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Mosynopolis (), of which only ruins now remain in Greek Thrace, was a city in the Roman province of Rhodope, which was known until the 9th century as Maximianopolis (Μαξιμιανούπολις) or, to distinguish it from other cities of the same name, as Maximianopolis in Rhodope. Aikaterini Balla, "Mosynopolis-Maximianoupolis"
In the 11th century, the city was the center of a district ( bandon) in the theme of Boleron, and Anna Komnene reports in her Alexiad that there were many living in Mosynopolis in the late 11th/early 12th centuries. The town was captured in 1185 by the Normans, while the monk Ephrem says that the city was captured in 1190 by Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor.Cæsares, V. 5695, in Patrologia Graeca, CXLIII, 216. The Battle of Messinopolis, in which the Bulgarians defeated Boniface I, Marquess of Montferrat, took place nearby in 1207, and was speedily followed by the destruction of Mosynopolis by Tsar Kaloyan of Bulgaria.
The fate of the town thereafter is somewhat obscure: it re-appears in 1317 as part of the theme of "Boleron and Mosynopolis", and its bishopric was still active, but the historian Catherine Asdracha, in her 1972 survey of the Rhodope area in the late Middle Ages, suggests that it never recovered from Kaloyan's sack and remained in ruins, proposing that it is to be identified with the town of Mesene, which the emperor and historian John VI Kantakouzenos reported as "destroyed many years ago".
The town at some point had other names including Porsula or Porsulae, Corsulae, Impara and Pyrsoalis,Antonine Itinerary,
From the 7th to the 9th centuries, the Episcopal see is referred to as archiepiscopal, giving it autocephalous status.
In all these instances, the see appears under the name Maximianopolis, but in 879 it is under the name Mosynopolis that it is represented by a bishop called Paul at the Fourth Council of Constantinople. From the following century to the 12th, it appears with reduced status as a suffragan of Traianoupoli.
In the 13th century it became a Latin Church bishopric.
The see is mentioned under the name Mosynopolis also in the Notitiae Episcopatuum of Leo the Wise, about 900;Heinrich Gelzer, Ungedruckte ... Notitiæ episcopatuum, 558. in that for 940;Gelzer, Georgii Cyprii Descriptio orbis Romani, 79. in that for 1170 under the name of Misinoupolis.Parthey, Hierocles Synecdemus, 122. Siméon Vailhé, "Mosynoupolis" in Catholic Encyclopedia (New York 1911)
After the destruction of the city, the Patriarchate of Constantinople in August 1347 authorized the Metropolitan of Traianoupoli to exercise jurisdiction in what had been the see of Maximianopolis or Mosynopolis.
The diocese was nominally restored in 1933 as the Latin Catholic titular archbishopric Massimianopolis in Rhodope.
It is vacant, having had a single incumbent of the intermediary (archiepiscopal) rank:
Ecclesiastical history
Bishops of Maximianopolis in Rhodope were present at the 5th and 6th-century ecumenical councils of Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), and Constantinople II (553) and in another council of 459.
Titular see
The bishopric is included in the Catholic Church's list of both as an archiepiscopal see under the name Maximianopolis in Rhodope Annuario Pontificio 2013 (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013, ), p. 925 and as a suffragan diocese of Mosynopolis subject to Trajanopolis in Rhodope. Annuario Pontificio 2013, p. 934
Photographs
See also
Source and External links
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