Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/96

 NICOMEDIA

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NICOPOLIS

latina, cd. Boll-vndists. II, 901-02; DpFOnRCQ, Les Oesia Mat- tyntm romains, I (Paris, 1900), 209-10; Marucchi, Les calacombcs romaines (Homo, 1900), 254-56.

J. P. KiRSCH.

Nicomedia, titularscc of Rilliyni;i I'rim;i. foundod by Kins Zi]iiicics. About 2t')l H. c. liis son Xicdilcmps 1 declirati'd tlir city imew, gave it his name, made it his capital, and adorned it with raasnilit'pnt monu- ments. At his court the vanquished Hannibal sought refuge. When Bithynia became a Roman province Nicomedia remained its capital. Pliny the Younger mentions, in his letters to Trajan, several public edifices of the city, — a senate house, an aqueduct which he had built, a forum, the temple of Cybele, etc. He also proposed to join the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmora by a canal which shoidd follow the river Sangarius and empty the waters of the Lake of Sabandja into the Gulf of Astacus. A fire then almost destroyed the town. From Nicomedia jjerhaps, he wrote to Trajan his famous letter concerning the Christians. Under Marcus Aurelius, Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, addressed a letter to his commu- nity warning them against the Marcionites (Eusebius, "Hist. Eccl.", IV, xxiii). Bishop Evander, who opposed the sect of the Ophites (P. L., LIII, 592), seems to have lived at the same time. Nicomedia was the favourite residence of Diocletian, who built there a palace, a hippodrome, a mint, and an ar- senal. In 303 the edict of the tenth persecution caused rivers of blood to flow through the empire, especially in Nicomedia, where the Bishop .\nthimus and a great many Christians were martyred. The city was then half Christian, the palace itself being filled with them. In 303, in the vast plain east of Nicomedia, Diocletian renounced the empire in favour of Galerius. In 311 Lucian, a priest of .^ntioch, de- livered a discourse in the presence of the judge before he was executed. Other martyrs of the city are numbered by hundreds. Nicomedia suffered greatly during the fourth century from an invasion of the Goths and from an earthquake (24 Aug., 354), which overthrew all the public and private monuments; fire completed the catastrophe. The city was rebuilt, on a smaller scale. In the reign of Justinian new public buildings were erected, which were destroyed in the following century by the Shah Chosroes. Pope Con- stantine I visited the city in 711. In 1073 John Comnenus was there proclaimed emperor and shortly afterwards was compelled to abdicate. In 1328 it was captured by the Sultan Orkhan, who restored its ramparts, parts of which are still preserved.

LeQuien (Oriens Christ., I, 581-98) has drawn up a list of fifty metropolitans, which may easily be com- pleted, for Nicomedia has never ceased to be a met- ropolitan see. Some Latin archbishops are also mentioned by Le Quien (III, 1017) and by Eubel (Hierarchia Cathohca medii aivi, 1, 381). As early as the eighth century the metropolitan See of Nicomedia had eight suffragan sees which disappeared by degrees. Among its bishops, apart from those already men- tioned, were: the three Arians, Eusebius, Eudoxius, and Demophilus, who exchanged their see for that of Constantinople; St. Theophylactus, martyred by the Iconoclasts in the ninth century; George, a great preacher and a friend of Photius; Philotheus Bryen- nios, the present titular, who discovered and pub- lished Ai-Saxv tOiv diroa-TdXav. To-day Nicomedia is called Ismidt, the chief town of a sanjak directly de- pendent on Constantinople. It has about 25,000 in- habitants, who are very poor, for the German port of Haidar Pacha has completely ruined its commerce. Since 1891 the Augustinians of the Assumption have a mission and school, and the Oblates of the .Assump- tion, a school and a dispensary. The Latin Catholics number about 2.50 in the region of the mission, seventy of them hving in the city. The Armenian Catholic parish numbers 120.

Texier, Asic Minrmc (Pari.i, 1802), 00-68; Ccinet, La Tut- Quie d'Aaie (Paris), IV, 355-04.

