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Dear catholic.com visitors: This Catholic Answers website, with all its free resources, is the world’s largest source of explanations for Catholic beliefs and practices. We receive no funding from the institutional Church and rely entirely on your generosity to sustain this website with trustworthy, accessible content. If every visitor this month donated $1, catholic.com would be fully funded for an entire year. If you’ve never made a gift, now is the time. Your donation will be matched dollar for dollar this week only. Thanks and God bless.

Zela

Titular see of Asia Minor, suffragan of Amasea in the Helenopontus

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Zela, titular see of Asia Minor, suffragan of Amasea in the Helenopontus. In pagan times the city, which was situated on the Scylax, belonged to priests, equal in dignity to the princes of Pontus, lords of the territory. On the eminence which rises in the middle of the city stood a famous temple, consecrated by the Persian kings to their national divinities, Anahita, Vohu-Mane, and Anadates. Zela is famous for the victory of Mithridates Eupator over Valerius Trianus, lieu-tenant of Lucullus (67 B.C.), also for that of Caesar over Pharnaces (47 B.C.), after which he wrote his famous letter, “Veni, Vidi, Vici” (I came, I saw, I conquered). At first a mere hamlet, Zela obtained from Pompeii the title of city, and became the capital of a district allotted to Queen Pythadoris (Strabo, XI, viii, 4; XII, iii, 37; Pliny, “Hist. Nat.”, VI, 8). It was finally ceded to Nero, with all Pontus Polemoniacus, by its last king, and remained part of the Greco-Roman empire until 1397, when the Turks seized it. According to a letter (72) of St. Basil, a council was held there by the Arians in the fourth century. Le Quien (Oriens christ., I, 541) mentions several bishops: Heraclius, at Nice (325); Atticus, at Chalcedon (451); Hyperechius (458); Georgius (692); Constantine (787); Paul (879). According to the “Acta Patriarchatus Constantinopolitani” of Miklosich and Muller (I, 69), there was a bishop at Zela in 1315; he was then named Metropolitan of Amasea; later the see was suppressed. Zela (now Zilch) is a Gaza in the sandjak of Tokat and the vilayet of Sivas; the city numbers 20,000 inhabitants, 5000 of whom are Christians, the rest being nearly all schismatic Armenians.

S. VAILHI


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