2. Savia. 3.

5. Noricum

1.

diocese were six provinces. 1. Dalmatia. Pannonia Superior. 4. Pannonia Inferior. Mediterraneum. 6. Noricum Ripense. In Dalmatia, Carolus à Sancto Paulo reckons four episcopal dioceses. Salona, the metropolis. 2. Jadera, now called Zara. 3. Epidaurus, now Ragusa. 4. Scodra, or Scutari. But Scodra is wrong placed in Dalmatia; for, as has been noted before, it was rather the metropolis of Prævalitana. But Holstenius adds two more in the room of it, Doclea and Senia, now called Segna, a city upon the Liburnian shore.

SECT. 17.-Of Savia.

The next province to this was Savia, which seems to be so named from the river Savus running through the middle of it. It is sometimes called Pannonia Sava, being part of Pannonia on the Savia, and sometimes Pannonia Sirmiensis and Cibaliensis, from the cities Sirmium and Cibalis, which lay in this part of it. But here we consider it as a distinct province from Pannonia, from which it was separated by the river Dravus, and is what we now call Sclavonia, and part of Bosnia and Servia. In this province were six episcopal dioceses. 1. Sirmium, the metropolis, near the confluence of the Savus and the Danube. 2. Singidunum. 3. Mursa, now called Essek. 4. Cibalis. 5. Noviodunum. 6. Siscia.

SECT. 18.-Of Pannonia Superior and Inferior.

1.

Between the river Dravus and the Danube lay the two Pannonias, Superior and Inferior, which are now the southern part of Hungary. In the former of these Carolus à Sancto Paulo out of Lazius, speaks of four dioceses. Vindobona, or Vienna. 2. Sabaria. 3. Scarabantia, and 4. Celia. To which Holstenius adds Petavia, now called Petow, which the other confounds with Patavia or Batava Castra in Noricum, now called Passaw in Bavaria. Victorinus Martyr was bishop of this city, though Baronius, and many others commonly style him Pictaviensem, as if he had been bishop of Poitiers in France; whereas he was bishop of this city in Pannonia Prima, called Potavia or

Petow, as is observed by Spondanus, and Pagi, and Du Pin, in their critical remarks upon the life of that ancient writer. In Pannonia Inferior there were but three dioceses. 1. Curta. 2. Carpis. 3. Stridonium, the birth-place of St. Jerom.

SECT. 19.-Of Noricum Mediterraneum and Ripense.

More westward from Pannonia was the province of Noricum, confined on the north with the Danube, and on the south and west with Venetia and Rhætia, two Italic provinces. This the Romans divided into two, Noricum Mediterraneum, and Ripense, in both which Lazius mentions but four dioceses. 1. Laureacum, now called Lork. 2. Juvavia, or Salsburg. 3. Ovilabis. 4. Solva. Carolus à Sancto Paulo by mistake adds a fifth, Petavia, Petow; but that, as was said before, belongs to another province. And the rest were not erected till the sixth century, when that part of Germany was first converted, which is now Carniola and Carinthia, with part of Bavaria, Stiria, Tirol, and Austria. By which it is easy to judge of what vast extent those dioceses anciently were, as they are now at this day; two of them, as I observed, being as large as ten or twenty in some other parts of the world, particularly in Palestine and Asia Minor, which have been already considered; and the observation will be more fully verified by taking a particular view of Italy, whose episcopal dioceses come now in order in the next place to be considered.

CHAP. V.

A particular Account of the Dioceses of Italy.

SECT. 1. Of the Extent of the Diocese of the Bishop of Rome.

ITALY, in the sense we are now to speak of it, as it was taken for the whole jurisdiction of the Præfectus Urbis and Vicarius Italiæ, under the Roman Emperors, was of somewhat larger extent than now it is; for not only the islands

of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica were taken into the account, but also Rhætia Secunda, which is that part of Germany that lies from the Alps to the Danube. In this extent it was divided into two large civil dioceses, containing seventeen provinces of the Roman empire, as has been showed before; and in these provinces there were about three hundred episcopal dioceses, the names of which are still remaining, but the places themselves many of them demolished or sunk into villages, and other new bishoprics set up in their room. I shall not concern myself with the number or extent of the modern dioceses, but only those that were ancient, and erected within the first six hundred years; of which I am to make the same observation in general, as I have done upon those of Palestine and Asia Minor, that here were some of the largest, and some of the smallest dioceses, for extent of ground, of any in the world, and yet the same species of episcopacy retained in all without any variety or distinction. The dioceses of the suburbicary provinces, that lay next to Rome, were generally small, in comparison of those that lay further to the north and west in the Italic provinces. For about Rome the country was extremely populous, and cities much thicker spread, which occasioned so many more episcopal sees to be erected in those provinces above the other. This will plainly appear by taking a view of each particular province, and comparing the dioceses one with another; of which we shall be able to give a more exact account, because so much pains has been. taken by learned men in all ages, especially Cluver and Holstenius, Ferrarius and Baudrand in the last age, to describe minutely and exactly the several places of this country, and their distance from Rome and one another.

