Eustathius the Protopsaltis of Putna

Eustathius was a monk and chief cantor at Putna, regarded by the Paterikon as the greatest Moldavian protopsaltes of his day, in the second half of the fifteenth century. He is named in the Romanian Paterikon and venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization; the sources available to us give no day of commemoration.

He is believed to have taken his vows at Neamț. He came to Putna with Archimandrite Joasaph and sang the service of the church's consecration on 3 September 1470, before the prince, the sixty-⁠four ministers and tens of thousands of faithful. The Paterikon says he led a choice ascetic life, in fasting, prayer and the joy of the Spirit, and that from it flowed the chants which adorned the services of Putna for almost half a century.

He had much learning: he knew Greek and Slavonic and the chants of the great Byzantine and Athonite psaltes, among them John Damascene, Romanos the Melodist and John Koukouzelis. He did not only perform them in psaltic music but composed verses, magnifications, cherubic hymns and axia himself. He was also a calligrapher and copied books of psaltic chant, adorned with miniatures. Of these, one Irmologion from the end of the fifteenth century survives at Putna; some chants bear the title Composition of Eustathius.

He was one of the first teachers of the grammar school at Putna, founded after 1470 at the command of Stephen the Great. He taught the monks the grammar of psaltic music and the chants of the eight tones and was called by his disciples rhetor, domesticus, teacher and protopsaltes. Stephen the Great valued him and often came to Putna to hear him. His name was known also on Athos and among the protopsaltes of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, as Eustathius of Putna.

For more than forty years he raised about a hundred disciples, monks and village priests, many of whom became chief cantors in northern Moldavia. With them he sang the burial service of Stephen the Great on 2 July 1504, and fell asleep shortly afterwards.