Ionuţ Holubeanu has provided us with an important contribution to the history of Roman Scythia and the sources of Christian monasticism, two subjects of limited consensus and controversial debate among scholars of late antiquity. A member of the theological faculty of the Ovidius University of Constanţa. Holubeanu is the author of earlier books on church life and organization in the Lower Danube regions, including Ecclesiastical Organization in Scythia and Moesia Secunda in the 4th -7th Centuries (Bucharest: Editura Basilica, 2018) and Monasticism in Dobrogea from its Origins to the Present (Bucharest: Editura Universitara, 2020). As the author acknowledges (16), the present volume under review is a compilation and consolidation of his extensive and exhaustive research into the historical evidence concerning the evolution of the See of Tomi, a vital metropolitan community and later an independent archdiocese. Indeed, Holubeanu proposes a novel interpretation of the sparse and obscure testimony on monastic infrastructure and life in that province, offering fascinating information and insight into its development from the early-fourth and decline from the mid-fifth century onward.
Scythia—Scythia Minor or Lesser Scythia—played a prominent role in the Roman organization of the Eastern empire and as a military outpost for defense against attacks from across the Danube, notably after the foundation of Constantinople in the early fourth century but especially during the seventh century. The capital city of the region was Tomi, now Constanţa in Romania on the Black Sea. Christianity was introduced into the area during the first century of the Christian era, although documentation is minimal to non-existent until at least the following century. Subsequent centuries reveal relics of martyrs, as well as church basilicas and monastic complexes. The first bishop was Cyrillus, while the local church was possibly represented at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325 by “Marcus Tomeensis,” who was one of the signatories of the decisions. The liturgical language of Roman Scythia was Greek.
Monastic life in the Lower Danube confirms that monasticism—the eremitic and cenobitic life alike—was “in the air” throughout the Roman empire during the late third- and early-fourth centuries. The earliest monastic presence is attributed to the martyrs Epictet and Astion, who arrived from Asia Minor in 287. Christian missionaries sustained the ascetic lifestyles, but again the sparsity of sources renders their influence difficult to ascertain or assert. From the fourth century, a number of hermits appear in caves of the region, but the first documented existence of monks belongs to the Audians, whose spiritual leader Audius was exiled to Scythia after the Synod of Antioch in 341, with monastic communities being established there by the end of the fourth century. John Cassian observes that the Egyptian form of monasticism was largely unknown in Scythia. By the late fourth- to the early fifth-century, Holubeanu describes the development of a “Basilian” form of monasticism in the diocese of Tomi, by which he means a more social and charitable expression of monasticism. With the election of the monk Theotimos to bishop of Tomi from 390–407, monasticism was integrated into the official life of the church, assuming a more public and visible profile in the wider community. Despite resorting to anachronistic terminology to describe the progress—for the author, a regress—from a more “hesychastic” experience to an increasingly “scholastic” enterprise, the general trend of local monasticism assumed an admirable theological priority that has represented and reflected the role of monasticism in the region to this day. This becomes particularly apparent in the work of Dionysius Exiguus, the foremost exemplar of monasticism in Roman Scythia by the turn of the sixth century. Monastic leaders of the time assumed responsibility for resolving theological debates, sometimes even at the expense of spiritual growth. Theological literature and theological libraries attest to the impressive ecclesiastical organization and doctrinal reflection of the Scythian monks, whose presence and influence begin to decline and even disappear by the late sixth- and early-seventh centuries.
