Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Themisonium

A titular see in Phrygia Pacatiana, suffragan of Laodicea. Themisonium was a city of Phrygia, but near the limits of Pisidia, so that at one time it was said to be in that province. The inhabitants relate that during an invasion of the Gauls, warned by a dream which they attributed to the gods, Hercules, Apollo, and Hermes, they took refuge with their wives and children in a grotto or cave thirty stadia from their city, and placed at the entrance for protection the statues of the three divinities. The coins of the city show the god, Lycabas Sozon. It may be identified with the village of Kara Eyuk Bazar, vilayet of Smyrna.

Le Quien (Oriens christianus, I, 813) mentions the name of only one bishop of Themisonium, but he really belongs to Temenothyrae. On the other hand (ibid., 821), there was a see at Thampsiopolis, with two bishops: Zosimus, who lived in 451, and John, present at the Council of Constantinople, 869. These two sees are certainly one and the same: Thampsiopolis, mentioned in the "Notitiae episcopatuum" from the tenth to the thirteenth century, is no other than Themisonium. If the earlier "Notitiae episcopatuum" says nothing of this see it is probably because it was united with Agathe Come, of whose bishops there is no notice, and which disappeared from the later "Notitiae". To the two bishops mentioned above we may add Magnus, present at the Council of Seleucia, 359.

SMITH, Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Georg., s. v.; RAMSAY, Asia Minor (London, 1890), 135; IDEM, The cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia (New York, 1895), 260, 274, and passim.

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