Caesarea Palaestinae

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(Caesarea Maritima.) Atitular see of Palestine. In Greek antiquity the city was calledPyrgos Stratonos (Straton's Tower), after a Greek adventurer or a Sidonian King; under this name it antedates, perhaps, Alexander the Great.King Herod named it Caesarea inhonour ofAugustus, and built theretemples, palaces, a theatre, an amphitheatre, a port, and numerous monuments, withcolonnades and colossalstatues. The civil life of the new city began in 13 B.C., from which time Caesarea was the civil and military capital of Judaea, and as such was the official residence of the Roman procurators, e.g.Pilate and Felix.Vespasian and Titus made it a Roman colony,Colonia Prima Flavia Augusta Caesarea. UnderAlexander Severus it became the civilmetropolis of Palestine, and later, when Palestine had been divided into three provinces, it remained themetropolis of Palaestina Prima. St. Peter established the church there when hebaptized thecenturionCornelius (Acts 10:11);St. Paul often sojourned there (ix, 30, xviii, 22, xxi, 8), and wasimprisoned there for two years before being taken toRome (xxiii, 23, xxv, 1-13). However, there is no record of anybishops of Caesarea until the second century. At the end of this century a council was held there to regulate the celebration ofEaster. In the third centuryOrigen took refuge atCaesarea, and wrote there many of his exegetic andtheological works, among others the famous"Hexapla", themanuscript of which was for a long time preserved in the episcopallibrary of that city. ThroughOrigen and the scholarlypriest, St. Pamphilus, thetheologicalschool of Caesarea won a universal reputation.St. Gregory the Wonder-Worker,St. Basil the Great, and others came from afar to study there. itsecclesiasticallibrary passed for the richest in antiquity; it was there thatSt. Jerome performed much of his Scriptural labours. Thelibrary was probably destroyed either in 614 by thePersians, or about 637 by theSaracens. Asecclesiasticalmetropolis of Palaestina Prima, subject to the Patriarchate of Antioch, Caesarea had theBishop ofJerusalem among its suffragans till 451, when Juvenalis succeeded in establishing the Patriarchate ofJerusalem. Caesarea had then thirty-two suffragen sees (Revue de l'Orient chrét., 1899, 56).Lequien (III, 533-74) mentions thirty-two Greekbishops of Caesarea, but his list is very incomplete. Among the more celebrated are Theotecnus, a disciple ofOrigen; the famous church historianEusebius, a disciple of St. Pamphilus; Acacius, the leader of anArian group; the historianGelasius of Cyzicus; St. John the Khozibite in the sixth century; and Anastasius, a writer of the eleventh century. During thepersecution ofDiocletian, Caesarea had manymartyrs to whomEusebius hasconsecrated an entire work (De martyribus Palaestinae). Among them were St. Hadrian, whose church has just been discovered; Sts.Valens, Paul, Prophyrius, and others. Another illustrious personage of Caesarea is the sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius. When King Baldwin I took the city in 1101, it was still very rich. There was found the famouschalice known as theHoly Grail, believed to have been used at theLast Supper, preserved now atParis, and often mentioned inmedieval poems. The city was rebuilt by thecrusaders, but on a smaller scale. A list of thirty-sixLatinbishops, from 1101 to 1496; is given byLequien (III, 1285-1290) and Eubel (I, 159; II, 126). During theFrankish occupation the Latinmetropolis had ten suffragensees. Themetropolitan See of Caesarea is still preserved by the Greeks of the Patriarchate ofJerusalem, as it is by the Latins merely as atitular see. The present name of the city is Kaisariyeh. Since 1884 a colony ofMussulman Bosnians has occupied themedieval city, which covers a space of about 1800 feet, north to south, and 7500 feet, east to west. The ancient walls, bastions, and ditches are well preserved. The ruins of the Roman city extend to a distance of about four miles; they are the largest in Palestine, and are used as a stone-quarry for Jaffa and Gaza, and even forJerusalem. One sees there, crowded together, the haven ofHerod, restored by thecrusaders, the amphitheatre large enough to contain 20,000 spectators, remains of canals and aqueducts, a hippodrome with a splendid obelisk of rose granite,colonnades, ruins oftemples and of at least two churches, and other stupendous relics of past greatness.

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