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<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <title>CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Asia Minor</title><script src="https://dtyry4ejybx0.cloudfront.net/js/cmp/cleanmediacmp.js?ver=0104" async="true"></script><script defer data-domain="newadvent.org" src="https://plausible.io/js/script.js"></script><link rel="canonical" href="https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01782a.htm"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <meta name="description" content="The peninsular mass that the Asiatic continent projects westward of an imaginary line running from the Gulf of Alexandretta (Issus) on the Mediterranean to the vicinity of Trebizond (Trapezus) on the Black Sea"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://feeds.newadvent.org/bestoftheweb?format=xml"><link rel="icon" href="../images/icon1.ico" type="image/x-icon"><link rel="shortcut icon" href="../images/icon1.ico" type="image/x-icon"><meta name="robots" content="noodp"><link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="../utility/screen6.css" media="screen"></head> <body class="cathen" id="01782a.htm">  <br/> <div id="capitalcity"><table summary="Logo" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 width="100%"><tr valign="bottom"><td align="left"><a href="../"><img height=36 width=153 border="0" alt="New Advent" src="../images/logo.gif"></a></td><td align="right"> <form id="searchbox_000299817191393086628:ifmbhlr-8x0" action="../utility/search.htm">  <input type="hidden" name="safe" value="active"> <input type="hidden" name="cx" value="000299817191393086628:ifmbhlr-8x0"/> <input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:9"/>  <label for="searchQuery" id="searchQueryLabel">Search:</label> <input id="searchQuery" name="q" type="text" size="25" aria-labelledby="searchQueryLabel"/>  <label for="submitButton" id="submitButtonLabel" class="visually-hidden">Submit Search</label> <input id="submitButton" type="submit" name="sa" value="Search" aria-labelledby="submitButtonLabel"/> </form> <table summary="Spacer" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td height="2"></td></tr></table> <table summary="Tabs" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr> <td bgcolor="#ffffff"></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../"> Home </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_white_on_color" href="../cathen/index.html"> Encyclopedia </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../summa/index.html"> Summa </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../fathers/index.html"> Fathers </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../bible/gen001.htm"> Bible </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../library/index.html"> Library </a></td> </tr></table> </td> </tr></table><table summary="Alphabetical index" width="100%" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td class="bar_white_on_color"> <a href="../cathen/a.htm"> A </a><a href="../cathen/b.htm"> B </a><a href="../cathen/c.htm"> C </a><a href="../cathen/d.htm"> D </a><a href="../cathen/e.htm"> E </a><a href="../cathen/f.htm"> F </a><a href="../cathen/g.htm"> G </a><a href="../cathen/h.htm"> H </a><a href="../cathen/i.htm"> I </a><a href="../cathen/j.htm"> J </a><a href="../cathen/k.htm"> K </a><a href="../cathen/l.htm"> L </a><a href="../cathen/m.htm"> M </a><a href="../cathen/n.htm"> N </a><a href="../cathen/o.htm"> O </a><a href="../cathen/p.htm"> P </a><a href="../cathen/q.htm"> Q </a><a href="../cathen/r.htm"> R </a><a href="../cathen/s.htm"> S </a><a href="../cathen/t.htm"> T </a><a href="../cathen/u.htm"> U </a><a href="../cathen/v.htm"> V </a><a href="../cathen/w.htm"> W </a><a href="../cathen/x.htm"> X </a><a href="../cathen/y.htm"> Y </a><a href="../cathen/z.htm"> Z </a> </td></tr></table></div> <div id="mobilecity" style="text-align: center; "><a href="../"><img height=24 width=102 border="0" alt="New Advent" src="../images/logo.gif"></a></div>  <div id="mi5"><span class="breadcrumbs"><a href="../">Home</a> > <a href="../cathen">Catholic Encyclopedia</a> > <a href="../cathen/a.htm">A</a> > Asia Minor</span></div> <div id="springfield2"> <div class='catholicadnet-728x90' id='cathen-728x90-top' style='display: flex; height: 100px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; '></div> <h1>Asia Minor</h1> <p><em><a href="https://gumroad.com/l/na2"><strong>Please help support the mission of New Advent</strong> and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more  all for only $19.99...</a></em></p> <p>The peninsular mass that the <a href="../cathen/01777b.htm">Asiatic</a> continent projects westward of an imaginary line running from the Gulf of Alexandretta (Issus) on the Mediterranean to the vicinity of <a href="../cathen/15028a.htm">Trebizond</a> (Trapezus) on the Black Sea. It is washed by three great seas, the Euxine (Black Sea) on the north, the Mediterranean on the south, and the Ægean on the west. It is located between 36°-42° north latitude and 26°-40° east longitude. The extreme length is about 720 miles and the extreme breadth about 420, though the average is 650 and 300 miles respectively. At its extreme western limit it almost touches the <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">European</a> mainland, from which it is separated for several miles by the narrow straits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles (Hellespont) and by the small Sea of Marmora (Propontis) through which connecting waters the Mediterranean and the Black Sea are brought into mutual contact.</p> <h2 id="section1">Name</h2> <p>In remote antiquity it had no common designation, being known variously after the races or kingdoms that it included. The term "Asia" was soon popularized by the Romans for whom it meant only the populous and cultivated western sea-board, organized by them into a province, together with neighbouring territory (Mysia, Lydia, Caria, Phrygia) more or less civilized after the Græco-Roman <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">ideas</a>. The first writer to use the term Asia Minor is the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> Orosius (Hist., I, 2, 10), about the year 400. The early Byzantine writers often refer to it as <em>‘e mikrà ’Asía,</em> "Little <a href="../cathen/01777b.htm">Asia</a>". In Byzantine administration it came soon to be known under the somewhat elastic name of <em>’Anatolé</em> or "rising sun", i.e. "the East". It was, politically speaking, "the Anatolic theme", one of the twenty-nine provinces of the Byzantine empire from the seventh century to the eleventh century, when it became a <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turkish</a> land. Since then it has become officially known as Anatolia (Anadoli, Natolia, Nadolia), and as such constitutes an important part of <a href="../cathen/01777b.htm">Asiatic</a> Turkey, is in fact the chief political and religious mainstay of the present <a href="../cathen/10424a.htm">Moslem</a> constitution as far as it is based on Constantinople. Asia Minor is also known as "the Levant", a Western (Italian and French) equivalent for Anatolia. This term, however, applies chiefly to the commercial and industrial centres of the southern and western coasts, though in <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> language and history it often includes both <a href="../cathen/05329b.htm">Egypt</a> and the Holy Land. It was only gradually, and in response to divers influences and agencies, that under the name of Asia Minor were included the remote semi-Oriental territories of Cappadocia and <a href="../cathen/12234c.htm">Pontus</a>, Cilicia and Lesser <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenia</a>. Outside of <a href="../cathen/09079a.htm">Roman law</a> and administration, their only element of earnest unity was in the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian religion</a>, and it is not at all insignificant that the first expression of a sense of close and solid relationship should come from a <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> <a href="../cathen/12025c.htm">philosopher</a> historian, and precisely at the moment when the new religion had finally borne down in town and country all forms of opposition and apathy, and filled with a new spirit the exhausted races and now lifeless culture of past ages.</p> <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> <h2 id="section2">Geography</h2> <p>It is an elevated plateau, ranging in its surfaces from two to five thousand feet above the sea level, from which rise great mountain chains that run east and west with a certain regularity, while minor groups of mountains and isolated peaks of savage grandeur are widely scattered over the immense table-land. In extent Asia Minor covers about 270,000 square miles and is about the size of <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a>, while in its main physical features it has often been compared with <a href="../cathen/14169b.htm">Spain</a>. The mountains of the northern coast, or Pontic range, rise abruptly from the sea for a long distance, are broken by no good harbours, and fall gradually away towards the Bosphorus. Those of the southern or Taurus range run in an irregular line not far from the Mediterranean and form a natural barrier between the central highlands and the southern sea, broken only by the coastal plains of Pamphylia and Cilicia. Inland, the Anti-Taurus range and isolated peaks lift their huge walls from seven to ten thousand feet and render difficult the intercommunication of the inhabitants. Some of these peaks, like Mt. Argæus in Cappadocia (13,100) are of volcanic origin, and smaller cones with well-preserved craters are numerous. There are but few passes, usually at a great height, the most notable of them being the famous Gates of Cilicia (Pylæ Ciliciæ) at the easternmost extremity, a narrow gorge (3,300) between two lofty mountains, the only entrance from the plains of <a href="../cathen/14399a.htm">Syria</a>, and therefore at all times the road followed by the Eastern conquerors of Asia Minor. At the extreme west the mountains descend gradually to the sea which they pierce with numberless headlands and projections that give rise to the system of bays and inlets in which Asia Minor has at all times found its chief resources and its most attractive charm.</p> <p>Asia Minor is a rich field for the geologist. The immense central mass of Mt. Argæus in Cappadocia is largely cretaceous limestone, and elsewhere, south and west, calcareous rocks abound. The rivers carry off enormous quantities of this material which, as it hardens to travertine, forces them to shift their beds, petrifies vegetation, and sterilizes the surroundings. Igneous rocks are frequent, and there is still abundance of the Proconnesian and Phrygian marbles that once tempted the <a href="../cathen/13641b.htm">sculptors</a> and builders of <a href="../cathen/11666a.htm">Pergamus</a> and <a href="../cathen/13024b.htm">Rhodes</a>. The mineral wealth is very great, but much neglected. The rivers are numerous and fall mostly into the Black Sea or the Mediterranean. But they are all sinuous and narrow, and as a rule very shallow. Moreover, falling from great interior heights, they become regularly torrential floods that carry away vast masses of alluvial matter, which they deposit in the sea, thereby filling up good harbours, converting into lakes ports once open, and pushing their deltas so far seaward that they become a menace to navigation. The lack of navigable rivers reaching well into the interior has always been a source of political and <a href="../cathen/12213b.htm">economic</a> weakness for Asia Minor, and is perhaps the chief reason why in antiquity it never took on the character of a great united state. In later times this was much more deplorable, owing to the ruin of the once excellent system of Roman roads, the suspicions and unprogressive attitude of the <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turkish</a> authorities, and the decay of all the land-improvements made by the original native races, the Greeks of the coast and coastal valleys, the Romans of the imperial period, and the Byzantine population. The interior plateau has an average altitude of 3,500 feet, and stretches north-east by southwest a distance of 250 miles in length by 160 in breadth. Much of it is a treeless and barren waste covered with salt lakes or brackish pools, and with a stunted growth of saline brush, wormwood, sage, and fern. Yet it supports many nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes of Turcomans and Yuruks, who wander at will over these lonely wastes and undulating downs in search of pasturage and water for their vast flocks of sheep and goats, though in the hot summer months they seek the higher levels for purer air and the welfare of their flocks.