Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/605

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PATMOS


547


PATRAS


now grave, now epigrammatically witty, on the profounder significances of love in marriage. The book became quickly famous. In 1862 the poet's wife died, leaving him with six young children. As happy love had been his earlier, the grief of loss be- came in great measure his later theme; poignantly touching and also mo.st sublime thoughts upon love, death, and immortality are presented under greatly poetic imagery in the odes of "The Unknown Eros". Coventry Patmore became a Catholic in Rome very soon after his first wife's death. His second wife, Marianne Byles, was of the same faith. She was a woman of considerable fortune as well as beauty. Bringing him no children, she died after some twenty years of marriage, and the poet, somewhat late in life, made a third alliance, his wife being Miss Harriet Robson, also a Catholic; she became the mother of one son.

Patmore's prose works are the essays collected under the title "Principle in Art", and "Rod, Root, and Flower". They belong to the latter half of his life. The volume named second is in great part deeply and loftily mystical. During the period of his first marriage Patmore had lived in the intimacy of Ruskin, Browning, Tennyson, Dobell, Millais, Woolner, Ros- setti, and Holman Hunt, and was associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, especially in the production of the "Germ", to which he contributed poetry and prose. During his last years he withdrew into the country, and gave his time almost entirely to meditation. His unique lot was to be at first the most popular, and later the least popular of poets. Between the periods of composition occurred long spaces of silence. Yet there was no change in the spirit of the poet. He smiled to see such different estimation wait upon poetry that was as starry and divine in the trivial- seeming and much-read "Angel" as in the "Unknown Eros", hardly opened by the pubhc, and only now beginning to take its place as a great English classic in the minds of students.

Alice Meynell.

Patmos, a small volcanic island in the ^gean Sea, off the coast of Asia Minor, to the south of Samos and west of Miletus, in lat. .37° 20' N. and long. 26° 3.5' E. Its length is about ten miles, its breadth six miles, and its coast-line thirty-seven miles. The highest point is Hagios Elias (Mt. St. Elias), rising to over 1050 feet. The island was formerly covered with luxuriant palm- groves, which won it the name of Palmosa; of these groves there remains but a clump in the valley called "The Saint's Garden". The ancient capital occupied the northern (Ruvali) i.sthmus. The modern town of Patmns li<'s in the miildle part of the island. Above it lowers the I)at1 Iniicnts of St. John's monastery, fountled in lOSS by St. Christobulus. The Island of Patmos is famous in history as the place of St. John's exile: "I, John . . . was in the island, which is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus" (Apoc., i, 9); there according to general belief the Beloved Disciple wrote the Apocalypse, the im- agery of which was in part inspired by the scenery of the island. The spot where St. John was favoured with his revelations is pointed out as a cave on the slope of the hill, half way between the shore and the modern town of Patmos.

Clahk. Travels (London. 1818); Mdrrat, Handbook to Asia Minor (London) ; TozER, The Islands of the Mgean (London, 1890); Gu^RiN, Description de Vile de Patmos (Paris, 1856); La- CROix, Les lies de la Grkce (Paris, 1853) ; Le Camub, Voyage aux pays bibliques (Paris, 1890) ; Ross, Reisen auf den griechischen Inseln (Stuttgart, 1840).

Charles L. Souvat.

Patna. See Allahabad, The Diocese of.

Patras, metropolitan see in Achaia. It was one of the twelve ancient cities of Achaia, built near Mount Panachaicon (now Voidia), and formed of three small districts, Aroe, Antheia, and Meaatis.


After the Dorian invasion Patreus established there a colony from Laconia, and gave his name to the city. In the Peloponnesian War it took sides with Athens, and, in 419 B. c, Alcibiades advised the construction of long walls to connect the town with its harbour. Re- verses having reduced it to extreme misery, Augustus restored it after the victory at Actium by a military colony, called Aroe Patren.sis, the existence of which till the reign of CJordianus III is attested by coins. It became very prosperous through its commerce and especially through its weaving industry. In the sixth century it suffered from an earthquake (Pro- copius, "Bell. Goth.", IV, xxv), and afterwards from the ravages of the Slavs. In 807, however, it re- sisted the attacks of the Slavs and, in return, received the title of metropolitan see from the Emperor Nice- phorus I. Patras was dependent on Rome until 733, when it became subject to the Pat riarchate of Constan- tinople. Nothing is known of the beginning of Chris- tianity in the city, unless we accejit tlie tradition that it was evangelized by the Apo.-itle St. .\nilr(>w. A celebrated Stylite lived there in th<> tenth century, to whom St. Luke the Younger went to be trained (P. G., CXI, 451). In 1205 William of Champlitte took possession and installed canons; they in turn elected Anthelme, a monk of Chmy, as archbishop. The territory formed a barony subject to the A'cman family and included in the principality of Morea or Achaia. The Latin archbishops held it from the second half of the thirteenth century till 1408, when they sold it to Venice. In 1429 it again fell into the power of the Greeks, and was taken by the Turks in 1460. Under the Ottoman dominion Patras became the capital of the pashalik of Morea, and underwent severe trials. In 1532 it was captured by Andrea Doria; in 1571, at the time of the Battle of Lepanto, the Greek metropolitan aroused the popu- lace on behalf of the Venetians and was cut to pieces by the Turks. It was burnt by the Spaniards in 1595; pillaged by the Maltese in 1603, and captured by the Venetians on 24 July, 1687, and kept by them for thirty years. In 1770, at the instigation of the Russians, the city revolted, and was sacked by the Turks. On 4 April, 1821, it rose unsuccessfully against the Ottomans, who held it until it was de- livered by General Maison on 5 October, 1828. It is now the capital of the nome Achaia, and has 38,000 inhabitants.

The Greek see, first dependent on Corinth, became a metropolitan see in the ninth century. It had four suffragans (Gelzer, "Ungedruckte . . . Texte der Notiti;o episcopatuum", 5.57); then five about 940 (Gelzer, "Georgii Cyprii Descriptio orbis Romani", 77); after 1453 it had only two, which successively disappeared (Gelzer, op. cit., 634). Its titulars were called Metropolitans of Patras from the ninth century until the Middle Ages, Metropolitans of Old Patras until 1833, Bishops of Achaia until 1852, Archl)isho])8 of Patras and Eleia from that time. The list of its titulars has been compiled bv Le Quien (Oriens christ.,

II, 177-82), Gelzer (in Gerland, "Neue Qurllcn zur Geschichte des lateinischen Erzbistums Patras", Leipzig, 1903), 247-5.5, Pargoire (in " Iv'hos cl'( )rieiit ", VII, 10.3-07). The Latin archdiocese, crcati'd in 1205, lasted until 1441, when it became a titular see. It had five suffragans, Andravida, AmycUe, Modone, Corone, and Cephalonia-Zante; even when Modone and Corone belonged to the Venetians they continued to depend on Patra-s. The list of Latin titulars has been drawn up by Le Quien (op. cit.. Ill, 1023-32), Eubel (Hierarchia cath. med. a?vi, I, 412; II, 236;

III, 289), and Gerland (op. cit., 244-46). In 1640 the Jesuits established themselves at Patras, and in 1687 the Franciscans and Carmelites. In the nineteenth century the pope confided the administration of the Peloponnesus to the Bishop of Zante, in 1834 to the Bishop of Syra. Since 1874 the city has formed a