Odessos

Odessos was established as an apoikia on the western coast of the Pontos Axeinos (the Black Sea). The founders of the polis arrived from Miletus as a result of the ancient Hellenic migratory activity. The town has been known under the same name from the second quarter of the 6th c. BC to the first quarter of the AD 7th c. The newly arriving settlers adopted the name they found, which had existed since before their establishment in this place.

As the archaeological research shows, the first settlers occupied the northern slope of a small bay, protected from the north and northeast winds by a small cape – Varna Cape, a continuation of what is today the breakwater of the port. Probably from the late 6th or early 5th c. BC, Odessos began to grow by absorbing the territory north of the gulf.

During the Classical Age, Odessos was included in the borders of the Thracian Kingdom of Odrysai. A change occurred during the time of King Philip II of Macedon, who went to war against the Scythian king Ateas and reached Odessos. Then – in 339 BC, the town came under Macedonian rule. It continued during the reign of his successor Alexander III the Great and later in the days of his deputy in Thrace – Lysimachus. In the course of the war for the succession of the Alexander’s Empire with the rest of the Diadochi, Lysimachus died in 281 BC and the nominal Macedonian rule over Thrace and the Pontic coast was put to an end.

Odessos probably recognized the authority of the briefly flourishing Getae kingdom of Burebista, between 55 and 48 BC. The town then led an independent policy until it fell under Roman rule in 28 BC, initially annexed to the Roman province of Macedonia, and in AD 15 to Moesia. Under the Antoninian dynasty, Odessos experienced an economic boom. Its incorporation into the Roman Empire played a significant role in its cultural and economic rise. The population increased and the town expanded in area. During the Hellenistic and Roman Ages, silver and bronze coins were struck in the town mint.

Odessos, with its harbour, rose as an important imperial economic and political center on the western coast of the Black Sea. Due to the good economic conditions and sea trade in the 5th – 6th centuries, many immigrants from the rich provinces of the Empire settled in Odessos – from Bithynia, Phrygia, Syria and the Aegean islands, especially after the repulse of the Huns, which testifies to the stabilization of the situation and the lively trade by sea. The epitaphs known so far from the necropolises of Odessos show that people of various professions settled in the town like ship owners, doctors, merchants and artisans.

With a special novel dated May 18, 536, Emperor Justinian I created the association of quaestura exercitus, whose governor with the rank of prefect was based in Odessos. He exercised military, judicial, administrative and financial authority. The quaestura included the provinces of Moesia Secunda, Scythia Minor, Cyprus, the Cyclades and Caria. Probably the basis of this union was the need to improve the sea defense in this part of the Black Sea and the possibility of the transfer of troops through sea communications and adjacent harbours.

In the 5th – 6th c., Odessos was a large Christian center, and a significant number of churches and monasteries were built in the town and its surroundings.

A hagiographic work, which is largely legendary, reports that the town of Odyssopolis of Moesia was visited by Apostle Andrew, the baptizer of the peoples along the Black Sea shore. According to Epiphanius, in the mid 1st c., Apostle Andrew the Baptist consecrated the bishop of Odessos, Amplias, who was greeted in a letter by Apostle Paul. The same bishop was later martyred and canonized. Amplias is one of the few saints of Christianity who found their martyrdom in Odessos. The other one is Dorotheus, Bishop of Tyre, who, according to Theophanes the Confessor, during the persecutions against the Christians under Emperor Julian the Apostate (i.e. 362), was murdered at Odessos. Nevertheless, it is possible these reports to be legendary and related to the idea of raising the authority of the Odessos Church by consciously transferring martyrdom events from other regions of the Empire.

Sure information from the written sources about the ecclesiastical community of Odessos and its leading bishops are dating from the second half of the 5th and the 6th c. From that time the names of several bishops are known – the Thracian Ditas in 468, and John in 518. It is accepted with some doubt that sometime around this time the Bishop of Odessos was Severus, elected Patriarch of Antioch (512 – 538). Martin became bishop of Odessos by 538. He is mentioned in one of the novellas of the Emperor Justinian I, in which Odessos is given a special attention. Bishop Martin held a personal meeting with the Emperor in 544 and managed to obtain his consent for the church and citizens of Odessos to sell and buy church property for charity and mainly for the redemption of captives.

In the second half of the 6th c. Bishop of Odessos was Daniel known from an epitaph found in one of the Christian necropolises in the town. Probably the Bishop of Durostorum Dulcisim, who died after him, was also buried in the same tomb. Their epitaphs, in a different lettering, have been engraved on the same tombstone. Other tombstones found in the necropolis of Odessos reveal also the names of church officials, such as Presbyter Peter and his son the Reader Bonos. Still another tombstone reveals the name of the leader of the Syrian church community in Odessos in the 6th c. – Father Markilius.

The Epiphanius (pseudo-Epiphanius) list from the first half of the 7th c. reports for the first time that Odessos was no longer a bishopric under the Metropolis of Marcianopolis but became the center of a newly formed autocephalous archbishopric under the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The territory of the Odessos archbishopric bordered to the south with the old bishopric of Hadrianopolis, also transformed into an autocephalous archbishopric – Mesambria.

FORMAL ANALYSIS