The text is taken from the Roma Heritage Museum at romamission.eu, the mission's site for Orthodox believers. Where it speaks about faith, we leave it in its own words. With the voices from the archive there is a link to the source. romamission.eu, Roma Heritage Museum
Around the 11th century, groups speaking an Indo-Aryan language set out west from north-western India, on horses and horse-drawn wagons – a horse people with horse trades, horse music and horse art. Linguistics tells us this, not legend: Romani is a sister of Hindi and Punjabi, and long stays in Persian and Armenian lands shaped it further, before it ever touched Europe.
The ancestors of the Roma leave the Indian subcontinent – probably Punjab and Rajasthan.
Centuries spent in the Greek-speaking Christian East. Romani takes in hundreds of Greek words that are still used every day.
Recorded in the Balkans, then in Hungary, the Czech lands, the German principalities, and as far as Spain and Britain.
When they reached the Byzantine Empire, the Christian East had no settled category for them. Monks and canonists reached for the nearest name they had – Athinganoi – a label that already belonged to an older heretical sect in Asia Minor, accused of sorcery, fortune-telling and forbidden practices. The newcomers brought snake charming, fortune-telling and a way of life that matched that old insult so well that it stuck. Athinganoi became the international Acigani, and from there Tsigani, Cigán, Țigan, Zigeuner, Cigano.
The ancestors of the Roma pass through Persia and Armenia and reach the Byzantine Empire. Greek priests baptize. Greek words – drom (road), papin (goose), klidi (key) – enter Romani for good.
The Roma settle in Serbian, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Romanian lands – all Orthodox. Monasteries and parishes record their baptisms, weddings and funerals. Slava, Pascha and the church calendar enter Roma family life.
Under the Ottomans, Orthodox identity becomes a mark of belonging in the millet system. The Roma in Ottoman Rumelia bear Orthodox names and patron saints. Romanian Roma live for centuries in slavery – yet the same liturgy is sung over the slave and over the free man.
Slavery in Wallachia and Moldavia is abolished (1856). The Roma sing in Orthodox choirs, serve as kumovia (godfathers) and bury their dead under the eight-pointed cross. Then comes the Porajmos – the Roma genocide of World War II.
Under communism, religion is pushed underground; Roma families hide icons in cupboards. After 1989 the Orthodox Church returns to Roma villages – slowly, unevenly, and often only where a priest stays. This is a story we are still inside of.
The Roma did not write their own chronicle. What we know of their first centuries in the Christian world comes from monks, bishops, town scribes and books of canon law, which were already trying to understand them. Here are the voices in order – quoted where the original text has survived, with sources you can click.
Where a citation is a general one rather than a single quotable text, we prefer to be careful rather than pretend to false precision. Send corrections to martin@romamission.eu and we will make them more exact. romamission.eu, Voices from the Archive
Wherever the Roma settled in Orthodox lands, they did not stay outside the faith – they entered it, gave their children the names of its saints and created traditions that look strikingly familiar to every Orthodox Christian.
Greek-speaking Byzantium was the first long home of the Roma in the Christian world. Romani still carries Greek nouns today. Roma children still receive the names of Orthodox saints – Mária, Michal, Juraj, in Greek forms María, Mihalis, Yiorgos – Orthodox names, not Indian ones.
In Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Ukraine the Roma have lived for centuries inside the Orthodox calendar – they kiss the priest's hand, cover their heads with a scarf, call the priest before the doctor when a child is ill. Custom and Church grew together.
The Orthodox liturgy in a Roma village in eastern Slovakia and the Orthodox liturgy in a Greek monastery use the same words, the same gestures, the same Cross. The Eucharist does not change with ethnicity. This is the foundation of this mission.
What followed is a slow story, not a tidy one. Over the centuries among the Orthodox peoples – Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Slavs – the Roma did not keep a separate religion of their own. They received baptism, they received Orthodox patron saints, they sang Pascha. The old practices did not disappear in the first generation, or in the second. Less and less with each century – yet even today in Roma villages you can see a people waiting for the light of Christ to finish its work.