To begin with Rome itself: this was a very large diocese in one respect, and very small in another. In respect of the city itself, and the number of people that were therein, it might be called one of the greatest dioceses in the world. For Pliny speaks of it as the most populous city in the universe, in the time of Vespasian, when it was but thirteen

'See chap. i. of this Book. VOL. II.

2 Plin. lib. iii. c. 5.

A a

miles about. But Lipsius, in his book De Magnitudine Romana, and Mr. Mede, and some others think, that is meant only of the city within the walls; for otherwise it was but forty-two miles in compass when St. John wrote his ReveIations in the time of Domitian. And afterward it received considerable additions; for in the days of Aurelian, the historian speaks of it as no less than fifty miles in circumference. And before this time the Christians made a considerable figure in it; for Cornelius, who lived in the middle of the third century, speaks of forty-six presbyters, beside deacons, sub-deacons, and other inferior clergy, belonging to the church in his time. And within half an age more we find an account of above forty churches in it for so many Optatus says there were, when Victor Garbiensis, the Donatist bishop, was sent from Afric to be the anti-bishop there; though there were forty churches and more in the city, yet he could not obtain one of them, to make his handful of sectaries look like a Christian congregation. This, as Baronius and Valesius have rightly observed, was spoken by Optatus not of his own times, but of the time when Victor Garbiensis came to Rome, which was in the beginning of the Diocletian persecution. Whence it may be rationally inferred, that if there were above forty churches in Rome before the last persecution, there would be abundance more in the following ages, when the whole city was become Christian. But as by the vast increase of this city the dioceses were very large within, so for the same reason it became very small without. For that which was at first the territory of Rome, seems afterwards to have been swallowed up in the city itself, by the prodigious increase of it. Insomuch that some have thought, that in the time of Innocent I., the diocese of Rome had no country parishes belonging to it, but that they were all within the city; because in his Epistle to Decentius, bishop of Eugubium," he

2 Mede, Com8 Vospic. Vit. Aurel. p. 645.

1 Lipsius, de Magnitud. Roman. lib. iii. c. 2. p. 111. mentat. Apocalypt. p. 488.

5

Optat. lib. ii. p. 49.

* Cornel. Ep. ad. Fab. Euseb. lib. vi. c. 43. Non enim grex aut populus appellandi fuerant pauci, qui inter quadraginta et 6 Innoquod excurrit basilicas, locum ubi colligerent non habebant. cent. Ep. 1. ad Decent. c. 5. De fermento autem quod die dominico per titulos mittimus superfluè nos consulere voluisti, cùm omnes ecclesiæ nostræ intra it a tem sunt constitutæ, &c.

2

3

seems to make this difference between other dioceses and that of Rome, "that in the Roman diocese the custom was to send the sacrament from the mother-church to the presbyters officiating in other churches, because all their churches lay within the city; but this was not proper to be done in other places, which had country parishes,' because the sacraments were not to be carried to places at too great a distance." But however this was, (for learned men are not exactly agreed upon it, and I conceive it to be a mistake,) this is certain, that the diocese of Rome could not extend very far any way into the country-region, because it was bounded on all sides with neighbouring cities, which lay close round it. On the north it had Fidenæ, a bishop's see in those times, though as Cluver and Ferrarius show out of Dionysius Halicarnasseus, it lay but forty stadia, or five miles distant from it. On the east it was bounded with the diocese of Gabii, which some by mistake place seventy miles from Rome, but Holstenius and Cluver, who are more accurate, tell us, it lay in the middle way between Rome and Præneste, about twelve or thirteen miles from each. In the same coast lay Tusculum, but twelve miles from Rome. A little inclining to the south lay the diocese of Subaugusta close by Rome: here Helena, the mother of Constantine, was buried, whence it was called Subaugusta Helena. Holstenius says, the remains of it are still visible at the place called Turris Pignatara. It was so near Rome, that the writers which speak of Helena's interment, commonly say she was buried at Rome, in the church of St. Marcelline, in the Via Lavicana; which is to be understood of St. Marcelline's church in Subaugusta, which lay in the way betwixt Rome and Lavici, whence the way was called Via Lavicana. If we look to the south of Rome down the river Tiber toward the sea, there we find three dioceses in three cities, none of them above three miles from each other, nor above sixteen miles from Rome.

1 Innocent. Ep. 1. Quod per parochias fieri debere non puto, quia non longè portanda sunt sacramenta.

rar. Lexic. Geogr. Voce, Fidenæ. Cluver. Ital. p. 955.

Paulo, p. 11.

Cluver. Ital. lib. ii. p. 654.

8 Fer