Chytri
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Chytri is a Roman Catholic titular see on the island and in the former Roman province of Cyprus.
[edit] History
It was beautifully located in the centre of the island, in the territory of Chytraea, west of Messaria. The flourishing modern village Kyrka (pronounced tsirka), in Greek officially Kythraia, in Turkish Deirmennik, has preserved the ancient name.
There has been found here a pre-Phoenician necropolis. In the time of the Assyrian king Assurbanipal, Pilagura was King of Kitrusi, one of the ten kingdoms in the island. Numerous inscriptions have been found in the Cypriot dialect, some in ordinary Greek. Chytri was noted for the worship of Apollo, Artemis and Aphrodite Paphia. Later forms of the name are Cythraia, Cythereia, Cythroi, Chytrides; according to the late Greek work of Sakellarios (Kypriaka, 2nd ed., 202-205) Kyrka should be Cythera or Cythereia; he identifies Chytri with Palo-Kythro, a village with ruins two hours south of Kyrka. However, the historical texts mention only one town.
Chytri was at an early date an episcopal see. Lequien's list of the bishops of the see (II, 1069) is very incomplete, only eight being recorded: the first is St. Pappus, who suffered martyrdom under Licinius, Maximinus or Constantius; the most famous is St. Demetrian, 885-912 (?).
The Greek, i.e. Orthodox, see of similar title was suppressed in 1222 by Cardinal Pelagius, the papal legate, while the islands was a Latin crusader kingdom.
[edit] Source
- This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia, so may be out of date, or reflect the point of view of the Catholic Church as of 1913. It should be edited to reflect broader and more recent perspectives. [1]
