Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Sura

Titular see in Augusta Euphratensis, suffragan of Hierapolis. Sura, situated on the banks of the Euphrates, at the intersection of the roads from Palmyra and Beroea or Chalcis, was a military station, and at the beginning of the fifth century was the residence of the prefect of the legio XVI Flavia Firma. In his second Syrian campaign Chosroes assaulted the town; the Armenian, Arsaces, the magister militum, directed the defence; when he fell the inhabitants sent their bishop to Chosroes as an envoy; but the latter, incensed by the resistance he had met with, ordered the destruction of the town, which had held out only half an hour. Justinian erected powerful fortifications there. Its ruins, of little importance, are near the present military post of El Hamman, not far from Rekka in the vilayet of Aleppo. Le Quien, "Oriens christianus", II, 949, mentions three bishops of Sura: Uranius, represented by his metropolitan at Chalcedon, 451; Marion, exiled as a Monophysite in 518; and the one who was envoy to Chosroes, whose name is unknown. The see is mentioned in the "Notitiæ episcopatuum" of the Patriarchate of Antioch in the sixth and tenth centuries.

VAILHÉ in Echos d'Orient, X (Paris, 1907), 94, 145; SMITH, Dict, of Greek and Roman Geog., s. v.; MÜLLER, Notes à Ptolemy, ed. Didot, I, 985; CHAPOT, La frontiére de l'Euphrate à la conguête arabe (Paris, 1907), 285-88 and passim.

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