Capra (Mauretania Caesariensis) Explained

Capra was an ancient Roman–Berber town in the province of Mauretania Caesariensis. The civitas was located in the present-day area of Béni Mansour and Béni Abbès, Algeria. It was a bishopric in the Roman Catholic Church.

Ecclesiastical history

Victor Vitensis speaks of Capra Picta as a town in that province, where some Catholics sent there into exile under the Arian Genseric, king of the Vandals from 428 to 477, converted a great number of the local population to Christianity.[1]

In the Notitia Provinciarum et Civitatum Africae,[2] Primus, bishop of the church in Capra, appears in the list of the Catholic bishops whom Huneric summoned to Carthage in 484 and then exiled.[3] [1] [4]

Titular see

No longer a residential bishopric, Capra is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.[5]

The ancient diocese was nominally restored in 1933 and since had the following incumbents, both of the lowest (episcopal) or intermediary (archiepiscopal) ranks :

Sources and external links

Notes and References

  1. Stefano Antonio Morcelli, Africa christiana, Volume I, Brescia 1816, pp. 117–118
  2. Johann Peter Kirsch, "Notitia Provinciarum et Civitatum Africae" in Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1911)
  3. http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/02m/0430-0484,_Victor_Vitensis,_Notitia_Provinciarum_Et_Civitatum_Africae_%5BIncertus%5D,_MLT.pdf Notitia Provinciarum et Civitatum Africae
  4. Pius Bonifacius Gams, Series episcoporum Ecclesiae Catholicae, Leipzig 1931, p. 464
  5. Annuario Pontificio 2013 (Libreria Editrice Vaticana 2013), p. 858