</p> <p>There are twenty-six lakes on this great plateau, some of which compare favourably with the great lakes of <a href="../cathen/14358a.htm">Switzerland</a>, both for size and beauty. Hot medicinal springs are very numerous and form one of the distinctive features of the land. In general the climate is colder than that of the <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">European</a> peninsula within the same degrees of latitude, and is subject to greater extremes of temperature. One cause of the great extremes of cold and heat is the general lack of moisture; that of the clouds is intercepted by the tall mountains, north and south, while the discharge of all the rivers is only about one-third of the united volume of the rivers of <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a>. The northern coast, between Constantinople and Sinope, is exposed to the cold blasts of unimpeded polar winds and to sultry summer heats; on the other hand, to the north-east the lofty peaks of the Caucasus intercept the cold winds from the steppes of <a href="../cathen/13231c.htm">Russia</a> and permit the growth of magnificent forests and of wild fruit-trees in abundance. The western coast has a temperature somewhat lower than that of <a href="../cathen/06735a.htm">Greece</a>, owing to the atmospheric currents developed by the countless headlands and inlets of the Ionian coast. The southern coast, sheltered from the north winds by the Taurus range, enjoys a warm and genial climate comparable to that of southern <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a>, though its summer is very dry. On the central plateau the climate is affected by the elevation and aspect of the land, but chiefly by the scanty rainfall; in some places the blue sky remains for six or seven months unflecked by a single cloud. As a rule, the summer is exceedingly hot and the winter equally cold. Even on the coast malaria is endemic, owing to the stagnant pools, swamps, and marshy tracts formed by the shifting of river beds, inundations, and the formation of deltas. Moreover, the deforestation of the interior permits the contaminated air of the low-lying pestilential plains to be wafted freely over the central plateau. In respect to climate Asia Minor has greatly deteriorated since Roman antiquity, owing chiefly to the low-grade civilization of its <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turkish</a> population and its inefficiency of the civil administration.</p> <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> <p>The flora of Asia Minor is very varied, apart from the scanty vegetation of the inland plateau. The oak is found there in fifty-two varieties, half of which occur nowhere else. On the northern slopes of the central plateau grow the walnut, box, beech, ash, and other trees; the great forest of Ajakh-Dagh (Sea of Trees) is 120 miles long by 40 broad, and its trees exhibit generally a much larger growth than those of other lands under the same latitude. There are also great forests on all the northern slopes of the Black Sea ranges. On the southern slope of the Taurus, to an altitude of 6,000 feet, noble <a href="../cathen/03473a.htm">cedar</a> groves grow and tower above the pines, firs, and junipers, while below them, gradually dropping to the sea, are broad belts of palm groves and aloes and other sub-tropical growths. In the eastern Pontic region and elsewhere the apple, pear, plum, and cherry grow wild; indeed, Asia Minor is said to be the native home of these fruit-trees, usually looked on as of Western origin. Oriental plane and cypress, quasi-sacred symbols of domestic comfort and of human sorrow, are found everywhere. In the sheltered southern valleys the vine, fig, orange, lemon, and citron grow amid the rich aromatic shrubbery, and lend to the landscape the aspect of <a href="../cathen/13772a.htm">Sicily</a> or the more favoured districts of southern <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a>.</p> <p>Several animal species, once indigenous to Asia Minor, have disappeared with the destruction of the inland forests. It is thought that like our domestic varieties of fruit trees, the sheep and the goat are also a gift of Asia Minor. The Angora goat, famous for its silky hair of which the mohair or so-called "cashmere" shawls are woven, is a <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turkish</a> importation of the eleventh or twelfth century (Tchihatcheff) and seems to have been unknown to the ancients. It is limited to the district of that name in Galatia, and the flocks, 400,000 to 500,000 head, are very difficult to acclimatize elsewhere than on these high plateaux; at any other place the quality of the fleece quickly deteriorates. The horses for which Asia Minor, particularly Cappadocia, was once famous have either disappeared or given way to another race, graceful, active, and hardy, but inferior to the present stock of <a href="../cathen/14399a.htm">Syria</a> or Arabia; there are no longer any large cattle of fine breed. The one-humped camel is the chief means of transportation, especially on the uplands and in the remote eastern districts. Here he associates peaceably with the horse, and can bear with ease and security a pack of 250 pounds over the passes and rocky terraces. The introduction of the camel probably dates from the twelfth century and symbolizes the thorough substitution of Oriental life for the civilization of the West. A small debased breed of asses abounds, quite inferior to the fine donkeys of <a href="../cathen/14399a.htm">Syria</a> or <a href="../cathen/05329b.htm">Egypt</a>. Mules are also numerous, as pack-animals and means of transportation; according to an Homeric tradition the peninsula is the original home of the mule. [For a fuller account of the geography of Asia Minor see the classic work of Vivien de Saint Martin, quoted below, and Reclus-Keane, The Earth and its Inhabitants (New York, 1895), Asia Minor (Anatolia), IV, 241-343.]</p> <h2 id="section3">History</h2> <p>From time immemorial Asia Minor has been the highway of nations crossing from east to west, and occasionally reversing their course. At the dawn of history, dimly seen Chalybes are working the iron ores of the Caucasus on the Black Sea, and close by are Iberians, Colchians and other tribes. At the other extremity Thracian tribes are flowing backward to their original haunts in Phrygia and Bithynia, while <a href="../cathen/13706a.htm">Semitic</a> peoples begin the historical life of Cappadocia. From 1500 to 1000 <font size=-2>B.C.</font> the <a href="../cathen/07305a.htm">Hittites</a> overran the land as far as the Halys and even as far as Smyrna and Ephesus; <a href="../cathen/13641b.htm">sculptures</a> and rock-sanctuaries (Boghaz-Keuï in Cappadocia) still attest their presence. Before them Turanian peoples may have been long settled on the land. Inscribed and sculptured rock-surfaces and <a href="../cathen/14773b.htm">tombs</a> in Lydia still puzzle the <a href="../cathen/01688a.htm">archeologist</a>, historian, and philologist. From all such data it is impracticable to reconstruct, except in the broadest outline, "the periods of formation through which Asia Minor must have passed before it stands out in the full light of history with its division into numerous more or less independent states, its mixed population, its complicated combination of <a href="../cathen/12738a.htm">religions</a> and cultures as different as the races which originated them" (Ragozin). The fable of the Amazon state in the Thermodon valley seems to have originated in the <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">female</a> <a href="../cathen/12409a.htm">priesthood</a> of the Hittite nature-goddess, Mâ, that the Greeks of the western coast eventually changed into Artemis (Diana of Ephesus). The modern discoveries of Schliemann and Dörpfeld at Hissarlik, on the site of ancient Troy, go far to confirm the reality of the main incidents in Homer and the traditional date (1200-1100 <font size=-2>B.C.</font>) of the siege and capture of the city of Priam. But it was not the Argives of Agamemnon who were destined to conquer Asia Minor for the <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">ideas</a> of Hellas. About the year 1100 <font size=-2>B. C., </font> numerous Greeks, fleeing before the Dorian invasion from the uplands of Epirus and Thessaly, began to move southward. Driven by these rude warlike invaders, they soon took to the open sea, and so eventually settled in the islands of the Archipelago and along the southern coast of Asia Minor wherever the river-mouths or the plains offered tempting sites for trade and enterprise. They found before them the kingdoms of Lydia and Caria with whose history Herodotus (I, 7-14) begins his account of the <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">wars</a> of the Greeks and <a href="../cathen/11712a.htm">Persians</a>; for <a href="../cathen/01777b.htm">Asia</a>, he says, with all the barbarian tribes that inhabit it, is regarded by the <a href="../cathen/11712a.htm">Persians</a> as their own (ibid., I, 4). Thenceforth, from the ninth to the sixth century <font size=-2>B. C., </font> it is a long procession of Greeks (Ionians, Æolians, Dorians) who descend regularly on the shores of Asia Minor as traders, colonists, adventurers; above all, men of Ionian race. They build their city and sanctuary of <a href="../cathen/10303c.htm">Miletus</a> near the shrine of the Lydian sun-god; they adopt other local <a href="../cathen/04683a.htm">deities</a>, intermarry with the natives and establish soon an over-sea Greece whose development is the first great chapter in the history of the Western mind. (Sayce, The Ancient Empires of the East, London, 1884; Grote, History of Greece.) The earliest known <a href="../cathen/11152a.htm">coins</a> (square-punched, electron) are of Lydian origin, belong to the seventh century <font size=-2>B. C., </font> and are perhaps a result of the mercantile intercourse of Greeks and natives. The <a href="../cathen/11264c.htm">oracle</a> of Delphi now attracted the Lydian kings, "the first of the barbarians", says Herodotus, "to send presents to that Greek temple", and so along the lines of a common religion there sprang up an ever closer intercourse of both races.</p> <p>About the middle of the sixth century <font size=-2>B. C., </font> a certain hegemony over most of the peninsula was established by Cræsus, King of Lydia, but this petted child of antique fortune was soon overthrown (548-546 <font size=-2>B.C.</font>) by the Persian Cyrus, after which for two centuries the entire land was an outlying province of <a href="../cathen/11712a.htm">Persia</a>. In those days the exactions of the "Great King" fitted in with the <a href="../cathen/01381d.htm">ambition</a> and patriotism of the Greeks of the mainland to bring about sympathetic <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">wars</a> in defence of the <a href="../cathen/01777b.htm">Asiatic</a> Greeks and then in defence of the Hellenic fatherland (500-449 <font size=-2>B.C.</font>). These <a href="../cathen/07687a.htm">immortal</a> efforts of the Greeks arrested forever the repeated overflow of Oriental arrogance and oppression, and made ready the way for the career of Alexander the Great who was destined to revenge on the Orient all the wrongs, supposed or real, of the Greeks of Asia Minor, and to open the career of <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">European</a> grandeur and progress. An uneasy and disturbed period followed, during which the <a href="../cathen/13690a.htm">Seleucid</a> successors of Alexander pretended to dominate from Antioch the rich and easy prey of Asia Minor that had fallen to Alexander after the battles of the Granicus and of <a href="../cathen/08201b.htm">Issus</a> (334-333 <font size=-2>B.C.</font>), fought respectively at either end of the peninsula. In this time arose the new kingdoms of <a href="../cathen/12234c.htm">Pontus</a>, Bithynia, Cappadocia, <a href="../cathen/11666a.htm">Pergamus</a>, and Cilicia partly Greek and partly native, also the interesting Celtic kingdom of Galatia founded (280 <font size=-2>B.C.</font>) by warlike adventurers from Gaul, and so organized by them that for the next six or seven centuries it bore the stamp of many peculiar Celtic institutions of their distant fatherland. Greek art, that had already flourished admirably in the Ionian islands and mainland centres of the south and south-west, now took on a fresh development forever connected with the little mountainous kingdom of <a href="../cathen/11666a.htm">Pergamus</a> and its Greek rulers known as the Attalids, from Attalus, a favourite name of its kings. Then came the <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">wars</a> with republican <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> (190-63 <font size=-2>B.C.</font>), ending in the latter year with the defeat and death of the great Mithradates VI, "the Oriental defender of Greek liberties", whereby <a href="../cathen/12234c.htm">Pontus</a> and Bithynia, i.e. the shores of the Black Sea, were for a long time freed from the peril of Oriental domination. In general the first three centuries of Roman imperial administration were a period of peace and progress for Asia Minor. From the fourth to the seventh century the last long conflict of Eastern <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> with <a href="../cathen/11712a.htm">Persia</a> went on, the vicissitudes of which were of no little importance to the great province across which the imperial armies and the warriors of <a href="../cathen/11712a.htm">Persia</a> moved to and fro. The annihilation of <a href="../cathen/11712a.htm">Persian</a> <a href="../cathen/01381d.htm">ambition</a> by Emperor Heraclius (<font size=-2>A.D.