Marcianopolis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Marcianopolis, or Marcianople (Devnya in modern Bulgaria), is a Roman Catholic titular see in the former Roman province of Lower Moesia, on the right bank of the Danube

[edit] History

The city was so renamed by Emperor Trajan after his sister Marciana (Amm. Marcellinus, XXVII, 2) and previously known as Parthenopolis. Romans repulsed a Goth attack to this town in 267 (or 268), during the reign of Gallienus (Historia Augusta, Claudius, 9; Zosimus, I, 42); Valens made it his winter quarters in 368 and succeeding years (Amm. Marcell., XXVII, 5; Theophanes the Confessor Chronographia, A. M. 5859, 5860, 5861). In 587 it was sacked by the king of the Avars but at once retaken by the Romans (Theophanes the Confessor, "Chronographia" A. M. 6079). The Roman army quartered there in 596 before crossing the Danube to assault the Avars (op. cit., A. M. 6088).

[edit] Ecclesiastical history

Marcianopolis was the home of many saints or martyrs, e.g. St. Melitena, whose liturgical feast is kept on 15 September and whose remains were carried to Lemnos; St. Alexander, martyred under Maximianus, and whose feast is kept on 2 February; Saints Maximus, Theodotus and Asclepiodotus, martyred at Adrianople under Maximianus, and whose feast is kept on 15 September, were born at Marcianopolis.

The "Ecthesis" of the pseudo-Epiphanius (c. 640) gives the Metropolitical See of Marcianopolis in the Balkans five suffragans (Heinrich Gelzer, "Ungedruckte ... Texte der Notitiae Episcopatuum" 542). The Notitia Episcopatuum of the Armenian cleric, Basil (c. 840) confirms this (Gelzer, Georgii Cyprii descriptio orbis romani, 25).

On the other hand Marcianopolis is not mentioned in the Notitia of Leo the Wise (c. 900) nor in that of Constantine Porphyrogenitus (c. 940), because the region was Bulgarian. Le Quien (Oriens christianus, I, 1217-1220) mentions many bishops of Marcianopolis and Preslav, erroneously identifying these two towns. The Preslav of the Middle Ages remains Preslav to this day, and his Marcianopolis is the town of Devnya, a little to the west of Varna in Bulgaria. This name under the form Bulgaria is mentioned by George Pachymeres on account of something that took place there in 1280 (De Michaele Palaeologo, VI, 49).