Tyana

From the Catholic Encyclopedia

A titular metropolitan see of Cappadocia Prima. The city must first have been called Thoana, because Thoas, a Thracian king, was its founder (Arrianus, "Periplus Ponti Euxini", vi); it was in Cappadocia, but at the foot of Taurus and near the Cilician Gates (Strabo, XII, 537; XIII, 587). The surrounding plain received the name of Tyanitis. There in the first century A.D. was born the celebrated magician Apollonius. Under Caracalla the city became the "Antoniana colonia Tyana". After having taken sides with Queen Zenobia of Palmyra it was captured by Aurelian in 272, who would not allow his soldiers to pillage it (Homo, "Essai sur le règne de l'Empereur Aurélien", 90-92). In 371 Valens created a second province of Cappadocia, of which Tyana became the metropolis, which aroused a violent controversy between Anthimus, Bishop of Tyana, and St. Basil, Bishop of Caesarea, each of whom wished to have as many suffragan sees as possible. About 640 Tyana had three, and it was the same in the tenth century (Gelzer, "Ungedruckte . . . Texte der Notitiae episcopatum", 538, 554). Le Quien (Oriens christ., I, 395- 402) mentions 28 bishops of Tyana, among whom were Eutychius, at Nice in 325; Anthimus, the rival of St. Basil; Aetherius, at Constantinople in 381; Theodore, the friend of St. John Chrysostom; Eutherius, the partisan of Nestorius, deposed and exiled in 431; Cyriacus, a Severian Monophysite. In May, 1359, Tyana still had a metropolitan (Mikelosich and Müller, "Acta patriarchatus Constantinopolitani", I, 505); in 1360 the metropolitan of Caesarea secured the administration of it (op. cit., 537). Thenceforth the see was titular. The ruins of Tyana are at Kilisse-Hissar, three miles south of Nigde in the vilayet of Koniah; there are remains of a Roman aqueduct and of sepulchral grottoes.

S. VAILHÉ