</font> 610-641) only shifted the source of danger; henceforth the <a href="../cathen/01663a.htm">Arab</a> and his successor, the Turk, take up the continuous challenge of the Orient, and finally make it good. Predatory <a href="../cathen/01663a.htm">Arab</a> invasions from 672 to 717 were repelled with vigour from Constantinople, after which for over three centuries the land remained subject to the hereditary Byzantine rule, though during this period almost endless conflict with the <a href="../cathen/01663a.htm">Arab</a> dynasties made the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> buffer-state of <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenia</a> a scene of unutterable woe, and even Asia Minor was constantly menaced by the children of the Prophet. In the end the <a href="../cathen/06147a.htm">bravery</a> and military skill of the Macedonian emperors (867-1057) availed not against the continuous pressure of fresh hordes from the far East, and the middle of the eleventh century saw two fatal events, almost contemporaneous and intimately connected, the final separation of the Greek and Latin churches (1040), and the conquest of Asia Minor by Malek Shah and his Seljuk <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turks</a> (1058-71). After the death of Malek (1092) his children disputed and divided the splendid inheritance left by him. But Asia Minor, henceforth Rûm (i.e. <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, the <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turkish</a> name of all <a href="../cathen/03096a.htm">Byzantine</a> territory), did not pass from their control; they set up their thrones at Nicæa, <a href="../cathen/11070a.htm">Nicomedia</a>, and eventually (1097) at <a href="../cathen/07619a.htm">Iconium</a> (Koniah). The <a href="../cathen/04543c.htm">crusaders</a> of the twelfth century usually took the great highway over Asia Minor, either entirely into <a href="../cathen/14399a.htm">Syria</a>, or partly, to embark at ports on the southern coast. Here and there they set up a temporary rule, but could not sustain it against the inexhaustible multitude of the <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turkish</a> hordes and the treachery of the Greek emperors. For more than a century the Seljuks ruled Asia Minor, until the appearance of the Mongol hordes (1235). The over-lordship of the latter lasted for some sixty years, until about 1294, when the rule of the Ottoman Turk was inaugurated by the victories of Othman I, and the successful reigns of his three sons, Urkhan, Murad I, and Bajazet I. A ray of hope shone for the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> <a href="../cathen/03096a.htm">Byzantines</a> during the thirteenth century when the Empire of Nicæa (1204-1330) held Bithynia, Lydia, a part of Phrygia and the islands of the Archipelago, i.e. the western region of Asia Minor, and again in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries when the Empire of <a href="../cathen/15028a.htm">Trebizond</a> (1204-1461) on the Black Sea nourished feebly the hopes of <a href="../cathen/05230a.htm">Greek Christians</a> for a return of independence under the cross. But Nicæa fell and became an outpost of <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Ottoman</a> conquest, and Trebizond scarcely survived the fall of <a href="../cathen/04301a.htm">Constantinople</a> (1453). Both weak states had arisen as a protest against the Latin conquest of Constantinople (1204), and though they made the coast line <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> for three centuries, they were unable to loosen the grip of the <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turkish</a> hordes of "the Black Sheep" and others on the table-land of the interior. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the <a href="../cathen/06419a.htm">Genoese</a> and <a href="../cathen/15333a.htm">Venetians</a> established a commercial supremacy along the coasts of Asia Minor and in many of the islands. They left permanent memorials in military architecture (since then the <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turks</a> call ruins indiscriminately "Djenovessi kalessi" or <a href="../cathen/06419a.htm">Genoese</a> castles), and especially in the commercial and maritime law, in business relations and methods, and in the class known henceforth as "Levantines". But the mutual jealousies and rivalries of the Italian commercial republics, and their predominating secular aims, prevented any serious attempt to oust the Seljuk Turk from the high table-lands and eastern border. Ottoman rule and life spread rapidly, threatened only for a brief while by a new Mongol invasion under Tamerlane (1386-1402), and by the disastrous battle of <a href="../cathen/01513a.htm">Angora</a> in the latter year (Creasy, History of the <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Ottoman Empire</a>, new ed., London, 1882). In the end, however, <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turkish</a> fortune and <a href="../cathen/06147a.htm">courage</a> prevailed, and permanent dominion over the peninsula was secured to the Osmanli by the capture of Constantinople in 1453, since which time save for a partial occupation by the <a href="../cathen/05329b.htm">Egyptian</a> Mohammed Ali (1831-39) the Turk has held in peace this richest jewel of Mediterranean empire. As a rule, the inland Turk has cared only for fresh pasturage for his flocks. Ever moving from place to place with his countless sheep and goats, he has despised agriculture and the life of towns. Heedless of the future he has ruined all cultivation of the land, allowed its once perfect development to decay completely, and driven the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> peasant of the Byzantine age to the mountains or the sea, when he has not induced him to adopt, with the normal life, the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> of the <a href="../cathen/08692a.htm">Koran</a>. It is the low-grade civilization of the steppes of <a href="../cathen/15095a.htm">Turkestan</a> made permanent on the former site of supreme Hellenic refinement of life and of <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> sublimity of teaching and <a href="../cathen/15472a.htm">virtue</a>. And it is universally admitted that only a recolonization from <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">Europe</a> can restore its original felicitous conditions. (Vivien de Saint Martin, "Déscription historique et géographique de l'Asie Mineure", Paris, 1852; Heyd, "Geschichte des Levantenhandels", Stuttgart, 1879, tr. into French by Reynaud, Paris, 1880-86).</p> <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> <p><em>The Roman Province.</em>—Under the Roman rule, republican and early imperial, the numerous political entities that had sprung up in Asia Minor after the death of Alexander the Great disappeared rapidly and made way for a unity and efficiency of administration, a peace and prosperity, hitherto unknown. The little Greek kingdoms of <a href="../cathen/11666a.htm">Pergamus</a> and Bithynia were left to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> by the wills of their last kings; Cilicia, freed by Pompey from the pirates that infested its waters, was only too grateful for imperial protection; <a href="../cathen/12234c.htm">Pontus</a> alone was won from Mithradates VI in a memorable <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">war</a> during which the Celts of Galatia sided with victorious <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> and reaped the reward of their good fortune in governmental favour. With their kings Deiotadrus and Amyntas, the line of Celtic rulers of Asia Minor closed; after the death of Amyntas (25 <font size=-2>B.C.</font>) Galatia became a Roman province. The last king of Cappadocia died in the reign of <a href="../cathen/14717b.htm">Tiberius</a>, and the land was forthwith annexed. In this way a practical uniformity of government was introduced over the entire peninsula. Without doing <a href="../cathen/15446a.htm">violence</a> to local customs or traditions, the imperial government assured to the <a href="../cathen/12514b.htm">provincials</a> an administration at once responsible and equitable, of swift and thorough <a href="../cathen/08571c.htm">justice</a>, of continuous peace, easy communication, protection to life and <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> and the fruits of honest industry. The wool-grower and the weaver of <a href="../cathen/01464b.htm">Ancyra</a>, the gold-embroiderer of <a href="../cathen/02060b.htm">Attalia</a>, and the <a href="../cathen/13641b.htm">sculptor</a> of Diana statuettes in Ephesus were henceforth assured of permanent prosperity, and with them all the other callings and occupations of the most highly civilized part of the Mediterranean world. Manufactures and industries increased, and before the end of the second century Asia Minor had touched the scene of temporal <a href="../cathen/07131b.htm">felicity</a>. Taxation, as everywhere in the empire, was close and minute, but not intolerable. Occasionally the taxes were remitted and in periods of public calamity (earthquakes, inundations) the public treasury came to aid the unhappy <a href="../cathen/12514b.htm">provincials</a>. The revenues of the peninsula, deeply impaired by republican misgovernment, the Mithradatic <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">wars</a>, and the campaigns against the pirates, increased with rapidity; the fertile islands of the archipelago together with Crete and <a href="../cathen/04589a.htm">Cyprus</a>, centuries ago hellenized in polity, tongue and civilized institutions, were bee-hives of industry. Rhodes, e.g., was the great workshop of Greek <a href="../cathen/13641b.htm">sculptors</a> who continued, though in a decadent way, the glorious traditions of the Ionian and Pergamene ages. Every available piece of ground on the coast was intensely cultivated, as the pitiful wreckage of agricultural engineering yet shows, while in the interior the plains of Galatia were covered with goats and sheep, and those of Cappadocia with the finest breed of horses known to the ancients. That all the industrial virtues were highly cultivated is shown by a list of occupations drawn from <a href="../cathen/08042a.htm">Christian inscriptions</a> of the fifth century (Cumont). They exhibit among other callings oil-dealers, scribes, greengrocers, potters, coppersmiths, skinners, mariners, money-changers, and goldsmiths. In the imperial period few new cities were added to the five hundred busy urban hives of the western coast, but Greek civilization went hand in hand with <a href="../cathen/09079a.htm">Roman law</a> through the interior and was welcomed, e.g. in the mountains of uncouth Cappadocia and of rugged warlike Issauria where the Attalids and <a href="../cathen/13690a.htm">Seleucids</a> had never been able to acclimatize it. For the better administration of <a href="../cathen/08571c.htm">justice</a> the land was divided into a certain number of judicial districts (<em>conventus juridici</em>) and assizes were regularly held in the chief towns of the same.</p> <p>A certain unity of religion was reached in the worship of <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> and Augustus, i.e. of the dead and later of the living emperors, to whom <a href="../cathen/14495a.htm">temples</a> were built in the <a href="../cathen/10244c.htm">metropolitan</a> cities (Augusteum, Cæsareum), and in the celebration of whose festivals the <a href="../cathen/01777b.htm">Asiatic</a> provincial proclaimed his gratitude, exercised his new Roman patriotism, and felt himself drawn nearer, if not to his fellow-Asiatics, at least to the marvellous darling of fortune <a href="../cathen/05479c.htm">enthroned</a> upon the distant Tiber. The man of Asia Minor had long been subject to <a href="../cathen/11712a.htm">Persia</a> without revolt, and then to the children of the brilliant marshals of Alexander; submission was natural to him, and this time it brought in its train all that was needed to make life perfect in so favoured a land, i.e. peace and prosperity. As <a href="../cathen/12407b.htm">high-priest</a> of the provincial department of the imperial religion of <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> and Augustus his influence over all religious matters was great. The office seems at times to have been closely identified with that of the president of the emperor's festival, and was the formal source of much of the <a href="../cathen/11703a.htm">persecution</a> directed against the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christians</a> of the province, especially during the annual festival, when the deputies of the provincial cities met at the <a href="../cathen/10244c.htm">metropolis</a> and manifested their patriotism, among other ways, by denouncing the followers of <a href="../cathen/08374c.htm">Jesus</a> for refusing to adore the divinity (<em>numen, genius</em>) of the emperor. An ideal picture of the office, affected, however, by <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> institutions and experience, is given by <a href="../cathen/08558b.htm">Julian the Apostate</a> in his famous letter to the Galatarch (Ep., xlix; cf. Eusebius, <a href="../fathers/250108.htm"><em>Church History</em> VIII.14.9</a>). With the <a href="../cathen/07462a.htm">honour</a> of president of the annual festival of the emperor went other distinctions, a special title (Asiarch, Bithyniarch, Galatarch), in addition to various marks of <a href="../cathen/07462a.htm">honour</a>. Only the rich could pretend to merit it, for the office carried with it the right and the <a href="../cathen/05215a.htm">duty</a> to defray the expense of such festivals. But there were many to claim it, for provincial <a href="../cathen/12405a.htm">pride</a> was strong in Asia Minor, and the rivalry of the <a href="../cathen/10244c.htm">metropolitan</a> cities was very keen. The new worship of <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> and Augustus was not unlike a religion established by law, though it never interfered with the other forms of Greek or Oriental worship, or the numerous <a href="../cathen/10338a.htm">miraculous</a> asylums, or even such individual careers as those of Apollonius of <a href="../cathen/15106b.htm">Tyana</a> or <a href="../cathen/01297a.htm">Alexander of Abonoteichos</a>. To the cities was left their ancient liberty of internal administration, the repartition of imperial assessments, and the preservation of local order. Only the wealthy could vote for the magistrates, and the time was yet far off when their descendants would try in vain to rid themselves of an hereditary dignity that in the end carried with it the heaviest of financial burdens. Occasionally the imperial government looked into the municipal book-keeping and even controlled the municipal decrees; more frequently it exercised a certain surveillance over the <a href="../cathen/11093a.htm">nomination</a> of the chief of police (<em>eirenarch</em>). The public safety was assured in the early imperial times by a small army of 5,000 auxiliary troops in Galatia, and by the Black Sea fleet of forty ships stationed at <a href="../cathen/15028a.htm">Trebizond</a>. In the time of <a href="../cathen/15379a.htm">Vespasian</a> two legions were quartered in Cappadocia and along the upper waters of the Euphrates. A few soldiers scattererd here and there through the provinces served the Roman magistrates as messengers, sheriffs, bailiffs, and the like. Asia Minor, in which both the senate and the emperor exercised, in theory at least, a co-ordinate <a href="../cathen/08567a.htm">jurisdiction</a> until the end of the third century, was too contented and loyal to call for other troops than were <a href="../cathen/10733a.htm">necessary</a> for protection from the foreign enemy, or to repress brigandage. The latter was, unhappily, never quite suppressed in a land well fitted for the flight and concealment of the lawless. Up to the time of Justinian certain parts of Isauria and Cilicia were the home of bold freebooters, despite the ever tightening military cordons, the increase of civilization, and the growing influence of <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> principles. There were often in municipal life lack of integrity, corruption, and waste, coupled with intrigues, rivalries, and factions, but this is no more than might be expected amid such unexampled prosperity, in a land where no large political life existed, and where climate and the narrow municipal horizon conspired to diminish energy and magnify local and temporary interests. "The calm sea" says Mommsen, "easily becomes a swamp, and the lack of the great pulsation of general interest is clearly discernible also in Asia Minor".