Sweet Bucovina”, Metropolia of Moldavia and Bucovina
- Chronology of Putna Monastery (putna.ro)
- The Putna Saints — Address of His Eminence Father Calinic, Archbishopric of Suceava