Amphilochie, Bishop of Hotin

AMPHILOCHIE, Bishop of Hotin. - A Romanian humanist of the 18th century; the dates of his birth and death are uncertain. A mathematician, philosopher and author of the first didactic manuals to appear in Moldavia; at one time a monk and prior of the monastery of Zagavia, near Hârlâu, he was elected bishop around 1780. He traveled and studied for a long time in Poland and Italy.

He left published an arithmetic, compiled on the Elementi aritmetici of Fr. Alessandro Conti of St. Matthew, a geography compiled on the first Roman edition of Buffier of 1775, and a theological grammar following the model of the Russian Plato Levsin, archbishop of Moscow: and with the manuscript Λόγος κατ' έργα (Purple e fatti) he made a precious contribution to the history of Moldavia. The erudition and the spirit of observation of the A. are revealed in the anthropological study that this scholar made on the domnesc (lordly) span of the lords of Moldavia: the identity of the Moldavian span with the Roman one of the time of Vespasian throws an interesting light on the problem of the Roman tradition of the Romanians. Likewise in his volume of arithmetic there was an ingenious comparison between the system of numeration of the ancient Romans carried out on certain little sticks, on which notches or carvings were made, and the identical system adopted by the Romanian shepherds of Transylvania for numbering livestock. He also left a manuscript treatise on physics, cosmography, theology and botany, of 1796. Of his love and interest for Italy and for its culture, certain pages are a document, where he speaks of Genoa, of Venice, of the dominion of the Pope and of Rome, and of the kingdom of Naples, with special interest in ecclesiastical administration.

Luigi Grillo