Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/36

 SINIS

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SION

writer. Other bishops were Cardinal Antonio Bar- berini, a Capuchin brother of Urban VIII; Cardinal Domenico Poracciani (1714); Annibale della Genga (1816), who afterwards became Pope Leo XII. The diocese is suffragan of Urbino; it has 4S parishes with 114 secular and 78 regular clergy; 92,000 souls; 15 monasteries for men; 19 convents for women; and 3 institutes for female education.

Cappelletti, Lc chiese d' Italia (Venice, 1857); Costelli, 11 passato e Vavvenire di Senigallia (Ascoli. 1890); Margutti, Escur&ione artistica per Senigallia (Florence, 1886).

U. Benigni.

Sinis, a titular see in Armenia Seeunda, suffragan of Melitene. The catalogue of titular bishoprics of the Roman Curia formerly contained a see of Sinita, in Armenia. When the Ust was revised in 1884, this name was replaced by Sinis, mentioned as belonging to Armenia Seeunda, with Melitene, now Malatia, as its metropolis. Ptolemy, V. 7, 5, mentions a town called Siniscolon in Cappadocia at Melitene, near the Euphrates. Miiller in his "Notes a Ptolemy" ed. Didot, I (Paris, 1901), 887, identifies this with Sinekli, a village near the Euphrates, "ab Argovan versus ortum hibernum", about nineteen miles north of Malatia in the vilayet of Mamouret ul-Aziz. But it seems certain that Siniscolon is a mis-reading for "Sinis Colonia", a form found in several MSS. Ramsay, "Asia Minor", 71, 272, 314, reads Sinis for Pisonos in "Itinerar. Anton." and es- pecially for Sinispora in the "Tabula Peutingeriana" (Sinis, Erpa), and places Sinis Colonia twenty-two Roman miles west of Melitene, on the road to Ca^sarea. There is no mention of this town in the Greek "NotitiiE episcopatuum" among the suffragans of Melitene, and none of its bishops is known, so it seems never to have been a bishopric.

S. Petrides.

Sinna. See Sehna, Diocese of.

Sinope, a titular see in Asia minor, suffragan of Amasea in Helcnopontus. It is a Cireek colony, situated on a peninsula on the coast of Paphlagonia, of very early origin, some attributing its foundation to the Argonaut Autolycus, a companion of Hercules. Later it received a colony from Miletus which seems to have been expelled or conquered by the Cimmerians (Herodotus, IV, 12); but in 632 b.c. the Greeks succeeded again in capturing it. Henceforth Sinope enjoyed great prosperity and founded several colonies, among them being Cerasus, Cotyora, and Trapezus. The town took part in the Peloponnesian War, sup- porting Athens. Xenophon stopped there with his forces on the retreat of the Ten Thousand (Anab. V, v, 3; Diodor. Sicul., XIV, 30, 32; Ammien Marcel., XXII, 8). Fruitlessly besieged in 220 B.C. by Mithridates IV, King of Pontus, Sinope was taken by Pharnaces in 183 B.C., and became the capital and residence of the kings of Pontus. It was the birthplace of Mithridates the Great, who adorned it with magnificent monuments and constructed large arsenals there for his fleet. LucuUus captured it and gave it back its autonomy. Caesar also estab- lished the Colonia Julia Cssarea there in 45 b.c. when his supremacy began. Sinope was also the birthplace of the cynic philosopher, Diogenes, Di- philus, the coiiii<- poet, and Aquila, the Jew, who translated the Old Testament into Greek in the second century a.d. A (christian commimity existed there in the first half of the second century, with a bishop, the father of the celebrated heretic ^iar^ion, whom he expelled from his diocese. Among its other bishops may hr. mentioned St. Phocas, venerated on 22 September, with St,. Phocas, the gardener of the same town, who is possibly to be identifii'd with him; Proha-resios, present at the Councils of (Jangres and Philippopolis in 343 and 344; Antiochus at the Coun- cil of Chalcedon, 451 ; Sergius at the Sixth (Ecumenical