</p> <p>A complete description of the cities of Asia Minor in the best days of the empire, their splendour and magnificence, partly inherited and partly to the credit of <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, sounds to modern ears like exaggeration. Their ruins, however, are convincingly eloquent. Marble and granite, exquisitely and solidly worked, were the building materials of the countless <a href="../cathen/14495a.htm">temples</a>, baths, assembly-rooms, gymnasia, deep-pillared porticoes and <a href="../cathen/04128c.htm">colonnades</a> that graced even the smallest of its cities, and were very often the gifts of private <a href="../cathen/07762a.htm">individuals</a>, who exhibited thus in their little "fatherland" (as the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> Bishop Abercius calls his native city Hierapolis), a power of self-sacrifice and affection for the public weal for which no larger stage was open. Countless art-works in marble and bronze often replicas of incomparable Greek originals carried away in the republican period, decorated the public buildings and the open squares; even these copies seem at last to have been confiscated by Constantine for his new city by the Golden Horn. Aqueducts and reservoirs, embankments and levees, saved and controlled the useful waters that are now the ruin of the land. Terraces built with skill and art multiplied the productive power of the fertile soil. From the city gates there radiated numerous long lines of sculptured <a href="../cathen/14773b.htm">tombs</a>, whose broken inscriptions now throw light on the rich and varied life of the antique world. In the <a href="../cathen/05248a.htm">fine arts</a> the correct sense of the Greeks was the guide, but in commercial and industrial life the Roman seems to have been dominant. Latin mercantile words are often transliterated into Greek, and there are numerous other evidences of close commercial intercourse with <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italy</a>. Famous Greek teachers and physicians frequented the Italian cities (Tac., Ann., XII, 61, 67) somewhat as the Byzantine <a href="../cathen/07538b.htm">humanists</a> frequented those of Northern <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italy</a>. The great municipal <a href="../cathen/05782a.htm">families</a> and those well established on the vast estates of the central table-land seem to have clung to the ancestral soil with more fidelity than was shown elsewhere in the Orient. Education of the purely literary type was universal, and to some extent provided for by the cities and even by the imperial government. We read of principals and inspectors of <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, of teachers of writing and music, of masters of boxing, archery, and spear-throwing, of special privileges for teachers of rhetoric and grammar; in a word the ideal <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a> of the Greek mainland as crystallized in the classic writers and in the still vigorous <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> of <a href="../cathen/02046a.htm">Athens</a>, was in a large measure reproduced in Asia Minor. Homer and the Greek classics were the <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> books. The chief result of it all was a race of remarkable public orators known as <a href="../cathen/14145c.htm">sophists</a> or rhetoricians, wandering academic lecturers on the glories of the past or on commonplaces of <a href="../cathen/12025c.htm">philosophy</a>, poetry, and history. Often bilingual, they were admired by the <a href="../cathen/12514b.htm">provincials</a>, whose favour they held by flattery and sympathy, and by careful attention to the <em>mise en scene</em>—voice, gesture, dress, attitude. Some of them, like Dio Chrysostom, exhibit genuine native patriotism, but in all of them there echoes a hollow declamatory note, the best evidence of the hopeless character of Greek <a href="../cathen/11388a.htm">paganism</a>, of which they were now the chief <a href="../cathen/14580a.htm">theologians</a> and <a href="../cathen/12025c.htm">philosophers</a>. Their literary influence was deep and lasting, and though they were inimical to the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian religion</a>, this influence may yet be traced in not a few of the <a href="../cathen/05230a.htm">Greek Christian</a> writers of their own and later times. Apart from this class the <a href="../cathen/11388a.htm">pagan</a> <a href="../cathen/14074a.htm">society</a> of Asia Minor seems to have contributed but a few great names to the annals of <a href="../cathen/13598b.htm">science</a> and literature. Two of them come from Bithynia, the above-mentioned rhetorician Dio Chrysostom, moralist and <a href="../cathen/12025c.htm">philosopher</a>, and Arrian of <a href="../cathen/11070a.htm">Nicomedia</a>, historian of Alexander the Great and popularizer of Epictetus. Pergamus boasts the name of the learned physician Galen, like his earlier fellow-Asiatic, Xenophon of Cos, a man of scientific attainments in his own department, and also of general philosophic culture, but a stern enemy of the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian religion</a>. Nevertheless, just as Roman Asia Minor boasts of no first-class cities like Alexandria or Antioch, but only of a great many second and third class centres of population, so in literature the great names are wanting, while general literary culture and refinement, both of speech and taste, are widespread, and, in the near western section, universal. The cosmopolitan character of imperial administration, the diffusion of <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a>, the facility of travel, and the free use of the two great civilized tongues, made the man of Asia Minor, in a certain sense, a citizen of the world and fitted him peculiarly to play an important part from the fourth century on in the spread of <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christianity</a> and the adaptation of its <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">ideas</a> to Græco-Roman <a href="../cathen/14074a.htm">society</a>. Indeed, without some <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">knowledge</a> of the civilization that moulded their youth, the Basils and the Gregorys [of <a href="../cathen/07016a.htm">Nyssa</a> and <a href="../cathen/07010b.htm">Nazianzus</a>  <em>Ed.</em>] lose half their interest for us. (Mommsen, The Provinces of the Roman Empire, New York, 1887, II, 345-97; Ramsay, The Historical Geography of the Roman Empire, London, 1890.)</p> <h3>Spread of Christianity in Asia Minor</h3> <p>As everywhere in the Roman empire, so in Asia Minor it was the numerous <a href="../cathen/14379b.htm">Jewries</a> in which the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian religion</a> found its first adherents. In the last three pre-Christian centuries the <a href="../cathen/13690a.htm">Seleucid</a> kings of <a href="../cathen/14399a.htm">Syria</a> had transplanted from Palestine to Asia Minor thousands of Jewish <a href="../cathen/05782a.htm">families</a> whose descendants were soon scattered along all the coasts and throughout a great part of the interior. On Pentecost day at <a href="../cathen/08344a.htm">Jerusalem</a> (<a href="../bible/act002.htm#vrs5">Acts 2:5, 9, 10</a>) there were present among the disciples "Jews, devout men out of every nation under heaven", also representatives of <a href="../cathen/12234c.htm">Pontus</a>, Galatia, Cappadocia, <a href="../cathen/01777b.htm">Asia</a>, and Bithynia. On his several missionary journeys, <a href="../cathen/11567b.htm">St. Paul</a> visited many parts of Asia Minor and established there the first <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Christian churches</a>; in the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Acts there is a vivid and circumstantial description of all the chief phases of his Apostolic activity. His conversion of the Galatians, in particular, has a perennial interest for <a href="../cathen/09022a.htm">Western Christians</a>, since at least a large portion of that province was composed of descendants of those Celts of Gaul who had settled there in the third century <font size=-2>B.C.</font> and in <a href="../cathen/11567b.htm">St. Paul's</a> time, and for centuries afterwards, still retained their Celtic speech and many Celtic institutions (Lightfoot, Commentary on Galatians, London, 1896, 1-15; Ramsay, The <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> in the Roman Empire before <font size=-2>A.D.</font> 170, New York, 1893, 97-111; Idem, St. Paul, the Traveller and Roman Citizen, New York, 1898, 130-151). Asia Minor was the principal scene of the labours of St. John; he wrote his Apocalypse on the desolate island of Patmos, and his Gospel probably at Ephesus. He established firmly in the latter city a famous centre of <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> life, and an ancient tradition, as old as the Council of Ephesus (431), says that the <a href="../cathen/15464b.htm">Blessed Virgin</a> spent her last years in the vicinity of Ephesus, and passed thence to her reward. From Ephesus St. John travelled much throughout Asia Minor and has always been credited with the first establishment of many of its <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">episcopal sees</a>; the story of the re-conversion of the young robber, touchingly told in the "Quis Dives" of <a href="../cathen/04045a.htm">Clement of Alexandria</a> exhibits the popular concept of St. John in the mind of the average <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> of Asia Minor about the year 200. In the "Acts of Thecla" it is now recognized that we have a fragment of a life of <a href="../cathen/11567b.htm">St. Paul</a> in Asia Minor, written about the middle of the second century, though without <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> approval, which throws no little light on several phases of the great Apostle's career but slightly touched on in the Acts and the Pauline Epistles. St. Peter, too, preached the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian Faith</a> in Asia Minor. His First Epistle, written from <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> (v, 13), is addressed "to the strangers dispersed through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, <a href="../cathen/01777b.htm">Asia</a>, and Bithynia", i.e. in northern, western, and central Asia Minor. That the new religion spread rapidly is <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proved</a> by the famous passage in the letter of Pliny (Ep. x, 97), Roman governor of Bithynia, addressed to the <a href="../cathen/15015a.htm">Emperor Trajan</a> about 112, in which he says that the whole province is overrun with the contagion of <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christianity</a>, the <a href="../cathen/14495a.htm">temples</a> are abandoned and the meat of the victims unsaleable, <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">persons</a> of every age, rank, and condition are joining the new religion. At this period also the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> History of <a href="../cathen/05617b.htm">Eusebius</a> shows us the admirable figure of <a href="../cathen/07644a.htm">St. Ignatius of Antioch</a>, of whose seven letters five are addressed to <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Christian churches</a> of Asia Minor (Philadelphia, Ephesus, <a href="../cathen/14060b.htm">Smyrna</a>, <a href="../cathen/15016c.htm">Tralles</a>, Magnesia) and reveal an advanced stage of <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> growth. It was at this time that <a href="../cathen/12219b.htm">St. Polycarp of Smyrna</a> and <a href="../cathen/08130b.htm">St. Irenæus</a> of <a href="../cathen/09472a.htm">Lyons</a> were born in Asia Minor, both prominent <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> figures of the second century, the latter being the foremost <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> writer of his period.