Archimandrite
The title archimandrite used in the Eastern Orthodox and the Eastern Catholic churches referred to a superior abbot whom a bishop appointed to supervise several'ordinary' abbots and monasteries, or to the abbot of some great and important monastery. It is used purely as a title of honour, with no connection to any actual monastery, is bestowed on clergy as a mark of respect or gratitude for service to the Church; this particular sign of respect is only given to those priests who have taken vows of celibacy, monks. Distinguished married clergy may receive the title of archpriest; the term derives from the Greek: the first element from ἀρχι archi- meaning "highest" or from archon "ruler". The title has been in common use since the 5th century, but is mentioned for the first time in a letter to Epiphanius, prefixed to his Panarium, but the Lausiac History of Palladius may evidence its common use in the 4th century as applied to Saint Pachomius; when the supervision of monasteries passed to another episcopal official—the Great Sakellarios —the title of archimandrite became an honorary one for abbots of important monasteries.
In some cases it served as an extra title: for example, manuscripts of 1174 mention Hegumen Polikarp of Kiev Cave Monastery as "Hegumen Archimandrite". In 1764 the Russian Orthodox Church secularised its monasteries and ranked them in one of three classes, awarding only the abbots at the head of monasteries of the second or first class the title of archimandrite. Abbots of third class monasteries were to be styled "hegumen"; the duties of both a hegumen and an archimandrite are the same. The Russian Orthodox Church selects its bishops from the ranks of the archimandrites. An archimandrite is a priest who has taken monastic vows and is theoretically in line to be ordained a bishop. Churches under the spiritual jurisdiction of the four Eastern Orthodox Patriarchates require that such a monastic priest possess a university degree in theology before they are elevated to the rank of archimandrite. Sometimes the requirement is waived if the priest can show outstanding achievement in other academic fields, such as the humanities or science.
An archimandrite who does not function as an abbot has the style "The Very Reverend Archimandrite" whilst one with abbatial duties uses the style "The Right Reverend Archimandrite". The word occurs in the Regula Columbani, du Cange gives a few other cases of its use in Latin documents, but it never came into vogue in the West; this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary. 1906. Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie Plank, Peter, "Archimandrite", in Fahlbusch, Encyclopedia of Christianity, 1, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, p. 118, ISBN 0802824137 The dictionary definition of archimandrite at Wiktionary
Phrygia
In classical antiquity, Phrygia was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now Asian Turkey, centered on the Sangarios River. After its conquest, it became a region of the great empires of the time. Stories of the heroic age of Greek mythology tell of several legendary Phrygian kings: Gordias, whose Gordian Knot would be cut by Alexander the Great Midas, who turned whatever he touched to gold Mygdon, who warred with the AmazonsAccording to Homer's Iliad, the Phrygians participated in the Trojan War as close allies of the Trojans, fighting against the Achaeans. Phrygian power reached its peak in the late 8th century BC under another, king: Midas, who dominated most of western and central Anatolia and rivaled Assyria and Urartu for power in eastern Anatolia; this Midas was, however the last independent king of Phrygia before Cimmerians sacked the Phrygian capital, around 695 BC. Phrygia became subject to Lydia, successively to Persia and his Hellenistic successors, Pergamon and Byzantium.
Phrygians became assimilated into other cultures by the early medieval era. Phrygia describes an area on the western end of the high Anatolian plateau, an arid region quite unlike the forested lands to the north and west. Phrygia begins in the northwest where an area of dry steppe is watered by the Sakarya and Porsuk river system and is home to the settlements of Dorylaeum near modern Eskisehir, the Phrygian capital Gordion; the climate is harsh with cold winters. South of Dorylaeum, there is another important Phrygian settlement, Midas City, situated in an area of hills and columns of volcanic tuff. To the south again, central Phrygia includes the cities of Afyonkarahisar with its marble quarries at nearby Docimium, the town of Synnada. At the western end of Phrygia stood the towns of Aizanoi and Acmonia. From here to the southwest lies the hilly area of Phrygia that contrasts to the bare plains of the region's heartland. Southwestern Phrygia is watered by the Maeander and its tributary the Lycus, contains the towns of Laodicea on the Lycus and Hierapolis.
