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.[1]
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.[2]
In 315 a great council was held there, the acts of which are still extant. In the early church baptism was generally by immersion. Baptism by perfusion, that is by pouring the water over the candidate, was permitted in the case of the seriously ill and where sufficient water for immersion was unobtainable or impractical, as in, for example, prisons. The Council of Neocaesarea ruled that individuals baptized by perfusion were disqualified from being presbyters. This became an issue in the case of Novation, who had received baptism by perfusion when dangerously ill.[3]
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
- ↑ Annuario Pontificio 2013 (Libreria Editrice Vaticana 2013 ISBN 978-88-209-9070-1), p. 939
- ↑ Van Dam, Raymond. Becoming Christian: The Conversion of Roman Cappadocia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 73. ISBN 0812237382. Retrieved 16 April 2015.
- ↑ "Sacraments of the Orthodox Church", The Church Eclectic, 1901
- Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Neocæsarea (2)". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton. 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