Joseph the New of Partos was a monastic ascetic of Dalmatian birth who served as Metropolitan of Timisoara in the mid-seventeenth century and is venerated as a wonderworker in the Romanian Orthodox tradition. By the received account he was born in 1568 at Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik) in Dalmatia and given the baptismal name Jacob. After his father's death in his childhood, he was sent at the age of twelve to Ochrid to be schooled.
At fifteen he entered a monastery dedicated to the Mother of God, and after some five years he traveled to Mount Athos, where he was tonsured at the Pantokrator Monastery and received the name Joseph. On Athos he was known for his ascetic discipline and the prayer of the heart, and he acquired a reputation for healing fellow monks and working miracles. According to the tradition he later held positions of monastic authority, including service as a confessor and priest among the Athonite communities.
On July 20, 1650, at an advanced age, Joseph was elected Metropolitan of Timisoara. He governed the diocese for about three years, attending to the pastoral needs of his flock; the synaxarion relates that on one occasion he extinguished a fire in the western part of Timisoara through his prayers, when a heavy rainfall followed. Around 1653 he withdrew to the nearby Partos Monastery, an established church center, where he lived in retirement for three years.
Joseph died on August 15, 1656, and was buried in the monastery church at Partos. His relics were reported to remain incorrupt, and he was formally canonized by the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church in 1956, his glorification being marked on October 7 of that year, after which his relics were transferred to the cathedral in Timisoara. His feast is kept on September 15.
