Neocaesarea (episcopal see)

Neocaesarea was an episcopal see in the late Roman province of Pontus Polemoniacus. At first called Cabira, its location corresponds to that of present-day Niksar, Turkey.

It is now one of the bishoprics listed in the Annuario Pontificio as titular sees and is referred to as Neocaesarea in Ponto to distinguish it from Neocaesarea in Syria.

Bishops

It became the civil and religious metropolis of Pontus. Gregory of Nyssa claimed that about 240, when Gregory Thaumaturgus was consecrated bishop of his native city, Neocæsarea had only seventeen Christians and that at his death (270) it counted only seventeen pagans. In 315 a great council was held there, the acts of which are still extant.

Being early placed at the head of an ecclesiastical province, Neocæsarea had four suffragan sees about 640 ("Ecthesis" of pseudo-Epiphanius, ed. Heinrich Gelzer, 539), retaining them until the tenth century, when Trebizond obtained its independence and, by degrees, the other three suffragans were suppressed. In 1391 the Archdiocese of Neocaesarea was confided to the metropolitan of Trebizond (Miklosich and Müller, "Acta", II, 154). About 1400 there was, however, a regular metropolitan (op. cit., II, 312), residing at Ordu. Among the twenty-seven bishops of this city mentioned by Le Quien, the most noted are Saints Gregory Thaumaturgus, Paul of Neocaesarea, and Thomas, a 9th-century martyr.

References

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:  The entry cites:
  • William Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (London, 1870), I, 462, II, 418, s. v. Cabira et Neocæsareia;
  • Le Quien, Oriens christianus, I (Paris, 1741), 499-508;
  • CUINET, La Turquie d'Asie, I (Paris, 1892), 733-35;
  • CUMONT, Studia Pontica