Augustopolis in Phrygia


Augustopolis in Phrygia was a city and bishopric in the Roman province of Phrygia, which remains a Latin Catholic and an Orthodox titular see.

Location and names

It was situated in the plain of Akar Çay. The Annuario Pontificio associates it with a modern Surmene, not the Sürmene on a part of the Black Sea coast, which belonged to the late Roman province of Pontus.
The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica said that this Augustopolis was "formerly Anabura ". The Phrygian town of Anabura is mentioned by Livy as lying on the route of the consul Gnaeus Manlius Vulso from Synnada to the sources of the Alander.

Ecclesiastical history

Augustopolis in Phrygia became a Christian bishopric. In the Late Roman province of Phrygia Salutaris Prima, it was a suffragan of the capital Synnada in Phrygia's Metropolitan Archbishopric.
The names of four of its residential bishops are known because of being mentioned in extant documents.
Augustopolis in Phrygia is today included in the Catholic Church's list of titular sees since the diocese's nominal restoration in the 15th century as a titular bishopric, under the name Augustopolis, until its renaming in 1933, avoiding confusion with Augustopolis in Palestina.
It is vacant since decades, having had the following incumbents, of the lowest rank with an archiepiscopal exception :
It is also an Orthodox titular metropolis in Turkey of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.