Dionysias
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dionysias is a Roman Catholic titular see in the former Roman province of Arabia. This city, which figures in the "Synecdemos" of Hierocles (723, 3) and Georgius Cyprius (1072), is mentioned only in Parthey's "Prima Notitia", about 840, as a suffragan of Bostra (presently Bosra, in modern Syria).
Waddington (op. cit. 529 sqq.) identifies Dionysias with Soada, now es-Sûwêda in Arabic, the chief town of an Ottoman caza in the vilayet of Damascus, where many inscriptions have been found. Soada, though an important city, is not alluded to in ancient authors under this name; inscriptions prove that it was built by a "lord builder Dionysos" and that it was an episcopal see. Noldeke admits this view. Gesenius identifies Dionysias with Shohba (in Antiquity Philippopolis), but this is too far from Damascus.
Lequien (Or christ., II, 865) gives the names of three Greek (Byzantine) bishops, Severus, present at the First Council of Nicaea in 325, Elpidius at the First Council of Constantinople in 381, and Maras at the council of Chalcedon in 451. Another, Peter, is known by an inscription (Waddington, Inscriptlons ... de Syrie, no. 2327). Fifteen or sixteen titular Latin bishops are known throughout the fifteenth century (Lequien, op. cit., III 1309; Eubel, I, 232, II, 160).
[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- This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia, so may be out of date, or reflect the point of view of the Catholic Church as of 1913.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]