Inscriptions found at Gordium make clear that Phrygians spoke an Indo-European language with at least some vocabulary similar to Greek, not belonging to the family of Anatolian languages spoken by most of Phrygia's neighbors. One of the so-called Homeric Hymns describes the Phrygian language as not mutually intelligible with that of Troy. According to ancient tradition among Greek historians, the Phrygians anciently migrated to Anatolia from the Balkans. Herodotus says, he and other Greek writers recorded legends about King Midas that associated him with or put his origin in Macedonia. Some classical writers connected the Phrygians with the Mygdones, the name of two groups of people, one of which lived in northern Macedonia and another in Mysia; the Phrygians have been identified with the Bebryces, a people said to have warred with Mysia before the Trojan War and who had a king named Mygdon at the same time as the Phrygians were said to have had a king named Mygdon. The classical historian Strabo groups Phrygians, Mysians and Bithynians together as peoples that migrated to Anatolia from the Balkans.
This image of Phrygians as part of a related group of northwest Anatolian cultures seems the most explanation for the confusion over whether Phrygians and Anatolian Mygdones were or were not the same people. The apparent similarity of the Phrygian language to Greek and its dissimilarity with the Anatolian languages spoken by most of their neighbors is taken as support for a European origin of the Phrygians. Phrygian continued to be spoken until the 6th century AD, though its distinctive alphabet was lost earlier than those of most Anatolian cultures; some scholars have theorized that such a migration could have occurred more than classical sources suggest, have sought to fit the Phrygian arrival into a narrative explaining the downfall of the Hittite Empire and the end of the high Bronze Age in Anatolia. According to this "recent migration" theory, the Phrygians invaded just before or after the collapse of the Hittite Empire at the beginning of the 12th century BC, filling the political vacuum in central-western Anatolia, may have been counted among the "Sea Peoples" that Egyptian records credit with bringing about the Hittite collapse.
The so-called Handmade Knobbed Ware found in Western Anatolia during this period has been tentatively identified as an import connected to this invasion. However, most scholars reject such a recent Phrygian migration and accept as factual the Iliad's account that the Phrygians were established on the Sakarya River before the Trojan War, thus must have been there during the stages of the Hittite Empire, earlier; these scholars seek instead to trace the Phrygians' origins among the many nations of western Anatolia who were subject to the Hittites. This interpretation gets support from Greek legends about the founding of Phrygia's main city Gordium by Gordias and of Ancyra by Midas, which suggest that Gordium and Ancyra were believed to date from the distant past before the Trojan War; some scholars dismiss the claim of a Phrygian migration
Gospel of Luke
The Gospel According to Luke called the Gospel of Luke, or Luke, is the third of the four canonical Gospels. It tells of the origins, ministry, death and ascension of Jesus Christ. Luke is the longest book in the New Testament; the cornerstone of Luke–Acts' theology is "salvation history", the author's understanding that God's purpose is seen in the way he has acted, will continue to act, in history. It divides the history of first-century Christianity into three stages, with the gospel making up the first two of these – the arrival among men of Jesus the Messiah, from his birth to the beginning of his earthly mission in the meeting with John the Baptist followed by his earthly ministry, Passion and resurrection; the gospel's sources are the Gospel of Mark, the sayings collection called the Q source, a collection of material called the L source, found only in this gospel. Luke–Acts does not name its author. According to Church tradition this was Luke the Evangelist, the companion of Paul, but while this view is still put forward the scholarly consensus emphasises the many contradictions between Acts and the authentic Pauline letters.
