Nicodemus of Tismana

Saint Nicodemus of Tismana was a Christian monk-scribe and translator who founded monasteries in Romania and Serbia. He is known for introducing hesychasm to Wallachia (Romania). He was one of the followers of St. Gregory of Sinai.

Quotes about Nicodemus of Tismana

• Considered in its entirety, the work of Nikodimos represents an original synthesis between the hesychast movement imported from Mount Athos and the artistic and literary influences coming from Serbia. Contrary to the currents that supply the first literary school in Moldavia established at the monastery of Neamț by the monk Gabriel (1424–49), it stands apart from the Bulgarian tradition of the fourteenth century. Nikodimos’s relations with Patriarch Euthymius of Trnovo merely assume the character of an episode without profound implications for the life of his foundations.
  • E. Turdeanu, ‘Les premiers écrivains religieux en Valachie: l’hégoumène Nicodème de Tismana et le moine Philothée’, in Turdeanu (ed.), Etudes de littérature roumaine et d’écrits slaves et grecs des principautés roumaines (Leiden: Brill, 1985), pp. 15–49 (pp. 36–7). English translation from Speake, Graham (2018). A history of the Athonite Commonwealth: the spiritual and cultural diaspora of Mount Athos. New York, pp. 147–8. ISBN 978-1-108-34922-2.
• A hesychast missionary in the spirit of St Gregory the Sinaite, whom he had known in his youth, St Nicodemus established his rule of life in the many communities founded by himself or his disciples in the three Romanian lands. Romanian monasticism thus owes to him its hesychastic orientation in the 14th century. The resulting cultural and spiritual blossoming was to continue, more or less without interruption, for the next three centuries.
  • Metropolitan Serafim Joantă, Treasures of Romanian Christianity: Hesychast Tradition and Culture, trans. I. Bănică and C. Hâncianu Latiş (Whitby, on: Cross Meridian, 2013), p. 72.