Caesarea in Mauretania
Cesarea in Mauretania (Latin: Caesarea Mauretaniae, meaning "Cesarea of Mauretania") was a Roman colony in Roman-Berber North Africa.[1] It was the capital of Mauretania Caesariensis [2] and is now called Cherchell, in modern Algeria.
Ecclesiastical history
Apart from some bishops who may have been of the church in Caesarea and whose names are engraved in inscriptions that have been unearthed, the first bishop whose name is preserved in extant written documents is Fortunatus, who took part in the Council of Arles of 314, which condemned Donatism as heresy. A letter of Symmachus mentions a bishop named Clemens in about 371/372 or 380.
The town became a Donatist centre and at the joint Conference of Carthage in 411, was represented both by the Donatist Emeritus and by the Catholic Deuterius. Augustine of Hippo has left an account of his public confrontation with Emeritus at Caesarea in the autmn of 418, after which Emeritus was exiled.
The last bishop of Caesarea whose name is known from written documents was Apocorius, one of Catholic bishops whom Huneric summoned to Carthage in 484 and then sent into exile. An early 8th-century Notitia Episcopatuum still included this see.[3][4]
Notes
- ↑ Detailed map of Roman Berber Africa, showing the location of Iol-Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast
- ↑ Ph. Leveau: Caesarea Mauretaniae (in French)
- ↑ Joseph Mesnage, L'Afrique chrétienne, Paris 1912, pp. 447–450
- ↑ Charles Courtois, v. Césarée de Maurétanie, in Dictionnaire d'Histoire et de Géographie ecclésiastiques, vol. XII, Paris 1953, coll. 203-206
