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TOMI

sepulchre". Thenceforth pilgrims of various rites repaired thither to venerate the empty tomb of Mary. St. Gregory of Tours, St. Modestus, St. Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, St. Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, St. Andrew, Bishop of Crete, John of Thessalouica, Hippolytus of Thebes, and Venerable Bede teach this same fact and bear witness that this tradition was accejited by all the Churches of East and West. St. John Damascene, preaching on the feast of the Assumption at Gethsemane, recalls that, according to the "Euthymian History", III, xl (written probably liy Cyril of Scythopoli.s in the fifth century), Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, sent to Con- stantinople in 452 at the command of the Emperor Marcian and Pulchoria, his wife, the shroud of the Blessed

Plan of the Church of the Assumption and of the Grotto of Gethst .\. Stairs. B. Courtyard. C. The Porch. D. Subterranean Chun E. Grotto of Getheemani.

Vertical Section of the Church of file Assumption, ive Level of the Courtyard. G. Level in the .XII Ccnli

H. Present Level.

Virgin preserved in the church of Gethsemane (P. G., XCVI, 747-51). The rehc has since been venerated in that city at the Church of Our Lady of Blacherna.

II. There was never any tradition connecting Mary's death and burial with the city of Ephesus. Not a .single writer or pilgrim speaks of her tomb as being there; and in the thirteenth century Perdicas, prothonolary of Kphe.sus, visited "the glorious tomb of Ihe Virgin at Gethsemane", and describes it in his poem (P. (., CXXXIII, 9ti9). In a letter sent in 431 by the members of the Council of Ephesus to the clergy of Constantinople we read that Nestorius "reached the city of Ephe.sus where John the Theo- logian and the I\iother of God, the Holy Virgin, were separated from the as.scmbly of the holy Fathers", etc. Tillemont lias completed the elliptical phrase by adding arbitrarily, "liave their tombs". He is fol- lowed by a few WTitcrs. According to the medita- tions of Sister Catherine Emmerich (d. 1S24), com- piled and published in 18.52, the Blessed Virgin died and was buried not at Ephesus but three or four leagues .south of the city. She is followed by those who accept her visions or meditations as Divine reve- lations. However, St. Brigid relates that at the time of her visit to the church of (ieth.semane the Blessetl Virgin appeared to her and spoke to her of her stay of three days in that place and of her A.ssumption into Heaven. The revelations of Ven. Maria d'.\greda do not contradict those of Catherine Emmerich.

III. .\s the soil is considerably raised in the Valley of the Cedron, the ancient Church of the Sepulchre of

Mary is completely covered and hidden. A score of steps descend from the road into the court (see plan: B), at the back of which is a beautiful twelfth century porch (C). It opens on a monumental stairway of forty-eight steps. The twentieth step leads into the church built in the fifth century, to a great extent cut from the rock. It forms a cross of unequal arms (D). In the centre of the eastern arm, 52 feet long and 20 feet wide, is the glorious tomb of the Mother of Christ. It is a little room with a bench hewn from the rocky mass in imitation of the tomb of Christ. This has given it the sliape of a cubical edicule, about ten feet in circumference and eight feet high. Until the four- teenth century the httle monument was covered with magnificent marble slabs and the walls of the church were covered with frescoes. Since 11S7 the tomb has been the property of the Mussulman Government which nevertheless authorizes the Christians to oflB- ciate in it.

Zahn. Die Dormiiift S. Virginis u. dai^ IJaus des Johannes-

Mnrkiis (T.rip^iK, ISOO): Xinsriii, n.j /r,.,< I,. dasGrabderh. ,/„„,;'.",, (Main/. I'Hiili; Mi:isrrT:-,n-:-, 1. ■>,.!. ran de la Saints ]-,,-,.!> ., J.,„..,l.,„ i.l, rn-:ik,i,, I'll! ;, l;,,,,,, MiLwER, Ist Marxa zi, J.r„-„ii. t,i ,»/. . ;./ /.;,,;,,..„,■,;.■,:/,.,/.,-, ' \ (.\i„,„.h, 1906) . 569-77;

I)E VuULli, its lylist's ,U- hi Tirn- snuilf iPari.s, IsljO).

Barnabas Meistermann.

Tomi, a titular metropolitan see in the Province of Scythia, on the Black Sea. It was a Greek colony from Miletus. In 29 b. c. the Romans captured the country from the Odryses, and annexed it as far as the Danube, under the name of Limes Scylhicns. The city was afterwards included in the Province of Moe- sia, and, from the time of Diocletian, in Scythia Minor, of which it was the metropolis. In A. D. 10 Ovid was exiled thither by Augustus, and died there eight years later, celebrating the town of Tomi in his poems. Few places had so many Christian memories as this town, in the barbarous country of the Getae; e. g. Sts. Macrobius, Gordianus, and their com- panions, exiled to Scythia and slain in 319, venerated on 13 Sept.; Sts. Argeus, N.-ircissus, and Marcellinus, also slain under Licinius and venerated 2 Jan.; a great many others whose names only are known, and who are mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for 3 April, 20 June, 5 July, and 1 October. The first bishop may have been Evangelicus, mentioned in the Acts of Sts. Epictetus and Action (S July), and who must have lived at the end of the third century. Eusebius (De Vita Constantini, III, 7) mentions a Scythian bi.shop at Nica!a who may have belonged to Tomi. Men- tion should be made of St. Bretanion, martyred under Valens, and whose feast, is observed 25 Jan.; Geron- tius, at the Council of Constantinople, in 381; St. Theotimus, writer and friend of St. John Chrysostom, venerated 20 April; Timotheus, at Ephe.sus in 431; John, ecclesiastical writer, d. about 448; Alexander, at Chalcedon in 451; Theotimus II, in 4.58; Paternus, in 519; and Valentinian, in 550. The Province of Scy- thia formed a single diocese, that of Tomi, an auto- cephalous archdiocese, subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople. It is mentioned in 640 in the Ecthe- sis of Pseudo-Epiphanius (Gelzer, " l^ngcdruckte . . . Texte der Noliti:e episcopatniim", .535). Shortly afterwards the Bulgarians invaded the region and the Archdiocese of Tomi was suppressed. The city subsequently belonged to the Byzantines, again to the Bulgarians, then to the Turks, and finally to the Rumanians since the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. The town of Tomi is near Constantza, the capital of Dobroudja and a port on the Black Sea, which has about 15,000 inhabitants. There is a Cathohc parish. A statue of the poet Ovid stands in the chief square.

Lr. QniF.N. Oriens christianus, I, 1211-16; Netjhammeb. Dot allchrisllichr Tomi (.SaliburR, 1903); Idem, Nach Adam Ktisti (Salzburg, 1906) ; Idem, Die christlichen AUerlUmcr der Dobrogea (Bukarest, 1906).

S. VAILHfi.