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 CjESAREA

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CiESAREA

Jesuits, a school and an orphanage by Sisters of St. Joseph de l'Apparition. An Assumptionist of the Greek Rite takes care of the Catholic Greeks. The bazaars are remarkable. The city has a trade in pasterma (preserved beef), woollens, cotton stuffs, and very beautiful carpets. There are at Kaisarieh ruins of a Seljuk fortress, a mosque of Houen (founder of an order of dervishes in the fourteenth century), and also old tombs. In the neighbour- hood are ruins of churches dedicated to St. Basil, St. Mercurius, etc.

Belley in Mem. de VAcad. des in^cript.et belles-lettres (17S0), XL, I. 124-48 ; Kinneir, Journey through Asia Minor, 98 sqq.; Texier, Description de VAsu- Mineure, II, 53 sqq.; i'iinet. Turquie d'Asie, I, 304-15: Chantre, M i-inn, n < '.;/.- padocc, 119-21; Piolet, Les missions eath. franeaises an XIX' siiele, I. 156 sqq.; Smith, Diet, of Greek and Roman Geog. (London, 1S7S), I, 469.

S. Vailhk.

Caesarea Mauretaniae, a titular see of North Africa. There was on the coast of Mauretania a town called Iol, where the famous Bocchus resided, that belonged occasionally to the Numidian kings. Juba II, when he had obtained Mauretania from Augustus, made it his capital and named it Casarea. After the deposition of his son Ptolemy, the city became the capital of the province named after it, Mauretania Ccesarea. Under Claudius it became a Roman colony, Colonia Claudia C&sarea. At the end of the fourth century it was burned by the Moors, and in 533 it was besieged by the troops of Justinian, but the whole province was soon lost by the Byzan- tines. Captured by the French in 1840, it is now Cherchel, the chief town of an arrondissement in the department of Algiers (Algeria), and has 9100 in- habitants. There are in the vicinity ruins of Roman monuments. Cherchel boasts of marble and plaster quarries, iron mines, and a trade in oil, tobacco, and earthenware. The port, important in Roman times, has been partly filled up by alluvial deposits and by earthquakes. As to the religious history of Caesarea, we know the names of four Catholic titulars of the see and one Donatist, from 314 to 484.

Morcelli, Africa Christiana (Rome, 1816); Gams, Series ep.. 464; Mas-Latrie, Trt'sor de chronologic, 1872; Diehl, L'Afriqui bij:uitl/m. L'iKi; \\ ui.i.e in t'amptes rendus de VAcad. des inscript. et belles-lettres (18S7-1S8S), D, XV, 53; XVI, 35, 241; De Cirsareir muninnentis (Algiers, 1S91); Gauckler, Musee de Cherchel (Paris. 1895); Smith, Diet, of Greek ami Roman Geog. (London, 1S7S), II, 59.

S. Petrides.

Caesarea Palaestinae (Cesarea Maritima), a titular see of Palestine. In Greek antiquity the city was called Pyrgos Stratonos (Straton's Tower), after a Greek adventurer or a Sidonian king; under this name it antedates, perhaps, Alexander the Great. King Herod named it Caesarea in honour of Augus- tus, and built there temples, palaces, a theatre, an amphitheatre, a port, and numerous monuments, with colonnades and colossal statues. The civil life of the new city began in 13 B. c, from which time Caesarea was the civil and military capital of Judaea, and as such was the official residence of the Roman procurators, e. g. Pilate and Felix. Vespasian and Titus made it a Roman colony, Colonia Prima Flavia Augusta Casarea. Under Alexander Severus it be- came the civil metropolis of Palestine, and later, when Palestine had been divided into three provinces, it remained the metropolis of Palsestina Prima. St. Peter established t Ire Church there when he baptized t lie centurion Cornelius (Acts, \, x i1; St. Paul often s::j::urned tlu.re (lx 50 xvrt t>. xxi '-,) ml Wis imprisoned there for two years before being taken to Rome (xxiii, 23, xxv, I 13). However, there is no record of any bishops of Ca-sarea until the second century. At the end of this century a council was held there to regulate the celebration of Faster. In the third century Origen took refuge at ( laesarea, and wrote there many of his exegetic and theological works, among others the famous "Hexapla", the manu-

script of which was for a long time preserved in the episcopal library of that city. Through Origen and the scholarly priest, St. Pamphilus, the theological school of Caesarea won a universal reputation. St. Gregory the Wonder-Worker, St. Basil the Great, and others came from afar to study there. Its ecclesiastical library passed for the richest in anti- quity; it was there that St. Jerome performed much of

his Scriptural labours. The library was probably destroyed either in 614 by the Persians, or about 637 by the Saracens. As ecclesiastical metropolis of Palaestina Prima, subject to the Patriarchate of Antioch, Caesarea had the Bishop of Jerusalem among its suffragans till 451, when Juvenalis succeeded in establishing the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Caesarea had then thirty-two suffragan sees (Revue de l'Orient chret., 1899, 56). Lequien (III, 533-74) mentions thirty-two Greek bishops of Caesarea, but his list is very incomplete. Among the more celebrated are Theotecnus, a disciple of Origen; the famous church historian Eusebius, a disciple of St. Pamphilus; Acacius, the leader of an Arian group; the historian Gelasius of Cyzicus; St. John the Khozibite in the sixth century; and Anastasius, a writer of the eleventh century. During the persecution of Diocletian Caesarea had many martyrs to whom Eusebius has consecrated an entire work (De martyribus Palae- stinae). Among them were St. Hadrian, whose church has just been discovered; Sts. Valens, Paul, Porphyrins, and others. Another illustrious person- age of C;esarea is the sixth-century Byzantine histor- ian Procopius. When King Bald- win I took the city in 1101.it was still very rich. There was found the famouschalice known asthe Holy Grail, believed to have been used at the Last Supper, preserved now at

Paris, and often mentioned in medieval poems. The city was rebuilt by Hie crusaders, but on a smaller scale. A list of thirty-six Latin bishops, from 1101 to 1196. is given by Lequien (111. L285-1290) and Eubel (I. loll; II. 126). During the l'rai ik i> 1 1 occu- pation the Latin metropolis had ten suffragan flic metropolitan See of Caesarea is still preserved by

the Creeks of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, as it is

by tin- Latins merely a- a titular see. The present

name of the city is Kaisariyeh. Sine 1884 a colony of Mussulman Bosnians has occupied the medieval city, which covers a space of about 1800 feet, north to south, and 7500 feet, east to west. The ancient

Pier, C-£8area