The most probable date for its composition is around AD 80–110, there is evidence that it was still being revised well into the 2nd century. Autographs of Luke and the other Gospels have not been preserved, as is typical for ancient documents; the earliest witnesses for Luke's gospel fall into two "families" with considerable differences between them, the Western and the Alexandrian, the dominant view is that the Western text represents a process of deliberate revision, as the variations seem to form specific patterns. The fragment P 4 is cited as the oldest witness, it has been dated from the late 2nd century. The oldest complete texts are the 4th century Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, both from the Alexandrian family. Codex Bezae shows comprehensively the differences between the versions which show no core theological significance; the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles make up a two-volume work which scholars call Luke–Acts. Together they account for 27.5% of the New Testament, the largest contribution by a single author, providing the framework for both the Church's liturgical calendar and the historical outline into which generations have fitted their idea of the story of Jesus.
The author is not named in either volume. According to a Church tradition dating from the 2nd century he was the Luke named as a companion of Paul in three of the letters attributed to Paul himself, but "a critical consensus emphasizes the countless contradictions between the account in Acts and the authentic Pauline letters." An example can be seen by comparing Acts' accounts of Paul's conversion with Paul's own statement that he remained unknown to Christians in Judea after that event. Luke admired Paul, but his theology was different from Paul's on key points and he does not represent Paul's views accurately, he was educated, a man of means urban, someone who respected manual work, although not a worker himself. The eclipse of the traditional attribution to Luke the companion of Paul has meant that an early date for the gospel is now put forward; some experts date the composition of the combined work to around 80–90 AD, although some others suggest 90–110, there is evidence, both textual and from the Marcionite controversy that Luke–Acts was still being revised well into the 2nd century.
Luke–Acts is a religio-political history of the Founder of the church and his successors, in both deeds and words. The author describes his book as a "narrative", rather than as a gospel, implicitly criticises his predecessors for not giving their readers the speeches of Jesus and the Apostles, as such speeches were the mark of a "full" report, the vehicle through which ancient historians conveyed the meaning of their narratives, he seems to have taken as his model the works of two respected Classical authors, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote a history of Rome, the Jewish historian Josephus, author of a history of the Jews. All three authors anchor the histories of their respective peoples by dating the births of the founders and narrate the stories of the founders' births from God, so that they are sons of God; each founder taught authoritatively, appeared to witnesses after death, ascended to heaven. Crucial aspects of the teaching of all three concerned the relationship between rich and poor and the question
Book of Job
The Book of Job is a book in the Ketuvim section of the Hebrew Bible, the first poetic book in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. Addressing the problem of theodicy – the vindication of the justice of God in the light of humanity's suffering – it is a rich theological work setting out a variety of perspectives, it has been praised for its literary qualities, with Alfred Lord Tennyson calling it "the greatest poem of ancient and modern times". The Book of Job consists of a prose prologue and epilogue narrative framing poetic dialogues and monologues, it is common to view the narrative frame as the original core of the book, enlarged by the poetic dialogues and discourses, sections of the book such as the Elihu speeches and the wisdom poem of chapter 28 as late insertions, but recent trends have tended to concentrate on the book's underlying editorial unity.1. Prologue in two scenes, the first on Earth, the second in Heaven 2. Job's opening monologue, three cycles of dialogues between Job and his three friends First cycleEliphaz and Job's response Bildad and Job Zophar and Job Second cycleEliphaz and Job Bildad and Job Zophar and Job Third cycleEliphaz and Job Bildad and Job 3.
Three monologues: A Poem to Wisdom Job's closing monologue and Elihu's speeches 4. Two speeches by God, with Job's responses 5. Epilogue – Job's restoration; the prologue on Earth introduces Job as a righteous man, blessed with wealth and daughters. The scene shifts to Heaven. Satan answers. God gives Satan permission to take Job's wealth and kill all of his children and servants, but Job nonetheless praises God: "Naked I came out of my mother's womb, naked shall I return: the Lord has given, the Lord has taken away. God allows Satan to afflict his body with boils. Job sits in ashes, his wife prompts him to "curse God, die," but Job answers: "Shall we receive good from God and shall we not receive evil?" Job laments the day of his birth. His three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad console him; the friends do not waver in their belief that Job's suffering is a punishment for sin, for God causes no one to suffer innocently, they advise him to repent and seek God's mercy. Job responds with scorn: his interlocutors are "miserable comforters", since a just God would not treat him so harshly, patience in suffering is impossible, the Creator should not take his creatures so to come against them with such force.