S. \^\^Mt.

Nicopolis, a titular see, suffragan ot S<'l);u-iteia, in Armenia Prima. Foun<lccl by Poinpcy uflcr his de- cisive victory over Mithridatcs. it was inhabited by veterans of his army and by mcnibcrs of I he neigh- bouring pea.santry, and w;is delightfully situated in a beautiful, well-watered plain lying at the bxse of a thickly-wooded mountain. All the Roman highways intersecting that portion of the country and leading to Comana, Polemonium, Neocai-sarea, Sebasteia, etc., radiated from Nicopolis which, even in the time of Strabo (XII, iii, 28), boasted quite a large population. Given to Polemon by Anthony, in Sti b. c, Nicopolis was governed from A. D. 54, by Aristobulus of Chal- cis and definitively annexed to the Roman Empire by Nero, A. D. 04. It then became the metropolis of Lesser Armenia and the seat of the provincial diet which elected the Armeniarch. Besides the altar of the Augusti, it raised temples to Zeus Nicephorus and to Victory. Christianity reached Nicopolis at an early date and, under Licinius, about 319, forty-five of the city's inhabitants were martyred; the Church vener- ates them on 10 July. St. Basil (P. G., XXXII, 896) calls the priests of Nicopolis the sons of confessors and martyrs, and their church (P. G., XXXII, 834) the mother of that of Colonia. About 472, St. John the Silent, who had sold his worldly goods, erected a church there to the Blessed Virgin.

In 499 Nicopolis was destroyed by an earthquake, none save the bishop and his two secretaries escaping death (Bull. Acad, de Belgique, 1905, 557). This dis- aster was irreparable, and although Justinian rebuilt the walls and erected a monastery in memory of the Forty-five Martyrs (Procopius, " De ^Edificiis ", III, 4), Nicopohs never regained its former splendour. Under Heraclius it was captured by Chosroes (Sebeos, "His- toire d'Heraclius", tr. Macler, p. 62) and thenceforth was only a mediocre city, a simple see and a suffragan of SebaslciM in Lesser Armenia, remaining such at least until I he clcxinth century, as may be seen from the various "Nut ilia; episcopatuum". To-day the site of ancient Nicopolis is occupied by the Armenian village of Purkh, which has a population of 200 fami- lies and is near the city of Enderes, in the sanjak of Kara-Hissar and the vilayet of Sivas. Notable among the eight bishops mentioned by Le Quien is St. Gregory who, in the eleventh century, resigned his bishopric and retired to Pithiviers in France. The Church venerates him on 14 March.

Le QtJlE.v, Oriens chrisHanua (Paris, 1740), I. 427-30; Acta Sanctorum, July, III, 34-45; CuMONT, Studica Pontica (Brussels, 1906), 304-14.

S. Vailh£.

Nicopolis, Diocese of (Nicopolitana), in Bul- garia. The city of Nicopolis (Thrace or Moesia), sit>- uated at the junction of the latrus with the Danube, was built by Trajan in commemoration of his victory over the Dacians (Ammianus Marcellinus, XXXI, 5; Jornandes, "De rebus geticis", ed. Savagner, 218). Ptolemy (III, xi, 7) places it in Thrace and Hierocles in Mcesia near the Ha;mus or Balkans. In the "Ec- thesis" of pseudo-Epiphanius (Gelzer, "Ungedruckte . . . Texte der Notitiae episcopatuum", .535), Nico- polis figures as an autoeephalous archbishopric about 640, and then disappears from the episcopal lists, owing to the fact that the country fell into the hands of the Bulgarians. Le Quien (Oriens christianus, I, 1233) has preserved the names of two ancient bishops: Marcellus in 458, and Amantius in 518. A list of the Latin titulars (1.3.54-1413) may be found in Eubel (Hierarchia catholica medii a;vi, Mijnster, I, 381). The city is chiefly noted for the defeat of the French and Hungarian armies (25 September, 1396) which made the Turks masters of the Balkan peninsula.