Jacob of Putna

Jacob was a hieromonk, confessor and calligrapher who came from Neamț to Putna in 1470, copyist of a collection of saints' lives written for Stephen the Great. 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.

In the fifteenth century he was one of the known confessors and teachers of Neamț, where he had laboured in youth as a disciple of Gabriel Uric. There he copied several patristic books for the spiritual nourishment of the monks. In 1470 he came to Putna as teacher and confessor of the whole community and continued the same obedience, forming dozens of young monks. He taught them above all humility, obedience and prayer, feeding them with the words of the Holy Fathers. He knew the philokalic writings well and was a skilled calligrapher.

Stephen the Great, knowing him closely, asked him for a collection of lives of saints and martyrs for the months of April to June, for the community of Putna. Jacob finished it, and on one of the pages he wrote: the right-⁠believing and Christ-⁠loving Stephen Voivode, by God's mercy lord of the land of Moldavia, son of Bogdan Voivode, commanded this collection to be written for his monastery of Putna, in the time of Archimandrite Joasaph, by the hand of the much-⁠sinning hieromonk Jacob, in the year 1474, May 20.

He helped greatly in founding the community and school at Putna. He also wrote a few other books, left several disciples and passed to the Lord toward the end of the fifteenth century.