[1] He was a monk of Hilandar (hence his epithet), the Serbian monastery of Mount Athos, and a priest of King Stefan Uroš III Dečanski (r. 1322–31).
Because of such tendencies (as noted in the great writer of Orthodox tradition, Dostoevsky, who also drew the literary skills from hagiographic literature), this work has been called a "novel", and Theodosius being the first Serbian novelist.
In this way, the Serbian historical characters were taken from the literary monotony in which the writers of the past centuries had put them in, enlightening them from different angles.
They coincide with known Horace's thinking about the function of literature, but the ways in which these attitudes are brought into the Serbian medieval times are very specific.
Their roots in ancient Greece (Aristotle), which is elaborated on by Hellenistic writers, and through late antique and early Byzantine, and later Athonite, enters the width of Teodosije.