Mosynopolis (), of which only ruins now remain in Greek

Thrace Thrace (, ; ; ; ) is a geographical and historical region in Southeast Europe roughly corresponding to the province of Thrace in the Roman Empire. Bounded by the Balkan Mountains to the north, the Aegean Sea to the south, and the Black Se ...

, was a city in the

Roman province The Roman provinces (, pl. ) were the administrative regions of Ancient Rome outside Roman Italy that were controlled by the Romans under the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire. Each province was ruled by a Roman appointed as Roman g ...

of Rhodope, which was known until the 9th century as Maximianopolis (Μαξιμιανούπολις) or, to distinguish it from other cities of the same name, as Maximianopolis in Rhodope.Aikaterini Balla, "Mosynopolis-Maximianoupolis"
/ref>

History

The city of Maximianopolis appears in written sources from the 4th century on. Its fortifications were renewed by

Byzantine emperor The foundation of Constantinople in 330 AD marks the conventional start of the Eastern Roman Empire, which Fall of Constantinople, fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 AD. Only the emperors who were recognized as legitimate rulers and exercised s ...

Justinian I Justinian I (, ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was Roman emperor from 527 to 565. His reign was marked by the ambitious but only partly realized ''renovatio imperii'', or "restoration of the Empire". This ambition was ...

, and it was later a base for operations by Emperor

Basil II Basil II Porphyrogenitus (; 958 – 15 December 1025), nicknamed the Bulgar Slayer (, ), was the senior Byzantine emperor from 976 to 1025. He and his brother Constantine VIII were crowned before their father Romanos II died in 963, but t ...

in his

wars War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of State (polity), states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or betwe ...

against the

Bulgarians Bulgarians (, ) are a nation and South Slavs, South Slavic ethnic group native to Bulgaria and its neighbouring region, who share a common Bulgarian ancestry, culture, history and language. They form the majority of the population in Bulgaria, ...

. In the 11th century, the city was the center of a district ('' bandon'') in the theme of Boleron, and Anna Komnene reports in her '' Alexiad'' that there were many Manichaeans living in Mosynopolis in the late 11th/early 12th centuries. The town was captured in 1185 by the

Normans The Normans (Norman language, Norman: ''Normaunds''; ; ) were a population arising in the medieval Duchy of Normandy from the intermingling between Norsemen, Norse Viking settlers and locals of West Francia. The Norse settlements in West Franc ...

, while the monk Ephrem says that the city was captured in 1190 by

Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (December 1122 – 10 June 1190), also known as Frederick I (; ), was the Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 until his death in 1190. He was elected King of Germany in Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt on 4 March 1152 and crowned in Aa ...

. The Battle of Messinopolis, in which the Bulgarians defeated Boniface I, Marquess of Montferrat, took place nearby in 1207, and was speedily followed by the destruction of Mosynopolis by Tsar Kaloyan of Bulgaria. The fate of the town thereafter is somewhat obscure: it re-appears in 1317 as part of the theme of "Boleron and Mosynopolis", and its bishopric was still active, but the historian Catherine Asdracha, in her 1972 survey of the Rhodope area in the late Middle Ages, suggests that it never recovered from Kaloyan's sack and remained in ruins, proposing that it is to be identified with the town of Mesene, which the emperor and historian John VI Kantakouzenos reported as "destroyed many years ago". The town at some point had other names including Porsula or Porsulae, Corsulae, Impara and Pyrsoalis,

Ecclesiastical history

Bishops of Maximianopolis in Rhodope were present at the 5th and 6th-century

ecumenical council An ecumenical council, also called general council, is a meeting of bishops and other church authorities to consider and rule on questions of Christian doctrine, administration, discipline, and other matters in which those entitled to vote are ...

s of

Ephesus Ephesus (; ; ; may ultimately derive from ) was an Ancient Greece, ancient Greek city on the coast of Ionia, in present-day Selçuk in İzmir Province, Turkey. It was built in the 10th century BC on the site of Apasa, the former Arzawan capital ...

(431), Chalcedon (451), and Constantinople II (553) and in another council of 459. From the 7th to the 9th centuries, the see is referred to as archiepiscopal, giving it autocephalous status. In all these instances, the see appears under the name Maximianopolis, but in 879 it is under the name Mosynopolis that it is represented by a bishop called Paul at the Fourth Council of Constantinople. From the following century to the 12th, it appears with reduced status as a

suffragan A suffragan bishop is a type of bishop in some Christian denominations. In the Catholic Church, a suffragan bishop leads a diocese within an ecclesiastical province other than the principal diocese, the metropolitan archdiocese; the diocese led ...

of Trajanopolis in Rhodope. In the 13th century it became a

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

bishopric. The see is mentioned under the name Mosynopolis also in the ''

Notitiae Episcopatuum The ''Notitiae Episcopatuum'' (singular: ''Notitia Episcopatuum'') were official documents that furnished for Eastern countries the list and hierarchical rank of the metropolitan and suffragan bishoprics of a church. In the Roman Church (the mos ...

'' of Leo the Wise, about 900; in that for 940; in that for 1170 under the name of Misinoupolis.Siméon Vailhé, "Mosynoupolis" in ''Catholic Encyclopedia'' (New York 1911)
/ref> After the destruction of the city, the Patriarchate of Constantinople in August 1347 authorized the Metropolitan of Trajanopolis to exercise jurisdiction in what had been the see of Maximianopolis or Mosynopolis.

Titular see

The bishopric is included in the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

's list of

titular see A titular see in various churches is an episcopal see of a former diocese that no longer functions, sometimes called a "dead diocese". The ordinary or hierarch of such a see may be styled a "titular metropolitan" (highest rank), "titular archbi ...

s both as an archiepiscopal see under the name Maximianopolis in Rhodope and as a suffragan diocese of Mosynopolis subject to Trajanopolis in Rhodope.''Annuario Pontificio 2013'', p. 934 The diocese was nominally restored in 1933 as the Latin Catholic titular archbishopric Massimianopolis in Rhodope. It is vacant, having had a single incumbent of the intermediary (archiepiscopal) rank : * Adam Hefter (5 December 1939 – 9 January 1970), previously Bishop of Gurk (Austria) (26 December 1914 – 4 May 1939) and Titular Bishop of Marciana (4 May 1939 – 5 December 1939)

Photographs

Image:20100418_Maximianoupolis_Mosynopolis_Rhodope_Thrace_Greece_1.jpg , Fortress: a little south from the church. Image:20100418_Maximianoupolis_Mosynopolis_Rhodope_Thrace_Greece_3.jpg , A central plan church. Image:20100418_Maximianoupolis_Mosynopolis_Rhodope_Thrace_Greece_4.jpg , A central plan church. Image:20100418_Maximianoupolis_Mosynopolis_Rhodope_Thrace_Greece_5.jpg , A central plan church.

References

Source and External links