Mastaura (Lycia) Explained

Mastaura (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: Μάσταυρα) was a town in ancient Lycia^[1] and is not to be confused with Mastaura (Caria).

It may have been located at present-day Dereağzı, some 25 km northwest of Myra,^[1] ^[2] ^[3] ^[4] which is therefore not to be confused with Dereağzı, Nazilli or Dereağzı, İncirliova.

Dereağzı had a large domed church made of brick,^[1] which may have been the cathedral of Mastaura.^[5]

Bishopric

The bishopric of Mastaura in Lycia is mentioned in Notitiae Episcopatuum of the 7th and 10th centuries as having first rank among the suffragans of the metropolitan see of Myra.^[6]

No bishop of the see is mentioned by name in extant documents, unless Baanes, who was at the Photian Council of Constantinople (879) was bishop not of Mastaura in Asia but of Mastaura in Lycia.^[7]

No longer a residential bishopric, Mastaura in Lycia is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.^[8]

Book: Joachim Henning. Post-Roman Towns, Trade and Settlement in Europe and Byzantium. 143. 2. 2007. Walter de Gruyter . 9783110183580. January 8, 2015.
Sencer Şahin, Mustafa Adak, Stadiasmus Patarensis: Itinera Romana Provinciae Lyciae (Ege Yayınları 2007), p. 261
Mehmet Alkan, "Parerga to the Stadiasmus Patarensis (8): On the named places in the journeys of sacrifice recorded in the Vita of Saint Nicholas of Holy Sion" in Gephyra, No. 8 (2011), pp. 99–124
Web site: Tore Kjeilen, "Dereağzı" . 2015-01-09 . 2016-03-04 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160304054032/http://looklex.com/turkey/dereagzi.htm . dead .
Henning (2007), p. 131
Heinrich Gelzer, Ungedruckte und ungenügend veröffentlichte Texte der Notitiae episcopatuum, in: Abhandlungen der philosophisch-historische classe der bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1901, p. 539, nº 254; e p. 554, nº 311.
Pascal Culerrier, Les évêchés suffragants d'Éphèse aux 5e-13e siècles, in Revue des études byzantines, vol. 45, 1987, p. 157
Annuario Pontificio 2013 (Libreria Editrice Vaticana 2013), p. 925