Augustopolis in Phrygia explained

Augustopolis in Phrygia (Greek: Αύγουστούπολις) was a city and bishopric in the Roman province of Phrygia, which remains a Latin Catholic and an Orthodox titular see.

Location and names

It was situated in the plain of Akar Çay (Kaystros).[1] It was located in the middle part of the plain, but its exact location is not known. The Annuario Pontificio associates it with a modern Surmene, not the Sürmene on a part of the Black Sea coast, which belonged to the late Roman province of Pontus.

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica said that this Augustopolis (which presumably had its name changed in honour of the Emperor Augustus) was "formerly Anabura (Surmeneh)".[2] The Phrygian town of Anabura is mentioned by Livy as lying on the route of the consul Gnaeus Manlius Vulso from Synnada to the sources of the Alander.[3]

History

Augustopolis was the hometown of the grammarian Eugenios, who worked under the emperor Anastasios I around the year 500. The 6th-century patriarch Eutychius of Constantinople was born at the nearby village of Theiou kome and received his education at Augustopolis. The 10th-century Arabic writer al-Mas'udi mentioned Augustopolis, as Ghuṣṭūbulī, as a place in the theme of Anatolikon where an annual perfume market took place. Later, Anna Komnene names Augustopolis (as "Agrustopolis") as the site of a battle in 1097, during the First Crusade. She wrote that the crusader army defeated Turkish forces under Danishmend, Qilij Arslan I, and Hasan of Cappadocia here and at Hebraike. Then in 1116, the Anatolian Seljuk sultan Malik Shah led an unsuccessful attack on a Byzantine army under Alexios I Komnenos before ultimately negotiating peace on the plain between Augustopolis and Akroinos. This last episode is the most important piece of evidence for locating where Augustopolis was. Augustopolis remained in diocese lists until the 12th century.[4]

Ecclesiastical history

Augustopolis in Phrygia became a Christian bishopric. In the Late Roman province of Phrygia Salutaris Prima, it was a suffragan of the capital Synnada in Phrygia's Metropolitan Archbishopric.

The names of four of its residential bishops are known because of being mentioned in extant documents.

Titular Sees

Augustopolis in Phrygia is today included in the Catholic Church's list of titular sees [7] since the diocese's nominal restoration in the 15th century as a titular bishopric, under the name Augustopolis, until its renaming in 1933, avoiding confusion with Augustopolis in Palestina.

It is vacant since decades, having had the following incumbents, of the lowest (episcopal) rank with an archiepiscopal (intermediary rank) exception:

It is also an Orthodox titular metropolis in Turkey of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. http://press.princeton.edu/B_ATLAS/BATL062_.pdf Map 62 (Princeton University Press)
  2. http://www.theodora.com/encyclopedia/p/phrygia.html Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition, "Phrygia"
  3. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0064%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DA%3Aentry+group%3D8%3Aentry%3Danabura-geo William Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), entry "Anabura"
  4. Book: Belke . Klaus . Mersich . Norbert . Tabula Imperii Byzantini Bd. 7. Phrygien und Pisidien . 1990 . Österreichicshe Akademie der Wissenschaften . Wien . 3-7001-1698-5 . 19 December 2023.
  5. Michel Lequien, Oriens christianus in quatuor Patriarchatus digestus, Paris 1740, Vol. I, coll. 845–846
  6. G. Bardy, v. Augustopolis, in Dictionnaire d'Histoire et de Géographie ecclésiastiques, vol. V, 1931, col. 657
  7. Annuario Pontificio 2013 (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013,), p. 842

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