Job's responses represent one of the most radical restatements of Israelite theology in the Hebrew Bible. He moves away from the pious attitude as shown in the prologue and began to berate God for the disproportionate wrath against him, he sees God as, among others and suffocating. He shifts his focus from the injustice that he himself suffers to God's governance of the world, he suggests that the wicked have taken advantage of the needy and the helpless, who remain in significant hardship, but God does nothing to punish them. The dialogues of Job and his friends are followed by a poem on the inaccessibility of wisdom: "Where is wisdom to be found?" it asks, concludes that it has been hidden from man. Job contrasts his previous fortune with an outcast, mocked and in pain, he protests his innocence, lists the principles he has lived by, demands that God answer him. Elihu intervenes to state that wisdom comes from God, who reveals it through dreams and visions to those who will declare their knowledge.
God speaks from a whirlwind. His speeches neither explain Job's suffering, nor defend divine justice, nor enter into the courtroom confrontation that Job has demanded, nor respond to his oath of innocence. Instead they contrast Job's weakness with divine wisdom and omnipotence: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" Job makes a brief response. In 42:1–6 Job makes his final response, confessing God's power and his own lack of knowledge "of things beyond me which I did not know", he has only heard, but now his eyes have seen God, "therefore I retract/ And repent in dust and ashes." God tells Eliphaz that he and the two other friends "have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has done". The three are told to make a burnt offering with Job as their intercessor, "for only to him will I show favour". Job is restored to health and family, lives to see his children to the fourth generation. Job appears in the
Belisarius
Flavius Belisarius was a general of the Byzantine Empire. He was instrumental to Emperor Justinian I's ambitious project of reconquering much of the Mediterranean territory of the former Western Roman Empire, lost less than a century before. One of the defining features of Belisarius's career was his success despite varying levels of support from Justinian, his name is given as one of the so-called "Last of the Romans". Belisarius is considered a military genius who conquered the Vandal Kingdom of North Africa in the Vandalic War in nine months from July 533 to March 534, he defeated the Vandal armies at the battles of Ad Decimum and Tricamarum and compelled the Vandal king Gelimer to surrender. After the conquest of North Africa, Belisarius took over most of Italy from the Ostrogothic Kingdom in a series of sieges between 535 and 540 during the Gothic War. Belisarius was born in Germane or Germania, a fortified town of which some archaeological remains still exist, on the site of present-day Sapareva Banya in south-west Bulgaria, within the borders of Thrace and Paeonia, or in Germen, a town in Thrace near Adrianople, in present-day Turkey.
Born into an Illyrian or Thracian family that spoke Latin as a mother tongue, he became a Roman soldier as a young man, serving in the bodyguard of Emperor Justin I. He came to his nephew, Justinian, as a promising and innovative officer, he was given permission by the emperor to form a bodyguard regiment, of heavy cavalry, which he expanded into a personal household regiment, 1,500 strong. Belisarius's bucellarii were the nucleus around which all the armies he would command were organized. Armed with a lance, composite bow, spatha, they were armoured to the standard of heavy cavalry of the day. A multi-purpose unit, the bucellarii were capable of shooting at a distance with bow, like the Huns, or could act as heavy shock cavalry, charging an enemy with lance and sword. In essence, they combined the best and most dangerous aspects of both of Rome's greatest enemies, the Huns and the Goths. Following Justin's death in 527, the new emperor, Justinian I, appointed Belisarius to command the Roman army in the east to deal with incursions from the Sassanid Empire.
