Larissa (titular see)

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The Catholic titular see of Larissa is the seat of a titular archbishopric of Thessaly, now in Greece.

[edit] History

The city, one of the oldest and richest in Greece, is said in Greek mythology to have been founded by Acrisius, who was killed accidentally by his son, Perseus^[1]. There lived Peleus, the hero beloved by the gods, and his son Achilles; however, the city is not mentioned by Homer, unless it should be identified with Argissa of the Iliad^[2].

The constitution of the town was democratic, which explains why it sided with Athens in the Peloponnesian War. In the neighbourhood of Larissa was celebrated a festival which recalled the Roman Saturnalia, and at which the slaves were waited on by their masters. It was taken by the Thebans and afterwards by the Macedonian kings, and Demetrius Poliorcestes gained possession of it for a time, 302 BC. It was there that Philip V of Macedonia signed in 197 BC a treaty with the Romans after his defeat at Cynoscephalae, and it was there also that Antiochus III, the Great, won a great victory, 192 BC.

Larissa is frequently mentioned in connection with the Roman civil wars which preceded the establishment of the empire and Pompey sought refuge there after the defeat of Pharsalus. First Roman, then Greek until the thirteenth century, and afterwards Frankish until 1400, the city fell into the hands of the Turks, who kept it until 1882, when it was ceded to Greece; it suffered greatly from the conflicts between the Greeks and the Turks between 1820 and 1830, and from the Turkish occupation in 1897. It was very prosperous under the Turkish sovereignty. On 6 March, 1770, Aya Pasha massacred there 3000 Christians from Trikala.

Christianity penetrated early to Larissa, though its first bishop is recorded only in 325 at the Council of Nicaea. St. Achilius of the fourth century, is celebrated for his miracles. Lequien^[3] cites twenty-nine bishops from the fourth to the eighteenth centuries; the most famous is Jermias II, who occupied the Patriarch of the West until 733, when the Emperor Leo III the Isaurian annexed it to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In the first years of the tenth century it had ten suffragan sees^[4]; subsequently the number increased and about the year 1175 under the Emperor Manuel Commenus, it reached twenty-eight^[5]. At the close of the fifteenth century, under the Turkish domination, there were only ten suffragan sees^[6], which gradually grew less and finally disappeared.