treason. They were just as badly treated as the Imperial Christians, enormous numbers of them apostatized to Islam; and when, after about a century, the rival Patriarchs reappear, the Melkite bishop has become a mere ornament of the Court of Constantinople, the Copt is the head of a local sect. The great days when the Christian Pharaoh was the chief bishop of the East had gone for ever.
3. Antioch.
The third great city of the Empire was Antioch on the Orontes. Just as Alexandria was the chief town of Egypt, so was Antioch the head of Syria. The city had been built in 301 b.c. by Seleucus Nicator, the founder of the Seleucid kingdom of Syria: before the Roman conquest (64 b.c.) it had been enlarged with three great suburbs, and was already the greatest and most famous city of Asia. At various times Emperors had lived there—Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Diocletian—and they built great temples, baths, and palaces. No less famous were the memories of the Christian Church of Antioch. It was here that we were first called Christians (Acts xi. 26); a very ancient tradition counted St. Peter as the first Bishop of Antioch;[1] during the persecution this city gave to the Church a long list of martyrs. St. Peter's successor was Evodius, then followed the glorious martyr St. Ignatius († 107), who, on his way to be thrown to the beasts at Rome, wrote the seven letters that form the most valuable part of the "Apostolic Fathers." Constantine (323–337) built the "Golden Church" at Antioch, splendid with precious metals and mosaic, that became the type of one class of Christian church.[2] When Julian (361–363) on his way to Persia went to the grove of Daphne by Antioch to
- ↑ St. Jerome: de vir. ill. I, &c. St. Peter was said to have reigned at Antioch for seven years (37–44) before setting up his chair at Rome. Our feast of St. Peter's Chair at Antioch (Feb. 22nd) was at first only Natale Petri de Cathedra, kept on the day of the old Roman Memory of the Dead (Cara Cognatio). To call it the Chair at Antioch was an afterthought, to distinguish it from the other feast on Jan. 18th: Cf. de Rossi in the Bolletino of 1867, and Kellner, Heortologie, 1901, p. 173.
- ↑ An eight-sided plan, with a gallery in two stories around and apses jutting out from the sides. On this model were built St. Vitalis at Ravenna, Charles the Great's church at Aachen, Essen, &c.
