AMFILOHIE, bishop of HOTIN. — A Roman humanist of the eighteenth century; the date of his birth and that of his death are uncertain. A mathematician, philosopher, and author of the first instructional manuals to appear in Moldavia, he was formerly a monk and prior of the monastery of Zagavia, near Hârlâu, and was elected bishop around 1780. He travelled and studied for a long time in Poland and Italy.
He published an arithmetic, compiled from Elementi aritmetici by Fr. Alessandro Conti of S. Matteo; a geography compiled from the first Roman edition of Buffier of 1775; and a theological grammar following the model of the Russian Platon Levsin, archbishop of Moscow. With the manuscript Λόγος κατ' έργα (Deeds and facts), he also made a valuable contribution to the history of Moldavia. A.’s erudition and spirit of observation are revealed in the anthropological study that this scholar conducted of the domnesc (lordly) palm of the lords of Moldavia: the identity of the Moldavian palm with the Roman one of the time of Vespasian casts interesting light on the problem of the Romanians’ Roman tradition. Likewise, in his volume on arithmetic there was an ingenious comparison between the system of enumeration used by the ancient Romans, carried out on small sticks on which notches or cuts were made, and the identical system adopted by the Romanian shepherds of Transylvania for counting livestock. He also left a manuscript treatise on physics, cosmography, theology, and botany, dated 1796. His love and interest in Italy and its culture are documented by several pages in which he speaks of Genoa, Venice, the Pope’s dominion and Rome, and the kingdom of Naples, with particular interest in ecclesiastical administration.