Varlaam

Born Circa 1590; Died Circa 1657. Initiator Of Book Printing In Moldavia. Translator. Born Into A Free Peasant’S Family. Served As Metropolitan Of Moldavia. Expert In Greek, Latin, And Slavic Languages.

Varlaam was one of the founders of the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy (1640) in Ia§i. He was an advocate of enlightenment and of friendship with Russia. In 1628 he visited Kiev and Moscow as a member of an embassy of the Moldavian hospodar Miron Barnovskii. In 1641, with the support of Peter Mogila, he founded a printing press under the auspices of the Iasj Monastery of the Three Saints. It printed four books, including the Instructive Gospel (Kazaniia, 1643), a collection of ecclesiastical precepts and a valuable monument of the literary language of the period, and the Code (1646), a monument of feudal legislation.