Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Tenedos

A titular see, suffragan of Rhodes in the Cyclades. The island, called in Turkish Boghaz-Adassi, has an area of 16 square miles and 5000 inhabitants, of whom 3000 are Greek schismatics. It is a caza of the sanjak of Lemnos in the vilayet of Rhodes. It seems to have been called by various names, such as Leucophrys, Calydna, Phoenice, and Lyrnessus. The name Tenedos is derived from Tenes, one of the heroes of the Trojan War. In this connexion Homer and Virgil make frequent mention of the island, which must have been used by the Greeks as a station for their fleet. Captured by the Persians, who used it as a naval station, it afterwards became the ally and tributary of Athens, to which it was faithful during the Peloponnesian War until the peace of Antalcidas in 358 B.C. Subject to Alexander and his successors, though retaining its internal organization, it fell into the power of the Romans in 129 B.C. and was ravaged by Verres. In 73 B.C. Lucullus destroyed a part of the fleet of Mithridates there. Justinian built there large storehouses to contain the grain brought from Alexandria (Procopius, "De aedificiis", V, i). The Venetians captured it in 1377; Mohammed II wrested it from them in the fifteenth century, but they recaptured it in 1656, though but for a short time. Canaris burned the Turkish fleet there in 1822. Le Quien (Oriens christ., I, 947-50) mentions the bishops: Diodorus, at Sardica in 344; Anastasius, a partisan of Nestorius; Florentius in 451; Joseph in 1356. In September, 1369, Harmodius, Bishop of Boreia Potamia, was transferred to the metropolitan See of Tenedos (Miklosich and Muller, "Acta patriarchatus Constantinopolitani", I, 511). At first a suffragan of Cyzicus and then of Mitylene, at least from the tenth century (Gelzer, "Ungedruckte . . . Texte der Notitiae episcopatuum", 559; "Georgii Cyprii Descriptio orbis romani", 83), Tenedos was raised to the rank of a metropolitan see shortly after the death of Andronicus III in 1341 (Gelzer, op. cit., 601; 608). In 1342 it had already become such (Miklosich and Müller, op. cit., I, 230). In October, 1368, the metropolitan See of Tenedos was given to the metropolitan of Peritheorium in Thrace (op. cit., I, 501). In a "notitia" of the fifteenth century the see is no longer mentioned.

HEMMER, Respublica Tenediorum (Copenhagen, 1735); SMITH, Dict. of Greek and Roman Geog., S.V.; LACROIX, Iles de la Grece, (Paris, 1853), 338-47; CUINET, La Turquie d'Asie, I, 490-97.

S. VAILHÉ