Raphael the Calligrapher of Hurezi

Raphael was a monk and calligrapher at Hurezi Monastery in the eighteenth century, the son of the priest Dumitru of Stăncești, Prahova, named Radu at baptism. For more than thirty years he copied patristic and liturgical manuscripts, and he fell asleep toward the end of the 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 learned the fear of God from childhood. Left an orphan, he was led by Christ into the community at Hurezi at only ten, and the Paterikon says he was loved by the abbot and all the fathers for the purity of his life, being a stranger, obedient and the youngest of the brothers. Abbot Dionysius entrusted him to the best teachers, from whom in a short time he learned Greek, Slavonic and fine writing. At fourteen he was already skilfully copying books of spiritual teaching and usually wrote on them that they were copied by the much-⁠sinning Radu the Child, son of Father Dumitru of Stăncești, in Hurezi Monastery.

On 2 April 1754, on the Saturday of Pascha, he was tonsured a monk with the name Raphael. He remained a simple monk all his life at Hurezi, with a single obedience: chanting in the choir and copying the writings of the Holy Fathers. For more than thirty years he copied dozens of patristic and liturgical books for monasteries and churches; fifteen manuscripts survive today. For a year he also lived in the community of Saint Paisius at Dragomirna, as he himself writes. Returning to his monastery, he continued his obedience for another twenty years and passed to the Lord toward the end of the eighteenth century.