ANCYRA

Two ancient cities of Asia Minor, important for early Church history.Ancyra in Galatia is the modern city of Ankara, Turkey. St. Paul visited Galatia twice, in 51 or 52 (Acts 15:30–18:1) and 54 or 55 (Acts 18:23) and addressed an Epistle to the galatians from Corinth in 57. Crescens, its first known bishop, founded the church of Vienne in Gaul. Ancyra had a number of early martyrs, including Theodotus, the brothers Plato and Antiochus, and Clement, to whom a 6th-century church with cupola was dedicated. Its temple of Augustus was converted into a Christian church, and the city served as a monastic center (Palladius, Hist. Laus. 66–68). It was early troubled by heretical movements, as St. Paul testifies (Epistle to the Galatians), and montanism and other sects spread from there (Council of Constantinople I, c.7; In Trullo, c.95). Synods were conducted in 273 and 277. The acts of the synod in 314 deal mainly with apostates, or lapsi, and moral discipline (Mansi 2:513–540); that of 358, called by George of Iconium and presided over by basil of ancyra, adopted the homoiousian formula against the Anomeans, avoiding the homoousios for fear that it favored sabellianism, while the semi-Arians opposed the formula "similar in all things" (Mansi 3:265–290). The synod of 375 deposed the Catholic Bp. Hypsis of Parnassus and attempted to arrest gregory of nyssa. As a metropolitan see of Constantinople, Ancyra in the 7th century had seven or eight suffragans and was considered fourth in rank. It lost importance after the Arab invasions, and its Greek population became Turkish-speaking. It was colonized by the Armenians in the 13th century. In the 19th century Pius IX created a bishopric for the Armenians, who had been united to Rome since 1735. The massacre of the Armenians in 1917 and the treaty of Lausanne following the Greco-Turkish war in 1923 put an end to Christianity in the region.

Ancyra in Phrygia (known also as Ancyra ferrea or Ancyra of Synaos), originally in the province of Lydia, formed part of Laodicea in the 6th century and c. 900 was suffragan of Hierapolis. Florentius, its first known bishop, participated in the Council of Nicaea I (325). Philip of Ancyra was at Chalcedon (451); Cyricus, at Constantinople III (680–681) and in Trullo (692); Constans, at Nicaea III (787); and Michael, at the Photian Council of Constantinople (879). Ancyra had two Latinbishops in the 15th century: Francis (d. 1434) and Gonsalvus of Curiola. Its ruins were discovered by Hamilton near the modern village of Klisse-Keuï not far from Synaos (modern Simaoul); they include a theater and temple.

Bibliography: k. gross, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, 1:568. c. karalevsky, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques 2:1538–43. c. j. von hefele, Histoire des conciles d'après les documents originaux, tr. and continued by h. leclercq, 1.1:298–326; 1.2:903–908. p. joannou, Discipline générale antique (II ^e-IX ^es. ) (Sacra Congregazione Orientale, Codificazione orientale, Fonti ; 1962) 1.2:54–73. h. grotz, Die Hauptkirchen des Ostens (Orientalia Christiana Analecta 169; 1964) 126–133, 158–159. g. de vries, Cattolicismo e problemi religiosinel prossimo oriente (Rome 1944) 131–138. l. robert, Hellenica 9 (1950) 67–77. s. vailhÉ, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques 2:1546–48. m. le quien, Oriens Christianus 1:799–802. t. wiegand, "Reisen in Mysien" Mitteilungen des kaiserlichen deutschen archaeologischen Instituts: Athenische Abteilung 24 (1904) 311–339. For Ancyra, Armenian Catholicbishopric, see f. tournebize, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques 2:1543–46.

[p. joannou]