</p> <p>It is in Asia Minor that <a href="../cathen/14388a.htm">synods</a>, or frequent assemblies of <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">Christian bishops</a>, first meet us as a working <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> institution; even in remote and uncouth Cappadocia they were not infrequent in the third century. It was therefore fitting that when the first general council of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> was held (525) it should be called together at Nicæa (Isnik) in western Asia Minor, amid a population long stanchly <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a>. Of the (traditional) 318 <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> who attended that council about one hundred were from Asia Minor; the semi-barbarous Isauria sent fourteen city <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> and four rural <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> (<em><a href="../cathen/16024c.htm">chorepiscopi</a></em>), while remote Cilicia sent nine city <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> and one rural <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishop</a>. Indeed, the episcopal system of Asia Minor seems to have been almost completed by this time. (Ramsay, Cities and <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">Bishoprics</a> of Asia Minor, in Histor. Geogr. of Asia Minor, London, 1890, 104-426.) In any case, there were in that territory in the fifth century some 450 <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">episcopal sees</a>. The institution of rural <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> (<em><a href="../cathen/16024c.htm">chorepiscopi</a></em>) appears first in Asia Minor (Council of <a href="../cathen/01464b.htm">Ancyra</a>, 314) and seems to be the origin of the later <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parochial</a> system. It is in Asia Minor that arose, or were fought out, nearly all the great <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> conflicts of the early <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> period. The <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> History of <a href="../cathen/05617b.htm">Eusebius</a>, first published before 325, exhibits the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">Christian bishops</a> of Asia Minor during the second and third centuries in conflict with semi-Oriental philosophic <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heresies</a> like <a href="../cathen/06592a.htm">Gnosticism</a>, that developed under the leadership of keen critical <a href="../cathen/12652a.htm">rationalists</a> like <a href="../cathen/09645c.htm">Marcion</a> of <a href="../cathen/14014b.htm">Sinope</a> on the Black Sea, while the germs of the great christological <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heresies</a>, e.g. <a href="../cathen/10448a.htm">Sabellianism</a>, were first nourished on the same soil. Here, too, met the famous councils that overthrew these <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heresies</a> (Nicæa in 325, Ephesus in 431, and Chalcedon in 451). Internal reform of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Christian Church</a> was first undertaken from Asia Minor, where Montanus, a native of Phrygia, began the rigorist movement known as <a href="../cathen/10521a.htm">Montanism</a>, and denounced the growing laxity of <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> life and the moral apathy of the religious chiefs of the <a href="../cathen/14074a.htm">society</a>. He claimed for himself and certain <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">female</a> disciples the survival of the early <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> prophetic gifts, or personal religious inspiration, which seems to have been more frequent and to have survived longer in Asia Minor than elsewhere (Harnack, Mission und Ausbreitung, 287, 402). The immediate cause of the last great <a href="../cathen/11703a.htm">persecution</a>, that of <a href="../cathen/05007b.htm">Diocletian</a> (284-305), seems to have been the rapid growth of <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christianity</a> in all Asia Minor, particularly in the imperial capital, then located at <a href="../cathen/11070a.htm">Nicomedia</a> (Ismid). Maximus Daza, the sympathetic colleague in <a href="../cathen/05329b.htm">Egypt</a> of the persecuting Galerius (305-311), admitted (<a href="../cathen/05617b.htm">Eusebius</a>, <a href="../fathers/250109.htm"><em>Church History</em> IX.9</a>) that nearly all the Orient had become <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a>, and in this he was merely the echo of the dying words of the contemporary <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> scholar and <a href="../cathen/09736b.htm">martyr</a>, <a href="../cathen/09409a.htm">Lucian of Antioch</a>, who asserted (<a href="../cathen/13221b.htm">Rufinus</a>, Hist. Eccl., IX, vi) that in his time the greater part of the Roman world had become <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a>, even entire cities. Such a <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> city of Phrygia, <a href="../cathen/05617b.htm">Eusebius</a> tells us (<a href="../fathers/250108.htm"><em>Church History</em> VIII.11.1</a>), was given to the flames by the <a href="../cathen/11388a.htm">pagans</a> in the <a href="../cathen/11703a.htm">persecution</a> of <a href="../cathen/05007b.htm">Diocletian</a>; the inhabitants perished to a man with the name of Christ upon their lips. Apropos of this, Harnack recalls (op. cit., p. 466) the fact that eighty years earlier Thyatira in the same province was an entirely <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> city, though intensely <a href="../cathen/10521a.htm">Montanist</a> in religious temper. The city of Apaneia in the same province seems to have become quite <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> before 250. The work of Cumont (Inscriptions Chrétiennes de l'Asie Mineure, Rome, 1895) exhibits undeniable epigraphic evidence that Phrygia was widely <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christianized</a> long before the conversion of Constantine (312). The words of Renan (Origines du Christianisme, III, 363, 364) are therefore eminently <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">true</a>: "Thenceforward (from <font size=-2>A.D.</font> 112) for three hundred years Phrygia was essentially a <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> land. There began the public profession of <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christianity</a>; there are found, from the third century, on monuments exposed to the public gaze, the terms <em>Chrestianos</em> or <em>Christianos</em>; there the formulas of epitaphs convey veiled references to <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> <a href="../cathen/05089a.htm">dogmas</a>; there, from the days of Septimus Severus, great cities adopt biblical symbols for their <a href="../cathen/11152a.htm">coins</a>, or rather adapt their old traditions to biblical narrations. A great number of the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christians</a> of Ephesus and <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> came from Phrygia. The names most frequently met with on the monuments of Phrygia are the antique <a href="../cathen/10673c.htm">Christian names</a> (Trophimus, Tychicus, Tryphenus, Papias, etc.), the names special to the apostolic times, and of which the martylrologies are full". The Acts of the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">Christian Bishop</a>, Pionius of <a href="../cathen/14060b.htm">Smyrna</a>, a <a href="../cathen/09736b.htm">martyr</a> of the time of <a href="../cathen/04666a.htm">Decius</a> (249-251), portray that city as largely <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a>, and (with exception of the <a href="../cathen/08399a.htm">Jews</a>) entirely devoted to its rhetorician-bishop. In the fourth century <a href="../cathen/07016a.htm">Gregory of Nyssa</a> relates, apropos of <a href="../cathen/07015a.htm">Gregory of Cæsarea</a> (c. 213-275), that during the thirty-five or forty years of his episcopal activity he had <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christianized</a> nearly all <a href="../cathen/12234c.htm">Pontus</a>. It is an unfair exaggeration (Harnack, 475-476) to attribute his success to toleration of <a href="../cathen/11388a.htm">heathen</a> customs, amusements, etc. So good a <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> <a href="../cathen/14580a.htm">theologian</a> as <a href="../cathen/07016a.htm">Gregory of Nyssa</a> could relate this condescension of the Wonder-worker without perceiving any real sacrifice of <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> principles in <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a> or <a href="../cathen/10559a.htm">morals</a>; some concessions there must always be when it is question of conversions in bulk. His "Epistola Canonica" (P.G., X, 1019-48), one of the earliest and most venerable documents of <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">diocesan</a> legislation, presupposes many well-established <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> communities, whose captive <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">ecclesiastics</a> and citizens (c. 260) spread the first germs of <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christianity</a> among the piratical <a href="../cathen/11347d.htm">Goths</a> of the Black Sea. Asia Minor was certainly the first part of the Roman world to accept as a whole the principles and the spirit of the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian religion</a>, and it was not unnatural that the warmth of its conviction should eventually fire the neighbouring <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenia</a> and make it, early in the fourth century, the first of the ancient states formally to accept the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">religion of Christ</a> (<a href="../cathen/05617b.htm">Eusebius</a>, <a href="../fathers/250109.htm"><em>Church History</em> IX.8.2</a>). The causes of the rapid conversion of Asia Minor are not, in general, dissimilar to those which elsewhere favoured the spread of <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christianity</a>. It may be accepted, with Harnack, that the ground was already prepared for the new religion, inasmuch as Jewish <a href="../cathen/10499a.htm">monotheism</a> was acclimatized, had won many disciples, and discredited <a href="../cathen/12223b.htm">polytheism</a>, while on the other hand <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christianity</a> was confronted by no State religion deeply and immemorially entrenched in the hearts of a united and homogeneous people (the imperial worship being a late innovation and offering only a factitious unity). But much of this is <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">true</a> of other parts of the Roman empire, and it remains certain that the local opposition to the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian religion</a> was nowhere stronger than in the cities of Asia Minor where <a href="../cathen/01586a.htm">Antoninus Pius</a> (138-161) had to check the illegal <a href="../cathen/15446a.htm">violence</a> of the multitude (<a href="../cathen/05617b.htm">Eusebius</a>, <a href="../fathers/250104.htm"><em>Church History</em> IV.33</a>); even if we do not accept as genuine his <a href="../cathen/12783b.htm">rescript</a> "Ad commune Asiæ" (ibid., IV, xix), it is of ancient origin and exhibits an enduring <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> sense of intolerable <a href="../cathen/08010c.htm">injustice</a>, already foreshadowed in <a href="../bible/1pe004.htm">1 Peter 4:3-5, 13-19</a>. The literary opposition to <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christianity</a> was particularly strong, as already said, among the rhetoricians and grammarians, i.e. among the public teachers and the <a href="../cathen/12025c.htm">philosophers</a>, not to speak of the <a href="../cathen/11388a.htm">pagan</a> imperial <a href="../cathen/12409a.htm">priesthood</a>, nowhere so well organized and favoured as in every province of Asia Minor. Lactantius tells us that the last known anti-Christian pamphleteers were both from Bithynia in Asia Minor (Inst. V, 2), Hierocles, the governor of the province, and another whose name he withholds. The principal <a href="../cathen/14580a.htm">theologians</a> of Asia Minor (Irenæus, <a href="../cathen/07015a.htm">Gregory the Wonder-worker</a>, <a href="../cathen/10243a.htm">Methodius of Olympus</a>, <a href="../cathen/02330b.htm">Basil of Neocæsarea</a>, <a href="../cathen/07010b.htm">Gregory of Nazianzus</a>, and <a href="../cathen/07016a.htm">Gregory of Nyssa</a>) do not differ notably in their concepts of the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian religion</a> from those of <a href="../cathen/14399a.htm">Syria</a> or <a href="../cathen/05329b.htm">Egypt</a> or the West. It seems therefore quite incorrect to describe with Harnack the original conversion of Asia Minor as a gradual and rather peaceful transformation of the native <a href="../cathen/11388a.htm">heathenism</a> and no real extirpation (keine Ausrottung, sondern eine Umformung, op. cit., 463). If this were so, it must always remain a great mystery how the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christianity</a> of Asia Minor could present, on the eve of its political triumph, so remarkable a front of unity in sound <a href="../cathen/05075b.htm">doctrine</a> and elevated <a href="../cathen/10559a.htm">morals</a> when its alleged original <a href="../cathen/11388a.htm">pagan</a> sources were so numerous and conflicting, so gross and impure.