He proved himself an able and effective commander, defeating the larger Sassanid army through superior generalship. In June/July 530, during the Iberian War, he led the Romans to a stunning victory over the Sassanids in the Battle of Dara, followed by a tactical defeat at the Battle of Callinicum on the Euphrates in 531—this was a strategic victory in that the Persians retreated to their own borders; this led to the negotiation of an "Eternal Peace" with the Persians, Roman payment of heavy tributes for years in exchange for peace with Persia, freeing resources for redeployment elsewhere. In 532, he was the highest-ranking military officer in the Imperial capital of Constantinople when the Nika riots broke out in the city and nearly resulted in the overthrow of Justinian. Belisarius sought the help of Mundus, the magister militum of Illyricum, Narses, a eunuch and general, his friend John the Armenian. Together, they suppressed the rebellion, turning the rebels who had gathered in the Hippodrome against each other, by bribing one group to depart in peace and massacring the remainder, by some accounts as many as 30,000 people.
For his efforts, Belisarius was rewarded by Justinian with the command of a land and sea expedition against the Vandal Kingdom, mounted in 533–534. The Romans had political and strategic reasons for such a campaign; the pro-Roman Vandal king Hilderic had been deposed and murdered by the usurper Gelimer, giving Justinian a legal pretext. The Arian Vandals had periodically persecuted the Nicene Christians within their kingdom, many of whom made their way to Constantinople seeking redress; the Vandals had launched many pirate raids on Roman trade interests, hurting commerce in the western areas of the Empire. Justinian wanted control of the Vandal territory in north Africa, one of the wealthiest provinces and the breadbasket of the Western Roman Empire and was now vital for guaranteeing Roman access to the western Mediterranean. In the late summer of 533, Belisarius landed near Caput Vada, he ordered his fleet not to lose sight of the army marched along the coastal highway toward the Vandal capital of Carthage.
He did this to prevent supplies from being cut off and to avoid a great defeat such as occurred during the attempt by Basiliscus to retake northern Africa 65 years before, which had ended in the Roman disaster at the Battle of Cap Bon in 468. Gelimer had planned to ambush and encircle the Romans along with a force under his brother Ammatas and 2,000 men under his nephew Gibamund; the three attacks were not properly synchronized, however, so that Ammatas and Gibamund's forces were defeated before the forces of Gelimer met Belisarius ten miles from Carthage at the Battle of Ad Decimum on September 13, 533. Despite his bold plan, Gelimer's forces were outnumbered and surprised and disorganised for the positioning of Belisarius' main force, leading to Belisarius routing Gelimer and the remains of his army off the field. With this victory, Belisarius soon took Carthage. A second victory at the Battle of Tricamarum on December 15 resulted in Gelimer's surrender early in 534 at Mount Papua, restoring the lost Roman provinces of north Africa to the empire.
For this achievement, Belisarius was granted a triumph. According to Procopius, the spoils of the Temple of Jerusalem, including many obj
Justinian I
Justinian I, traditionally known as Justinian the Great and Saint Justinian the Great in the Eastern Orthodox Church, was the Eastern Roman emperor from 527 to 565. During his reign, Justinian sought to revive the empire's greatness and reconquer the lost western half of the historical Roman Empire. Justinian's rule constitutes a distinct epoch in the history of the Later Roman empire, his reign is marked by the ambitious but only realized renovatio imperii, or "restoration of the Empire"; because of his restoration activities, Justinian has sometimes been known as the "last Roman" in mid 20th century historiography. This ambition was expressed by the partial recovery of the territories of the defunct Western Roman Empire, his general, swiftly conquered the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa. Subsequently, Belisarius and other generals conquered the Ostrogothic kingdom, restoring Dalmatia, Sicily and Rome to the empire after more than half a century of rule by the Ostrogoths; the prefect Liberius reclaimed the south of the Iberian peninsula, establishing the province of Spania.