The Roma are Orthodox catechumens on a long road. They received Orthodoxy in the form they could – interwoven with their own customs, sometimes mixed with old lies, often without a nearby parish to teach them. They are not outside the Church. They are in it, still learning, still trying to be rid of the lies, still being renewed. Like a Roma family that finds a thrown-out icon of the Mother of God and carries it home to venerate it, a despised people keeps a cast-off image. This is the work of this mission: to walk the road with them.
The Eastern liturgy – its chant, its melodies, its bows – is closer to the Roma we serve than anything the Western Church ever sang. We do not have to teach it to them. They recognise it.
Many Roma customs grew for centuries alongside Orthodox practice. They are close to the Church because they lived beside it for so long – and within it. romamission.eu, Living Traditions
Orthodox iconography shows the crucified Christ with four nails – the feet apart, not crossed. Roma folk tradition tells of a smith who was forced to forge four nails for the crucifixion; the fourth one he stole. The story exists in many variants across Roma Europe, but the memory underneath matches Orthodox iconographic theology, not the Western three-nail iconography.
The Roma keep the body for two nights, gather as a wide family and bury on the third day. This is the Orthodox pattern of remembrance in the bones – Christ rose on the third day; the Church remembers her departed on the 3rd, 9th and 40th day. The Roma kept the third day even where the culture around them stopped.
Roma cantors learn Byzantine modal chant incredibly fast. The ear is already shaped: Roma secular music is modal – it draws from the same maqam / oktoechos family that built Byzantine chant. A Roma boy in a parish school slips into the second tone the way a fish slips into water.
The hora in Romania, the oro in Macedonia and Serbia, the syrtos and kalamatianos in Greece. The Roma dance the same circle dance as their Orthodox neighbours – and often lead it at the parish feast. It is one body of dance, not two.
Roma homes rarely keep the formal icon corner of a Slavic village. But almost every Roma home has icons – often ones a neighbour threw out like rubbish, rescued, brought home and hung on the wall. The Mother of God is loved with extraordinary tenderness. A despised people keeps a cast-off image.
The Romani noun endings in -os come from Byzantine Greek (raklós – a non-Roma boy, foros – town). The vocabulary of smithing – amoni (anvil), petalo (horseshoe), sideros (iron) and a long list of forge terms – is almost entirely Greek. The language itself remembers where the Roma were catechised.
Of the roughly 10 million Roma in Europe, more than four million live in countries with an Orthodox majority. The numbers are estimates – Roma populations are systematically undercounted – but the picture is clear.
The largest Roma population in Europe. Many Roma villages have full Orthodox parishes; many more have none yet.
The Roma make up about 10 % of the population. Orthodox identity is strong; church practice varies greatly from village to village.
The Roma here keep the Slava and the church calendar – but there are only a handful of separate Roma parishes.
Šuto Orizari near Skopje is the largest Roma municipality in the world. The mission field is wide open.
Greek Roma have been baptised Orthodox for centuries. But most live without a parish life of their own.
Tens of thousands of Roma have been displaced by the war. Many find their first real welcome in the Church in parishes in exile.
Russian Roma have had Orthodox roots since the 18th century. The Russian Orthodox Church recognises a Roma patron saint.
This is where our mission lives: we teach in Klenovec, in Markovce and in Kačanov. The Atlas rómskych komunít 2019 states that there are 417 thousand Roma in Slovakia. Map →
Population figures: Council of Europe estimates. Notes on the situation from local clergy and missionaries. romamission.eu, Roma Today
This page takes the text of the Slovak version of the Museum of Roma Heritage. There it is with images, in nine languages. romamission.eu/sk/dedicstvo
What it is, who translated it and how it is used. →
What is in it and how to get it for free. →
What the word “concentration” means, where most of them are, and what life in them is like. →