Palladius the Stenographer of Putna

Palladius, called the stenographer, that is the swift writer, was a calligrapher monk and miniature painter trained at Putna, who in 1488 wrote a Tetraevangelion for Stephen the Great. He lived in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 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.

Archimandrite Joasaph, abbot of Putna, had him learn calligraphy and the adornment of church books from the teachers who had come from Neamț: the hieromonk Nicodemus, the monk Cassian, Cyriacus and others. In a short time he became a known writer and painter. The Paterikon describes him as wise and devout, a good student of the teaching of the Holy Fathers and loved by the community. Because he wrote swiftly and beautifully, he was called stenographer.

In 1488 Stephen the Great ordered him to write a Tetraevangelion for Putna. Palladius wrote it and adorned it with fine miniatures and icons. The note at the end says that the prince made, wrote and bound the Tetraevangelion for his monastery of Putna, in the thirty-⁠second year of his reign, when Paisius the Short was archimandrite, through the hand of the much-⁠sinning stenographer Palladius; the work began on 3 September and ended on 23 March.

He also wrote other books of the Fathers, with philokalic teaching. He passed to the Lord in peace toward the beginning of the sixteenth century.