These campaigns re-established Roman control over the western Mediterranean, increasing the Empire's annual revenue by over a million solidi. During his reign, Justinian subdued the Tzani, a people on the east coast of the Black Sea that had never been under Roman rule before, he engaged the Sasanian Empire in the east during Kavad I's reign, again during Khosrow I's. A still more resonant aspect of his legacy was the uniform rewriting of Roman law, the Corpus Juris Civilis, still the basis of civil law in many modern states, his reign marked a blossoming of Byzantine culture, his building program yielded such masterpieces as the church of Hagia Sophia. Justinian was born in Tauresium, around 482. A native speaker of Latin, he came from a peasant family believed to have been of Illyro-Roman or Thraco-Roman origins; the cognomen Iustinianus, which he took is indicative of adoption by his uncle Justin. During his reign, he founded Justiniana Prima not far from his birthplace, which today is in South East Serbia.
His mother was the sister of Justin. Justin, in the imperial guard before he became emperor, adopted Justinian, brought him to Constantinople, ensured the boy's education; as a result, Justinian was well educated in jurisprudence and Roman history. Justinian served for some time with the Excubitors but the details of his early career are unknown. Chronicler John Malalas, who lived during the reign of Justinian, tells of his appearance that he was short, fair skinned, curly haired, round faced and handsome. Another contemporary chronicler, compares Justinian's appearance to that of tyrannical Emperor Domitian, although this is slander; when Emperor Anastasius died in 518, Justin was proclaimed the new emperor, with significant help from Justinian. During Justin's reign, Justinian was the emperor's close confidant. Justinian showed much ambition, it has been thought that he was functioning as virtual regent long before Justin made him associate emperor on 1 April 527, although there is no conclusive evidence of this.
As Justin became senile near the end of his reign, Justinian became the de facto ruler. Justinian was appointed consul in 521 and commander of the army of the east. Upon Justin's death on 1 August 527, Justinian became the sole sovereign; as a ruler, Justinian showed great energy. He was known as "the emperor" on account of his work habits, he seems to have been amiable and easy to approach. Around 525, he married Theodora, in Constantinople, she was by some twenty years his junior. In earlier times, Justinian could not have married her owing to her class, but his uncle, Emperor Justin I, had passed a law allowing intermarriage between social classes. Theodora would become influential in the politics of the Empire, emperors would follow Justinian's precedent in marrying outside the aristocratic class; the marriage caused a scandal, but Theodora would prove to be a shrewd judge of character and Justinian's greatest supporter. Other talented individuals included his legal adviser. Justinian's rule was not universally popular.
Justinian recovered. Theodora died in 548 at a young age of cancer. Justinian, who had always had a keen interest in theological matters and participated in debates on Christian doctrine, became more devoted to religion during the years of his life; when he died on 14 November 565, he left no children, though his wife Theodora had given birth to a stillborn son several years into his reign. He was succeeded by Justin II, the son of his sister Vigilantia and married to Sophia, the niece of Empress Theodora. Justinian's body was entombed in a specially built mausoleum in the Church of the
Chalcedon
Chalcedon was an ancient maritime town of Bithynia, in Asia Minor. It was located directly opposite Byzantium, south of Scutari and it is now a district of the city of Istanbul named Kadıköy; the name Chalcedon is a variant of Calchedon, found on all the coins of the town as well as in manuscripts of Herodotus's Histories, Xenophon's Hellenica, Arrian's Anabasis, other works. Except for a tower no above-ground vestiges of the ancient city survive in Kadıköy today; the site of Chalcedon is located on a small peninsula on the north coast of the Sea of Marmara, near the mouth of the Bosphorus. A stream, called the Chalcis or Chalcedon in antiquity and now known as the Kurbağalıdere, flows into Fenerbahçe bay. There Greek colonists from Megara in Attica founded the settlement of Chalcedon in 685 BC, some seventeen years before Byzantium; the Greek name of the ancient town is from its Phoenician name qart-ħadaʃt, meaning "New Town", whence Karkhēd, as is the name of Carthage. The mineral chalcedony is named for.
