Parium

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Parium (or Parion) was a Greek city in Mysia on the Hellespont. It became a Roman Catholic titular see, suffragan of Cyzicus in the Roman province of Hellespontus.

[edit] History

Located near Lampsacus, it was a colony probably founded by Eretria and Paros. It belonged to the Delian League. In the Hellenistic period it came under the domain of Lysimachus, and subsequently the Attalid dynasty.

In Roman times, it was a Colonia, within the province of Asia; and after the province was divided in the 4th century, it was in the province of Hellespontus.

[edit] Christian history

The Acts of the martyr St. Onesiphorus prove that there was a Christian community there before 180. Other saints worthy of mention are: St. Menignus, martyred under Decius and venerated on 22 November; St. Theogenes, bishop and martyr, whose feast is observed on 3 January; St. Basil, bishop and martyr in the ninth century, venerated on 12 April.

Le Quien (Oriens christianus I, 787-90) mentions 14 bishops, the last of whom lived in the middle of the fourteenth century. An anonymous Latin bishop is mentioned in 1209 by Innocent III (Le Quien, op. cit., III, 945) and a titular bishop in 1410 by Eubel (Hierarchia Catholica medii ævi, I, 410).

At first a suffragan of the Archbishopric, Parium became an autocephalous archdiocese as early as 640 (Gelzer, "Ungedruckte . . . Texte", 535) and remained so till the end of the thirteenth century. Then the Emperor Andronicus II made it a metropolis under the title of Pegon kai Pariou.

In 1354 Pegæ and Parium (the Latin forms of both names) were suppressed, the incumbent metropolitan receiving in exchange the See of Sozopolis in Thrace (Miklosich and Müller, "Acta patriarchatus Constantinopolitani", I, 109, 111, 132, 300, 330). This was the end of the episcopal see.

The ruins of Parium were under Ottoman rule at the Greek village of Kamares (the vaults), on the small cape Tersana-Bournou in the caza and sandjak of Bigha.