</p> <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> <p>Of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> administration of Asia Minor, after the triumph of the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian religion</a>, but little need be said. Like the rest of the Roman empire the land was divided into two administrative territories, known as "dioceses" (Gr. <em>dioikéseis,</em> districts to be supervised). They were <a href="../cathen/12234c.htm">Pontus</a> and <a href="../cathen/01777b.htm">Asia</a>, respectively an eastern and a western territory. In the first were twelve civil provinces, to which corresponded the ecclesiastical provinces of Cappadocia, Lesser <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenia</a>, <a href="../cathen/12234c.htm">Pontus</a>, <a href="../cathen/12204a.htm">Polemonium</a>, Helenopontus, Galatia, Bithynia, Honorias, and Paphlagonia. The diocese of <a href="../cathen/01777b.htm">Asia</a> included the provinces of <a href="../cathen/01777b.htm">Asia</a> (proper), Hellespont, Phrygia, Lydia, Caria, Lycia, Pamphylia, <a href="../cathen/12116b.htm">Pisidia</a>, Lycaonia, and the Cyclades or islands of the Ægean. By the end of the fourth century these eighteen provinces were subject to the patriarch of Constantinople, while on the south-eastern coast, Isauria and Cilicia, with the island of <a href="../cathen/04589a.htm">Cyprus</a>, were subject to the <a href="../cathen/11549a.htm">patriarchate</a> of Antioch, <a href="../cathen/04589a.htm">Cyprus</a> in a restless and discontented way. All were more easily reached from the mouth of the Orontes; yet other reasons, historical, national, and temperamental, co-operated with the <a href="../cathen/01381d.htm">ambition</a> of the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> of Constantinople to draw this line of demarcation between the two great <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> spheres of influence in the central Orient, whereby <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenia</a> was drawn within the radius of Syro-Antiochene influence, to the great detriment, later on, of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> unity. (Duchesne, Histoire ancienne de l'église, Paris, 1906, I, 433 sqq.) The <a href="../cathen/01381d.htm">ambition</a> of the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> of Constantinople, their jealousy of old <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, and imperial favour, had won this pre-eminence for the royal city. It had never evangelized Asia Minor; that was done from Antioch, and in the third century the two <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> exarchates of Asia Minor, Cæsarea in Cappadocia and Ephesus in <a href="../cathen/01777b.htm">Asia</a> proper, were subject to the patriarch of the great <a href="../cathen/14399a.htm">Syrian</a> city. In the latter half of the third century, long before the founding of Constantinople (330), the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> of Asia Minor were wont to attend the <a href="../cathen/14388a.htm">synods</a> of Antioch and in turn that patriarch occasionally presided over the <a href="../cathen/14388a.htm">synods</a> held in Asia Minor. It was from Antioch that the churches of Asia Minor got their liturgy; from them it radiated to Constantinople itself and eventually throughout the greater part of the <a href="../cathen/06752a.htm">Greek Church</a> (Duchesne, Origins of Christian Worship, London, 1903, 71). Once established, however, the <a href="../cathen/08567a.htm">jurisdiction</a> of Constantinople over most of the churches of Asia Minor remained unchallenged, especially after the <a href="../cathen/01663a.htm">Arab</a> conquest of <a href="../cathen/14399a.htm">Syria</a> (636) when the ancient influence of Antioch on eastern Asia Minor disappeared. Nevertheless, the ecclsiastical organization of Asia Minor was too solidly rooted in popular life to disappear except very slowly. If we had complete lists of the subscriptions to the Greek councils of the eighth and ninth centuries, we should <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">know</a> more about the survival of the episcopal system and its various modifications under Byzantine rule. As it is, not a little light is thrown on the <a href="../cathen/10285c.htm">medieval</a> <a href="../cathen/07322c.htm">hierarchy</a> of Asia Minor by a certain number of catalogues or lists of the <a href="../cathen/11549a.htm">patriarchates</a> with their <a href="../cathen/10244c.htm">metropolitan</a> and autocephalous <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">archbishops</a>, also of the suffragans of the <a href="../cathen/10244c.htm">metropolitans</a>, which are extant under the Latin name of <a href="../cathen/11124b.htm">"Notitiæ Episcopatuum"</a> (ed. Parthey, Berlin, 1866). These catalogues were originally known as <em>Taktiká,</em> some of them dating back to the seventh or eighth century (<em>Pakaià Taktiká</em>), while others underwent frequent correction, more or less scientific and thorough, even as late as the thirteenth century (Krumbacher, Gesch. der byzant. Litteratur, 2d ed., Munich, 1897, 415, 416; Ramsay, Hist. Geogr. of Asia Minor, 89, 427). Together with the geographies of Ptolemy and Strabo (the latter a native of Asia Minor and praised by Ramsay for his accurate and lucid work), the famous "Tabula Peutingeriana" (a fourth-century map of the imperial road-system radiating from Constantinople), and the "Synecdemos" of Hierocles, a sixth-century account of the sixty-four Byzantine provinces and their more than 900 cities, these episcopal lists enable us to follow the continuity of <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> public life in Asia Minor throughout the troubled centuries of political and <a href="../cathen/12213b.htm">economic</a> decay that finally ended in the blank horror of <a href="../cathen/10424a.htm">Islamitic</a> shepherdism. Krumbacher notes in these lists the strict adherence to ancient system and the recurrence of original <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">diocesan</a> names, long after they had ceased to correspond with the reality of things, somewhat as the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Roman Church</a> yet continues to use the titles of extinct sees located in countries now subject to non-Christian political control. The same author treats (op. cit., <em>passim</em>) in detail of the Byzantine writers of Asia Minor during the <a href="../cathen/10285c.htm">medieval period</a>.</p> <h2 id="section4">Present civil conditions</h2> <p>In the absence of a reliable census the population of Asia Minor is variously given. Larousse (1898) puts it at 9,235,000, of whom 7,179,000 are <a href="../cathen/10424a.htm">Moslems</a> and 1,548,000 <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christians</a>. This does not include the small <a href="../cathen/05230a.htm">Greek Christian</a> principality of <a href="../cathen/13421c.htm">Samos</a> (45,000) nor the island of <a href="../cathen/04589a.htm">Cyprus</a> (210,000) nor that of Crete (360,000), all three being frequently counted as parts of Asia Minor. <a href="../cathen/10739a.htm">Neher</a> (Kirchenlex., VII, 775) puts the total population at 10,750,000. It is mostly composed of <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Ottoman</a> <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turks</a> who still reproduce the primitive type, especially in the interior, where nomadic tribes, like the Turcomans and Yuruks, exhibit the characteristics of the original Ottoman conquerors. In general the term "Turk" is applied to all sedentary <a href="../cathen/10424a.htm">Mohammedans</a> in Asia Minor, whatever be their origin; it is also applied to the officials, descendants of Georgian or Circassian captive <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">women</a>, to the numerous immigrants from <a href="../cathen/02694a.htm">Bosnia</a> and <a href="../cathen/03046a.htm">Bulgaria</a> (Slavs in blood, but <a href="../cathen/10424a.htm">Moslems</a> in <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a>), and to the Albanian soldiers settled in Asia Minor. Similarly, the term applies to <a href="../cathen/10424a.htm">Moslem</a> descendants of <a href="../cathen/01663a.htm">Arab</a> and <a href="../cathen/12627a.htm">negro</a> slaves. Some of the nomadic tribes (Yuruks) are <a href="../cathen/10424a.htm">Mohammedan</a> only in name, though of ancient <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turkish</a> descent. They are generally known as Turcomans and live with their flocks in their own tent-encampments, primitive clans with no cohesion; they spend their lives in transit from the plains to the mountains, and vice versa, in search of pasturage, water, and pure air. With them may be classed the Chingani or gypsies, wandering tinkers, and horse dealers. There are also other small remnants of the original <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turkish</a> immigration that still affect the ways of their fierce ancestry, the Afshars and the Zeibeks, from whose ranks the government draws its most fanatical soldiers. The <a href="../cathen/10424a.htm">Mohammedan</a> Kurds of Asia Minor, both sedentary and nomad, differ so much in features and social habits from the <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turks</a> that they are not classed with the latter; they resemble much their brethren of the <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenian</a> highlands, are evidently of Medic origin, and speak dialects of <a href="../cathen/11712a.htm">Persian</a> with some Syriac and <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenian</a> words. Around the seaboard, in the numerous islands of the archipelago and in the large inland cities of Cappadocia and <a href="../cathen/12234c.htm">Pontus</a>, the Greeks are numerous; on the southern coast and in the islands they are in the vast majority and, except politically, are the dominant race as of old, being the commercial and industrial element. Not a few of the sedentary <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turks</a> are of Greek origin, descendants of <a href="../cathen/15506a.htm">voluntary</a> or compulsory <a href="../cathen/01624b.htm">apostates</a>; on the other hand, not a few Greeks isolated in the interior yet speak <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turkish</a>, a stigma of <a href="../cathen/07149b.htm">hated</a> subjection that Greek patriotism aims at effacing. There are many <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenians</a> in Asia Minor, sometimes gathered in distinct settlements, and again scattered through the <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turkish</a> villages; the taxes are usually farmed out to them, for which reason they are bitterly <a href="../cathen/07149b.htm">hated</a> by the <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turkish</a> peasant who complains of their rapacity. They retain usually their native tongue. On the Persian frontier of Asia Minor, in some secluded valleys, are found yet a few <a href="../cathen/10755a.htm">Nestorians</a>, descendants of those <a href="../cathen/14413a.htm">Syrian Christians</a> who fled in remote times to these fastnesses either to avoid the oppression of their <a href="../cathen/10424a.htm">Moslem</a> masters in Mesopotamia or before the encroachments of nomad tribes.</p> <h2 id="section5">Government</h2> <p>Asia Minor proper is divided into fifteen "vilayets" or administrative territories, two separate sanjaks (districts), and one principality (Samos). At the head of each is a "vali" or provincial governor, in whose council a seat is given to the spiritual head of each of the non-Moslem communities. Each vilayet is divided into sanjaks or districts, and these are again subdivided into communal groups and communes, presided over respectively by officers known as mutessarifs, kaimakams, mudirs, and mukhtars. The code is the <a href="../cathen/09068a.htm">common law</a> of <a href="../cathen/10424a.htm">Islam</a>, known as Nizam, and there is an appeal to the High Court at Constantinople from the civil, criminal, and commercial courts in each province. It is to be noted that in the conquered Roman provinces the <a href="../cathen/01663a.htm">Arabs</a> first, and then the <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turks</a>, retained much of the Roman (Byzantine) Law, especially as regarded their <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian</a> subjects, and in so far as it did not conflict with the <a href="../cathen/08692a.htm">Koran</a> (Amos, History of the Civil Law of <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, London, 1883). The chief cities of Asia Minor are Smyrna (300,000), <a href="../cathen/15028a.htm">Trebizond</a>, Iskanderûn (Issus, Scanderoon), <a href="../cathen/01135f.htm">Adana</a>, Angora (Ancyra), Sivas (Sebasteia), <a href="../cathen/14014b.htm">Sinope</a>, Samsûn (Amisus), Komiah (Iconium), Kaisariyeh (Cæsarea in Cappadocia). Adalia is the largest seaport on the southern coast; Broussa (Prusa), magnificently situated at the foot of Mt. Olympus in Bithynia, is the seat of silk industries, and holds the <a href="../cathen/14773b.htm">tombs</a> of the early Ottoman sultans. Kaisariyeh at the foot of Mt. Argeus, with its memories of <a href="../cathen/02330b.htm">St. Basil the Great</a>, is one of the world's oldest trade-centres, recognized as such from the dawn of history under its <a href="../cathen/13706a.htm">Semitic</a> name Mazaca; it is even now the most important commercial town in eastern Asia Minor. Sivas in the valley of the Kizil-Irmak (Halys) is a wheat centre. Trebizond on the Black Sea justifies even yet the foresight of its early Greek founders. Erzerûm in Lesser <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenia</a> is an important mountain fortress.