The mound of Fikirtepe has yielded remains dating to the Chalcolithic period and attest to a continuous settlement since prehistoric times. Phoenicians were active traders in this area. Pliny states that Chalcedon was first named Procerastis, a name which may be derived from a point of land near it: it was named Colpusa, from the harbour probably. Chalcedon originated as a Megarian colony in 685 BC; the colonists from Megara settled on a site, viewed in antiquity as so inferior to that visible on the opposite shore of the Bosphorus, that the 6th-century BC Persian general Megabazus remarked that Chalcedon's founders must have been blind. Indeed and Pliny relate that the oracle of Apollo told the Athenians and Megarians who founded Byzantium in 657 BC to build their city "opposite to the blind", that they interpreted "the blind" to mean Chalcedon, the "City of the Blind". Trade thrived in Chalcedon. Chalcedonia, the territory dependent upon Chalcedon, stretched up the Anatolian shore of the Bosphorus at least as far as the temple of Zeus Urius, now the site of Yoros Castle, may have included the north shore of the Bay of Astacus which extends towards Nicomedia.
Important villages in Chalcedonia included Panteicheion. Strabo notes that "a little above the sea" in Chalcedonia lies "the fountain Azaritia, which contains small crocodiles". In its early history Chalcedon shared the fortunes of Byzantium; the 6th-century BC Persian satrap Otanes captured it. The city vacillated for a long while between the Athenian interests. Darius the Great's bridge of boats, built in 512 BC for his Scythian campaign, extended from Chalcedonia to Thrace. Chalcedon formed a part of the kingdom of Bithynia, whose king Nicomedes willed Bithynia to the Romans upon his death in 74 BC; the city was destroyed by Mithridates. The governor of Bithynia, had fled to Chalcedon for safety along with thousands of other Romans. Three thousand of them were killed, sixty ships captured, four ships destroyed in Mithridates' assault on the city. During the Empire, Chalcedon recovered, was given the status of a free city, it fell under the repeated attacks of the barbarian hordes who crossed over after having ravaged Byzantium, including some referred to as Scythians who attacked during the reign of Valerian and Gallienus in the mid 3rd century.
Chalcedon suffered somewhat from its proximity to the new imperial capital at Constantinople. First the Byzantines and the Ottoman Turks used it as a quarry for building materials for Constantinople's monumental structures. Chalcedon fell to armies attacking Constantinople from the east. In 361 AD it was the location of the Chalcedon tribunal, where Julian the Apostate brought his enemies to trial. In 451 AD an ecumenical council of Christian leaders convened here. See below for this Council of Chalcedon; the general Belisarius spent his years of retirement on his estate of Rufinianae in Chalcedonia. Beginning in 616 and for at least a decade thereafter, Chalcedon furnished an encampment to the Persians under Chosroes II, it fell for a time to the Arabs under Yazid. Chalcedon was badly damaged during the Fourth Crusade, it came definitively under Ottoman rule under Orhan Gazi a century before the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. Chalcedon was an episcopal see at an early date and several Christian martyrs are associated with Chalcedon: The virgin St. Euphemia and her companions in the early 4th century.
St. Sabel the Persian and his companions, it was the site of various ecclesiastical councils. The Fourth Ecumenical Council, known as'the' Council of Chalcedon, was convened in 451 and defined the human and divine natures of Jesus, which provoked the schism with the churches composing Oriental Orthodoxy. After the council, Chalcedon became a metropolitan without suffragans. There is a list of its bishops in Le Quien, completed by Anthimus Alexoudes, revised for the early period by Pargoire. Among others are: a martyr. Cosmas and Nicetas, during the Iconoclastic period.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Fortescue, Adrian (1909). "Eutychius I". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. 5. New York: Robert Appleton.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Sinclair, W. M. . In Wace, Henry; Piercy, William C. (eds.). Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century (3rd ed.). London: John Murray.
