(St Severina),[1] he of Athens, he of Patras, he of New Patras. These are added to the Synod and Church of Constantinople, since the Pope of ancient Rome is held by gentiles."[2] Another of these lists counts under the Byzantine Patriarchate, "the Eparchy of the island of Sicily (Metropolis Catana); Eparchy of Calabria (Rhegium)."[3] Sicily has at this time fourteen sees: Syracuse, Catana, Tauromenion, Messana, Cephalœdium (Κεφαλούδιον, Cefalù), Thermæ,[4] Panormus, Lilybæum, Trikala,[5] Akragas (Girgenti), Tyndaris,[6] Leontinoi,[7] Alesa,[8] the island Malta. All these are counted as Byzantine sees. In the beginning of the ninth century the Armenian monk Basil writes: "These Metropolitans with their bishops were taken from the Roman diocese and subjected to the throne of Constantinople: Thessalonica, Syracuse, Corinth, Rhegium, Nikopolis (St Severina), Athens, Patras; because the Pope of old Rome is in the hands of Barbarians."[9]
After the Norman conquest the Greek Archimandrite Neilos Doxopatres[10] at Palermo, in his account of the division of Christendom between the five Patriarchates, admits that originally "Apulia, Calabria, and all the Campagna" were under the Roman Patriarch, also "Pannonia and all Illyricum, Macedonia and Thrace, whereas Byzantium and all the rest of the West in the same way belonged to the Roman."[11] His view is that Rome obtained her position because she was the Imperial city. "But when she ceased to be the Empress, because she was enslaved by foreigners and barbarous people and Goths, and being still under these as one who had lost the Empire, then she lost both her privileges and her Primacy."[12] So Neilos thinks that Constantinople has inherited the rights
- ↑ The Greeks began to call Sancta Severina (ἡ ἁγία Σεβερίνη) Νικόπολις after Nikephoros Phokas had conquered it from the Moslems (886).
- ↑ Parthey, op. cit., p. 74 (P.G., cvii, 340).
- ↑ The eighth Notitia in Parthey (op. cit., p. 162). Catana as metropolis of Sicily is puzzling. Otherwise the Metropolis is always Syracuse.
- ↑ Thermæ Himerenses, now Termini Imerese, on the coast between Palermo and Cefalù.
- ↑ Τροκαλείς = Τριόκαλα, Τρίκαλα, between Sciacca and Porto Empedocle, on the south-west coast. There is nothing now left of this city.
- ↑ There is now only a Capo Tindaro, on the North coast, by Patti.
- ↑ Now Lentini, between Catania and Syracuse.
- ↑ Ἄλεσα = Ἅλαισα, Halesa, on the North coast, East of Cefalù; only ruins now remain.
- ↑ Gelzer, "Georgii Cypr. descr.," p. 27.
- ↑ See p. 93.
- ↑ Ed. Parthey, p. 271.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 289.