</p> <h2 id="section6">Communication and education</h2> <p>There are no roads in the sense of our modern civilization; pack animals, including horses, have always been used by the <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turks</a>, both sedentary and nomad, for transportation, both of <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">persons</a> and goods. Recently carts have come somewhat into use. There are relays of horses at intervals on the main lines of communication and in the larger towns. A trans-Syrian railroad from Constantinople to Bagdad on the Persian Gulf has long been projected. It has reached Koniah and on its way passes Ismid (Nicomedia) and Eskeshir (Dorylæum). In all there are about 220 miles of railway in the vast peninsula. One of the principal <a href="../cathen/10424a.htm">Moslem</a> <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> is at <a href="../cathen/01380c.htm">Amasia</a> in Galatia. The Greek communities in Asia Minor cherish no public <a href="../cathen/05215a.htm">duty</a> more than that of <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a>, and make many <a href="../cathen/13309a.htm">sacrifices</a> in order to provide for their children, in primary and secondary <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, a high grade of the <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a> they admire. It is in reality a genuine Hellenism based on the study of the ancient classic writers, the history of their ancestors both peninsular and continental, antipathy to <a href="../cathen/10424a.htm">Islam</a>, a strong sense of mutual relationship, and a civil hope that they will again be called to the direction of public life throughout the peninsula. There is, however, a manifold opposition to this modern Greek ideal. If it were possible to bring about the re-union of the long separated Churches the ideal could be notably furthered.</p> <h2 id="section7">Resources</h2> <p>Asia Minor is yet largely an agricultural and pastoral land. On the high plateaux immense flocks of sheep and goats are raised, whose wool is used for domestic purposes, for export, or for the manufacture of <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turkish</a> rugs and carpets. The silk manufactures of Broussa, in the sixteenth century a staple of Asia Minor, have greatly decreased. Viticulture, once the <a href="../cathen/12405a.htm">pride</a> of Asia Minor, has almost perished. The use of wine is forbidden by the <a href="../cathen/08692a.htm">Koran</a>; hence the grape is cultivated by the <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turks</a> only for the making of confections, and by the Greeks chiefly for personal use. The wines of <a href="../cathen/03689b.htm">Chios</a> and Lesbos and Smyrna, famous in antiquity, are no longer made; their place is taken by dried raisins that form a principal article of export. Boxwood, salt-fish, barley, millet, wheat, oil, opium, rags, wool, and cotton, hides, galls, wax, tobacco, soap, liquorice paste, figure on the table of exports, but not at all in the proportions becoming the natural advantages of the land. It has already been stated that a few mines and marble quarries are worked, but in a feeble and intermittent way. The popular genius is foreign to all progress, the government is based on corruption and oppression, and the national religion is eminently suspicious and repressive. The inland Turk has the reputation of honesty, kindliness, hospitality, but he has no bent for the active and energetic Western life, loves dearly his "kief" or somnolent vegetative repose, and is hopelessly in the grasp of two rapacious enemies, the <a href="../cathen/15235c.htm">usurer</a> and the tax-gatherer. The Greek and the <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenian</a> are the dominant commercial factors, and are in several ways equipped to wrest from the Turk everything but political control of the country.</p> <h2 id="section8">The islands</h2> <p>Leaving aside the great islands of Crete and <a href="../cathen/04589a.htm">Cyprus</a>, no longer under immediate <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turkish</a> control, it may be noted that those of the Archipelago form a special administrative district. Their number is legion; some of them are very fertile, others are mere peaks and ridges of rock. They export fruit, some wine, raisins, olive oil, and mastic, and their sponge fisheries are very valuable. Among the islands famous in antiquity are Tenedos near the mouth of the Dardanelles, Lemnos between the Dardanelles and <a href="../cathen/02047b.htm">Mt. Athos</a>, Lesbos, the native place of Alcæus and Sappho, between the Dardanelles and <a href="../cathen/14060b.htm">Smyrna</a>. The island of Icaria recalls the legend of Icarus, and Patmos the sojourn of St. John and the composition of his Apocalypse. Cos awakens memories of the great healer Hippocrates, and the island of <a href="../cathen/13024b.htm">Rhodes</a> has a history second to none of the small insular states of the world. Its strong fleets made it respected in Greek antiquity, and its maritime code was taken over by the <a href="../cathen/09079a.htm">Roman Law</a>. Its bronze Colossus, astride the mouth of its harbour, was one of the seven wonders of the world. For nearly four hundred years it was the home of the Knights of St. John and its famous siege and capture by Suleiman I (1522) filled all <a href="../cathen/09022a.htm">Western Christendom</a> with equal sorrow and admiration. Since 1832 the island of <a href="../cathen/13421c.htm">Samos</a> is a quasi-independent principality, and forms a special sanjak by itself. In the full flood of ancient Ionian luxury, art, and <a href="../cathen/13598b.htm">science</a>, Samos was foremost of the Hellenic colonies along the coast of Asia Minor. There Pythagoras was born, and Antony and Cleopatra once resided at <a href="../cathen/13421c.htm">Samos</a>. In ancient times it was a favourite resort for those wearied of the agitated life of <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>.</p> <h2 id="section9">Vicariate Apostolic of Asia Minor</h2> <p>In 1818 the Vicariate Apostolic of Asia Minor, founded in the seventeenth century, was confided by <a href="../cathen/12131a.htm">Pius VI</a> to the <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/14060b.htm">Smyrna</a> as Administrator Apostolic. Since then the <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/14060b.htm">Smyrna</a> exercises <a href="../cathen/08567a.htm">jurisdiction</a> over the Latin <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> of the greater part of Asia Minor, a few places excepted. Smyrna itself is the chief centre of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a> in the peninsula. It was founded as a <a href="../cathen/09022a.htm">Latin</a> <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">see</a> by <a href="../cathen/04023a.htm">Clement VI</a> in 1346, became extinct in the seventeenth century, was restored and elevated (1818) to the <a href="../cathen/01694b.htm">archiepiscopal</a> dignity by <a href="../cathen/12132a.htm">Pius VII</a>. For about a century and a half, from 1618 to the latter part of the eighteenth century, the <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> exercised with success the pastoral ministry at <a href="../cathen/14060b.htm">Smyrna</a>, for many centuries the chief resort of the once numerous <a href="../cathen/09022a.htm">Latin Christians</a> (chiefly Italian and French) known as "Levantines". They were the traders, merchants, travellers, agents of all kinds in business at the various centres of commerce in the islands and along the coast of Asia Minor, which are known as "Scale" to the <a href="../cathen/08208a.htm">Italians</a> and "Echelles" to the French. Here the famous "lingua franca", or jargon of a few hundred uninflected Provençal, Spanish, and French words, with some Greek and <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turkish</a>, was the principal medium of commercial communication. When the <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> first entered Smyrna they found there some 30,000 well disposed <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christians</a> and 7,000 to 8,000 <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenians</a>. <a href="../cathen/10357a.htm">Lazarists</a> and <a href="../cathen/03320b.htm">Capuchins</a> were also active at <a href="../cathen/14060b.htm">Smyrna</a> during this period. The Latin <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> of <a href="../cathen/14060b.htm">Smyrna</a> and vicinity are variously estimated from 15,400 to 18,000. There are in the city proper 8 churches and 8 <a href="../cathen/03574b.htm">chapels</a>. The <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parishes</a> are 3 in number and the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> 61 (19 <a href="../cathen/13675a.htm">secular priests</a> and 42 religious, <a href="../cathen/06217a.htm">Franciscans</a>, <a href="../cathen/03320b.htm">Capuchins</a>, <a href="../cathen/12354c.htm">Dominicans</a>, <a href="../cathen/10357a.htm">Lazarists</a>, <a href="../cathen/10102b.htm">Mechitarists</a>). There are 15 <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> (8 for boys, 7 for girls), with 3 boarding-schools or academies for girls, conducted respectively by the "Damesde Sion", the Sisters of Charity, and the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception. The <a href="../cathen/11322b.htm">orphan asylums</a> number 4, with about 290 <a href="../cathen/11322b.htm">orphans</a>. There is also a <a href="../cathen/07480a.htm">hospital</a>. Since 1839 the Sisters of Charity (87) and since 1840 the <a href="../cathen/08056a.htm">Christian Brothers</a> have been active at <a href="../cathen/14060b.htm">Smyrna</a> in <a href="../cathen/03592a.htm">works of charity</a> and <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a>; the latter had in their college (1901) 155 pupils. The <a href="../cathen/10357a.htm">Lazarists</a> conduct a <a href="../cathen/04107b.htm">college</a> known as the College of <a href="../cathen/12456a.htm">Propaganda</a>, founded in 1841; it has about 100 pupils. The present <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/14060b.htm">Smyrna</a> and Administrator Apostolic of Asia Minor is Monsignor Rafaele Francesco Marengo, a <a href="../cathen/12354c.htm">Dominican</a>, from 1871 to 1904 <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priest</a> of Galata (Constantinople), and since 1904 Ordinary of <a href="../cathen/14060b.htm">Smyrna</a>. He has one suffragan, the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">Bishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/03244d.htm">Candia</a>, or Crete. Outside of <a href="../cathen/14060b.htm">Smyrna</a>, there are very few Latin <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> in Asia Minor. The "Missiones Catholicæ" for 1901 gives the names of 16 scattered missions. Since 1886 the Assumptionist Fathers of Constantinople and the Oblate Sisters of the same congregation have devoted themselves to missionary work along the line of the railway from Broussa to Koniah (Iconium). They have opened 8 <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> for boys and 7 for girls, in which they care for about 1,200 children. Their services are mostly in demand for the Latin <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> engaged business or in the construction of the railway. <a href="../cathen/10424a.htm">Moslem</a> fanaticism and Greek jealousy are sources of opposition. In 1900 there were engaged in charitable and <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">educational</a> work on these temporary missions 100 Assumptionist Sisters. The few <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> (Uniat) Greeks on the mainland have no special organization of their own but are subject to the Latin <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/14060b.htm">Smyrna</a> as Administrator of the Vicariate Apostolic of Asia Minor. Formerly all <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> in the Archipelago (Latin and Greek) were under the <a href="../cathen/08567a.htm">jurisdiction</a> of <a href="../cathen/14060b.htm">Smyrna</a>, but since 14 December, 1907, there has been a <a href="../cathen/12386a.htm">prefecture Apostolic</a> for the island of <a href="../cathen/13024b.htm">Rhodes</a>, including eleven other islands. In this prefecture the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> number about 360 in a population of 36,000, and are attended by 2 <a href="../cathen/06217a.htm">Franciscan</a> missionaries. They have 6 <a href="../cathen/03041a.htm">churches</a> and <a href="../cathen/03574b.htm">chapels</a>, a <a href="../cathen/04107b.htm">college</a>, with 60 pupils directed by the <a href="../cathen/08056a.htm">Christian Brothers</a>, and an academy for girls (130) directed by <a href="../cathen/06217a.htm">Franciscan</a> Tertiaries. The <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> (Uniat) <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenians</a> scattered through the