A Shared
Thousand-Year Story

“A Samaritan people, descendants of Simon the Magician, named Adsincani, who were renowned sorcerers and villains.”

Written by the disciple of St George Hagiorites (d. 1065) on Mount Athos. Records Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos summoning the Adsincani — a people reputed for skill with animals and for sorcery — to deal with wild beasts plaguing the imperial hunting park at Philopation. Widely cited as one of the earliest probable references to Roma in the Byzantine world.

“Ventriloquists, inspired satanically, who pretend to predict the unknown.”

Patriarch of Antioch and the most authoritative Byzantine canonist of his age. In his commentary on Canon 61 of the Quinisext Council, Balsamon describes Athinganoi who wind serpents around themselves, tell fortunes by good or evil stars, and prophesy the future — and lumps them with the satanically inspired. The canonical guidance against consulting them, first aimed at an older heretical sect of the same name, is carried forward and read against the Acigani who arrive later.

In the period of Patriarch Gennadius II Scholarios (first patriarch after the Fall of Constantinople, 1454–1456), the Byzantine pastoral tradition warning against Acigani sorcery and fortune-telling was carried forward into the Slavic Pilot Books. Orthodox faithful were instructed not to receive them into their homes for divination. The text is preserved across the Slavonic canonical tradition rather than in a single dated decree — the precise archival citation will appear in Fr. Martin Halík's forthcoming book on Roma Orthodox history.

“We saw outside this city a tribe of people, who worship according to the Greek rite, and assert themselves to be of the race of Cain. These people rarely or never stop in one place for more than thirty days, but always, as if cursed by God, are nomad and outcast. After the thirtieth day they wander from field to field with small, oblong, black, and low tents, like those of the Arabs.”

An Irish Franciscan friar passing through Crete describes the Atsingani he met outside Heraklion. Probably the earliest surviving Western European eyewitness description of the Roma — and already, in 1322, he notes that they worship 'according to the Greek rite.'

Dan I of Wallachia gifts forty Roma (Aṭigani) families to the Orthodox monastery of Tismana — one of the earliest documented instances of Roma being held as monastic serfs in the Romanian principalities. The same pattern is repeated at Cozia, Cotmeana and many other monasteries. The dark side of the shared story: the Church that catechised them also held them. This bondage lasts until abolition in 1855–56.

The Saxon municipal accounts of Brașov record a payment in kind — grain and provisions — to a band of Acigani passing through under their own chieftain. The earliest dated municipal record of Roma in Central Europe; they arrive as Christian travellers with a leader, not as strangers.

A band led by 'Duke Andrew of Egypt' arrives in Bologna with around a hundred men and women, bearing a letter of safe-conduct from Pope Martin V identifying them as Christians on pilgrimage. Five years before the Bishop of Paris will excommunicate those who consult them, the Bishop of Rome had received them as fellow Christians.

“The Bishop of Paris went there with a Franciscan friar called the Petit Jacobin, who at the bishop's command preached publicly, excommunicating all those who had believed in them and had shown them their hand.”

A band of Égyptiens — described as twelve penitents, a duke, a count, and ten horsemen — camped outside Paris at La Chapelle. Vast crowds came out to have their fortunes read. The Bishop of Paris responded by excommunicating any Christian who had let them read the lines of the hand, and ordered general processions to undo the offence.

The Russian Orthodox synod, in chapters condemning soothsayers, charmers and false prophets, continues the same long pastoral concern: the Church guarding her people from divination. The same family of warnings that began with the Byzantine canon-law tradition reaches into the heart of Russia.

Vatopedi, Iviron and other Athonite monasteries record Atsiganoi serving as smiths, carpenters and pack-handlers in their houses. The smithing thread runs unbroken from the Adsincani of 1054 to Ottoman-era Athos — same trade, same place, six centuries on. Further citations in Fr. Martin Halík's forthcoming book.

Catherine II's reforms register the Roma as imperial subjects with the obligation to settle and pay taxes. Over the following decades large numbers are gathered into Russian Orthodox parishes; the Ruska Roma — Russia's main Roma group — trace their continuous Orthodox parish life to this era.

After roughly five centuries of bondage to Orthodox monasteries, boyars, and the princely state, Roma slavery in the Romanian principalities is abolished. At the lowest estimate some 250,000 Roma pass legally into freedom. The Church that had held them now begins the slow, unfinished work of receiving them as equal members. That is the work we are still inside.