Council, 681 ; Zeno, who was exiled in 712 for oppos- ing Monothelitism; Gregory, present at the Seventh Council in 787, beheaded in 793 for revolting against the emperor, etc. A little before 1315 the Bishop of Sinope, driven out of his see by the Turks, received in compensation the metropoles of Sida and Sylseos (Miklosich and Miiller, "Acta patriarchatus Con- stantinopolitani", I, 34); the diocese must have been suppressed upon his death, as it is not mentioned in the "NotitiiP episcopatuum" of the fifteenth century. In 1401 a Greek merchant who visited Sinope found everything in disorder as a result of the Turkish inroads (Wiichter, "Der Verfall des Griechentums in Kleinasien im XlV. Jahrhundert", 20); however, the town, which had belonged to the Empire of Tra- pezus from 1204 was not captured till 1470 by Mahomet II. In November, 1853, the Turkish fleet was destroyed by the Russians in the port of Sinope. Sinope is now the chief town of a sanjak of the vilayet of Castamouni, containing 15,000 in- habitants, about one half of whom are Greek schis- matics.

Smith, Dirt, of Greek and Roman Geog. (London. 1870). s. v.; Robinson, Ancient Sinope (Baltimore, 1906); Le Quien, Oriens christianus (Paris, 1740), I, 537-40; Vailh^, Les ivlqties de Sinope in Echos d'Orient, XI, 210-12; Cuinet, La Turquie d'Asie (Paris, 1891), IV. 574-82.

S. Vailh£.

Sins against the Holy Ghost. See Holy Ghost, subtitle VIII.

Sinuessa, Synod of. See Marcellinus, Saint, Pope. Sion. See Jerusalem.

Sion, a titular see in Asia Minor, suffragan of Ephesus. No civil document mentions it. It ia numbered among the suffragans of Ephesus in the Greek "Notitise episcopatuum", from the seventh to the thirteenth century. [See Gelzer in "Abhand- lungen der k. bayer. Akademie der Wiss.", I. CI. XXI Bd. Ill Abth". (Munich, 1900), 536, 552; Idem, "Georgii Cyprii descriptio orbis romani" (Leipzig, 1890), 8, 62; Parthey, "Hierocles Synecdemus e Notit. gr. episcopal. (Berlin, 1866), 61, 103, 155, 167, 203, 245.] The names of only three bishops of Sion are known: Nestorius, present at the Council of Ephesus, 431; John, at the Council in Trullo, 692; Philip, represented at Nica-a, 787, by the priest Theognis (Le Quien, "Oriens christianus", I, 721). This author asks if Basil, Bishop irAXews ' Auaiuv rep- resented at Chalcedon, 451, by his metropolitan does not belong to Sion; it is more likely that he was Bishop of Assus. Ramsay ("Asia Minor", 105) thinks that Sion is probably the same town as Tianae, or Tiarae mentioned by Pliny, V, 33, 3, and Hierocles, 661, 8, and Attaca, mentioned by Strabo, XIII, 607; but this is very doubtful. In any case the site of Sion is unknown.

S. Petrides.

Sion, Diocese of (Sedunensis), a Swiss bishopric depending directly on the Holy See.

History. — The Diocese of Sion is the oldest in Swit- zerland and one of the oldest north of the Alps. At first its see was at Octodorum, now called Martinach, or Martigny. According to tradition there was a Bishop of Octodorum, named Oggerius, as early as A. D. 300. However, the first authenticated bishop is St. Tlieodore (d. 391), who was present at the Council of AquiN-ia in 3S1. On the spot where the Abbey of Saint-Maurice now st;uids he built a church in honour of St. Mauritius, martyred here about 300. He also induced the hermits of the vicinity to unite in a common life, thus beginning the .\hbcy of Saint- Maurice, the ohlost north of the .-Mjjs. Theodore rebuilt the church at Sion, which had been destroyed by Emperor Maxiiuianus at the beginning of the