peninsula have their own <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> organization dependent on Constantinople, where the Porte now recognizes the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenian</a> <a href="../cathen/11549a.htm">Patriarch</a> of Cilicia, since 1867 officially resident in the <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turkish</a> capital. He is the successor of the <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenian</a> <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">archbishop</a>-primate created at Constantinople in 1830 by the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> for the benefit of the <a href="../cathen/05230a.htm#catholic">Uniat</a> <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenians</a>, but ignored by the Porte until 1867, when <a href="../cathen/12134b.htm">Pius IX</a> secured the recognition of the settlement just mentioned. There are <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">episcopal sees</a> for the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenians</a> of Asia Minor at <a href="../cathen/01135f.htm">Adana</a> (3,000), Angora (7,000), Broussa (3,000), Kaisariyeh or Cæsarea (1,500), <a href="../cathen/10166a.htm">Melitene</a> (4,000), Erzerûm (10,000), Trebizond (5,000), and Sivas (3,000). In all these places the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenians</a> are far outnumbered by their <a href="../cathen/13529a.htm">schismatic</a> countrymen. The <a href="../cathen/10102b.htm">Mechitarist</a> Fathers (Armenian <a href="../cathen/10487b.htm">monks</a>) have stations at Broussa, <a href="../cathen/01513a.htm">Angora</a>, and Smyrna, also at Aidin, the ancient Tralles in the valley of the Mæander, where there are about 3,000 <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenian</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> in a population of 40,000 or 50,000. The <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenian</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> patriarch at Constantinople has a <a href="../cathen/08567a.htm">jurisdiction</a> over his people (16,000 in Constantinople), both civil and <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a>, analogous to that of the Greek Orthodox patriarch and his own <a href="../cathen/13529a.htm">schismatic</a> fellow-patriarch. The <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenian</a> <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> of Constantinople numbered (1901) 85; of these 26 were <a href="../cathen/10102b.htm">Mechitarists</a> (10 from <a href="../cathen/15417a.htm">Vienna</a>, 16 from <a href="../cathen/15333a.htm">Venice</a>), and 9 were Antonian <a href="../cathen/10487b.htm">monks</a>. There were 5 <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> for boys and 3 for girls, with 300 pupils, 2 colleges and 1 lyceum, 1 <a href="../cathen/07480a.htm">hospital</a>, 1 asylum for the insane and 1 asylum for invalids. Their <a href="../cathen/03041a.htm">churches</a> and <a href="../cathen/03574b.htm">chapels</a> number 16, and the <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parishes</a> 13. The present patriarch is Monsignor Sabbaghian (Peter Paul XII). Since 1869 the <a href="../cathen/03481a.htm">law of celibacy</a>, that until then had not been observed by all the <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenian</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>, has been made <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligatory</a>. The "Missiones Catholicæ" for 1901 indicates the following Latin missionaries in <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenian</a> centres of Asia Minor: <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a>, <a href="../cathen/03320b.htm">Capuchins</a>, <a href="../cathen/10357a.htm">Lazarists</a>, and <a href="../cathen/15024a.htm">Trappists</a> (in all about thirty) at <a href="../cathen/01135f.htm">Adana</a>, Erzerûm, Sivas, <a href="../cathen/15028a.htm">Trebizond</a>, and Kaiseriyeh.</p> <h2 id="section10">Greek Orthodox Church and non-Catholic Armenians</h2> <p>The great majority of the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christians</a> of Asia Minor belong to the so-called Greek-Orthodox or <a href="../cathen/13529a.htm">schismatic</a> <a href="../cathen/11549a.htm">patriarchate</a> of Constantinople. In <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> and ecclesiastico-civil matters they are subject to the patriarch according to the arrangement made on the fall of <a href="../cathen/04301a.htm">Constantinople</a> (1453), variously modified since then, and known as the "Capitulations" (Baron d'Avril, La protection des Chrétiens dans le Levant, Paris, 1901). The power of the patriarch, both <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> and civil, regulated by and divided with the National Assembly and the Great Synod at Constantinople, is extensive. Of the twelve <a href="../cathen/10244c.htm">metropolitans</a> who now compose his council three are from western Asia Minor (Cyzicus, <a href="../cathen/11070a.htm">Nicomedia</a>, and Chalcedon) and are habitually resident in the capital, while the other nine are elective at fixed periods. These three, together with the <a href="../cathen/10244c.htm">metropolitan</a> of <a href="../cathen/07242b.htm">Heraclea</a> in Thrace, hold the patriarchal seal that is divided into four parts. The Greek-Orthodox population, scattered through the islands of the Archipelago and along the whole coast-line of Asia Minor, is said to number about one million; in recent times it tends to increase and is now commercially dominant in the greater part of Asia Minor. There are several Greek (Basilian) <a href="../cathen/04340c.htm">monasteries</a> in the peninsula, six on the coast of the Black Sea, near Samsun and near Trebizond. There is also one (Lembos) near Smyrna. In the islands the number is larger; there are 3 on Chios, 87 on Samos, 2 on Patmos, and several in the Princes Islands near Constantinople. <a href="../cathen/04589a.htm">Cyprus</a> has 4 and Crete 50 (Silbernagl, 58, 59; <a href="../cathen/15354a.htm">Vering</a>, "Lehrbuch des kathol. orient. und prot. Kirchenrechts", Freiburg, 1893, 3d ed., 623-630; Petit, "Règlements généraux des églises orthodoxes en Turquie", in Revue de l'orient chrétien, Paris, 1898; Neale, "The Holy Eastern Church", I, London, 1850; Pitzipios, "L'Église orientale", Rome, 1855). Non-uniat, or <a href="../cathen/13529a.htm">schismatic</a>, <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenians</a> have settled in large numbers in various parts of Asia Minor, sometimes in the cities and sometimes in their own villages, in some places among the <a href="../cathen/15097a.htm">Turkish</a> populations. Since 1307 they have had a <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishop</a> resident at Constantinople, and since 1461 there has been in that capital a patriarch of the nation on the same political level as the Greek patriarch, recognized as the civil head of his people and their agent in all matters affecting their religion and in many civil matters. Until 1830 this <a href="../cathen/13529a.htm">schismatic</a> patriarch was recognized by the Porte as the civil representative also of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenians</a>. As stated above, it was only in 1867 that the latter obtained recognition of their own patriarch in the <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> of Monsignor, afterwards <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">Cardinal</a>, Anton Hassoun. There are about 40,000 <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenians</a> resident in Constantinople, and in Asia Minor, as already stated, their number is quite large; of the 120 lay members who make up the National Assembly representative of the <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenians</a> at Constantinople, one-third must be chosen from Asia Minor. They have the following <a href="../cathen/10244c.htm">metropolitan sees</a> in the peninsula (most of them provided with suffragans); Kaisariyeh, <a href="../cathen/11070a.htm">Nicomedia</a>, Broussa, <a href="../cathen/14060b.htm">Smyrna</a>, <a href="../cathen/01380c.htm">Amasia</a>, Sivas, Erzerûm, and <a href="../cathen/15028a.htm">Trebizond</a>. The <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> of the <a href="../cathen/13529a.htm">schismatic</a> <a href="../cathen/01736b.htm">Armenians</a> usually reside in <a href="../cathen/04340c.htm">monasteries</a> of their own nationality, which are thus centres both of national and <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> life. (Silbernagl-Schnitzer, Verfassung und gegenwärtiger Bestand sämtlicher Kirchen des Orients, 2d ed., Munich, 1904, 229-231.) See P<font size=-2>ERSECUTIONS, </font> E<font size=-2>ARLY</font> C<font size=-2>HRISTIAN </font>. For details of <a href="../cathen/10424a.htm">Moslem</a> <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a>, see T<font size=-2>URKEY</font>. For efforts of Protestant missionaries, and their influence on <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a>, see C<font size=-2>ONSTANTINOPLE</font>; T<font size=-2>URKEY</font>. For details of Greek-Orthodox <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> life and organization, see C<font size=-2>ONSTANTINOPLE,</font> P<font size=-2>ATRIARCHATE OF</font>; and G<font size=-2>REEK</font> C<font size=-2>HURCH</font>.</p> <div class='catholicadnet-728x90' id='cathen-728x90-bottom' style='display: flex; height: 100px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; '></div> <div class="cenotes"><h2>Sources</h2><p class="cenotes">     For the general history and description of Asia Minor the reader may consult, besides the classical work of DE SAINT MARTIN, the treatises of TCHIHATCHEFF, <em>L'Asie Mineure, etc.</em> (Paris, 1853-60), and CUINET, <em>La Turquie d'Asie</em> (Paris, 1892-94). Modern works of travels in Asia Minor: LEAKE (1824); AINSWORTH (1842); HAMILTON, <em>Researches on Asia Minor</em> (London, 1842); VAN LENNEP (1870); BARKLEY (1891); RAMSEY, <em>Impressions of Turkey</em> (London, 1897). The remnants of Byzantine life in Asia Minor may be studied in HAMMER'S classical <em>Geschichte der Osmanen</em> (Pesth, 1834); KRAUSE, <em>Die Byzantiner des Mittelalters</em> (Halle, 1869); BIKÉLAS, <em>La Grèce Byzantine</em> (Paris, 1893); BURY, <em>The Later Roman Empire</em> (London, 1889). For external conditions of primitive Christian life on the western coast of Asia Minor read RAMSEY, <em>The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia Minor</em> (New York, 1905). For the medieval period of the Asia Minor Churches see LEQUIEN, <em>Oriens Christianus</em> (Paris, 1740), and for the hierarchical lists GAMS, <em>Series episc. Eccl. cath.</em> (1873-86); EUBEL, <em>Hierarchia Catholica Medii Ævi</em> (1898-1902). For modern Catholic statistics see <em>missiones Catholicæ</em> (Propaganda, Rome, 1901); PIOLET, <em>Les missions catholiques françaises au XIX<sup>e</sup> siecle</em> (Paris, 1900); <em>Missions d'Asie,</em> I, 99-115, 132-149. For Protestant missions in Asia Minor see DWIGHT, TUPPER, AND BLISS, <em>Encyclopedia of Missions</em> (New York, 1904), s.v. <em>Turkey</em>. For the ecclesiastical conditions of the Greek Orthodox Christians, see, besides the above-mentioned works, RATTINGER, <em>Das ökumenische Patriarchat</em> in <em>Stimmen aus Maria-Laach</em> (1874); SILBERNAGL-SCHNITZER (<em>op. cit.</em>); MILAS, <em>Das Kirchenrecht der morgenländischen Kirche</em> (Zara, 1897); also the older works of HEINECCIUS, <em>Abbild der älteren und neueren griech. Kirche</em> (Leipzig, 1711f); EICHMANN, <em>Die Reformen des osmannischen Reiches</em> (Berlin, 1855), and PISCHON on the constitution of the Greek Orthodox Church, in <em>Theol. Studien und Kritiken</em> (Leipzig, 1864).</p></div> <div class="pub"><h2>About this page</h2><p id="apa"><strong>APA citation.</strong> <span id="apaauthor">Shahan, T.</span> <span id="apayear">(1907).</span> <span id="apaarticle">Asia Minor.</span> In <span id="apawork">The Catholic Encyclopedia.</span> <span id="apapublisher">New York: Robert Appleton Company.</span> <span id="apaurl">http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01782a.htm</span></p><p id="mla"><strong>MLA citation.</strong> <span id="mlaauthor">Shahan, Thomas.</span> <span id="mlaarticle">"Asia Minor."</span> <span id="mlawork">The Catholic Encyclopedia.</span> <span id="mlavolume">Vol. 1.</span> <span id="mlapublisher">New York: Robert Appleton Company,</span> <span id="mlayear">1907.</span> <span id="mlaurl"><http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01782a.htm>.</span></p><p id="transcription"><strong>Transcription.</strong> <span id="transcriber">This article was transcribed for New Advent by WGKofron.</span> <span id="dedication">In memory of Fr. John Hilkert, Akron, Ohio  Fidelis servus et prudens, quem constituit Dominus super familiam suam.</span></p><p id="approbation"><strong>Ecclesiastical approbation.</strong> <span id="nihil"><em>Nihil Obstat.</em> March 1, 1907. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor.</span> <span id="imprimatur"><em>Imprimatur.</em> +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.</span></p><p id="contactus"><strong>Contact information.</strong> The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is webmaster <em>at</em> newadvent.org. Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads.</p></div> </div> <div id="ogdenville"><table summary="Bottom bar" width="100%" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td class="bar_white_on_color"><center><strong>Copyright © 2023 by <a href="../utility/contactus.htm">New Advent LLC</a>. 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