Nathan

Venerable Nathan, hieroschemamonk, was one of the three great ascetics of the Putna Hermitage in the eighteenth century, with Venerable Silas and Paisios. He was born in 1717 at Pașcani and departed to the Lord on 26 December 1784.

He was first a monk and sacristan at Putna Monastery, where he was ordained deacon, then priest. Desiring more prayer and quiet, he withdrew to the Putna Hermitage and received the great schema with the name Nathan. He was a skilled confessor, among others of the great metropolitan Jacob of Putna, and the hermitage's dwellers and the faithful honoured him as a true father and keeper of good Orthodox order. He occupied himself with copying manuscripts and drawing up the founders' memorial lists; in 1754 he was called to Iași by Metropolitan Jacob to draw up the memorial list of Putna. In 1781 Venerable Silas, near death, appointed him abbot. Though old, Nathan continued with zeal the spiritual work of his predecessor for three and a half years, in the time of the Habsburg occupation, amid growing want. On his deathbed he bore the burden of illness with patience and departed to the Lord on the day after the Nativity of the Lord, in 1784.

Soon after the death of the three hieroschemamonks the Putna Hermitage was deserted. After more than 200 years, at the beginning of Great Lent in 1990, a Putna monk saw a heavenly light above the narthex of the ruined old church. On 24 April 1990, when the rebuilding of the hermitage began, the graves of the three were found in the narthex: their bones were yellow as wax and gave off a sweet fragrance. In 2016 the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church canonized them, together with Saint Jacob of Putna, and the proclamation took place on 14 May 2017. Venerable Silas, Paisios and Nathan are commemorated on 16 May.