time, was called Dacia Nova, as the other beyond the Danube was called Dacia Antiqua, and Gothia. In this province of Dardania, Carolus à Sancto Paulo finds four dioceses. 1. Scupi, the metropolis. 2. Ulpianum, otherwise called Justiniana Secunda. 3. Diocletiana, which, at the time of the Council of Sardica, was reckoned a city of Macedonia. 4. Nessyna, or Nessus. Holstenius adds another, called Pautalia, which Hierocles, in his Notitia, reckons among the cities of Dacia Mediterranea, and Stephanus and Ptolemy among the cities of Thracia, as lying in the confines of those provinces.

Besides these five provinces of the Dacian diocese, on the south side of the Danube, there was another on the north side out of the bounds of the Roman empire, called Dacia Antiqua, and Gothia, from the time that the Goths seated themselves in it. Epiphanius speaks of one Silvanus, bishop of Gothia, beyond Scythia, taking Scythia for the Roman Scythia, on this side the Danube, whereof Tomi was the metropolis. Whence Holstenius rightly concludes, that Gothia was [either] that region which is now called Transylvania, or [that which is now] Wallachia. But what episcopal sees they had, or whether they had, in all this region, any more than one bishop, as the Scythians, and Saracens, and some other such barbarous nations had, is uncertain. Carolus à Sancto Paulo thinks Zarmizegethusa was the seat of their bishop, because Ptolemy makes it the royal seat and metropolis of the kingdom. And this he supposes to be the same with Gothia, mentioned in the Notitia of Leo Sapiens among the autocephali, or such bishops as had no suffragans under them. But these being matters involved in obscurity, I leave them to further inquiry.

the diocese

Occiden

16. Out of the Illyricum Orientale, we pass next into the Of the six civil diocese of Illyricum Occidentale, which was under the provinces in government of the Præfectus-Prætorio of Italy. In this dio- of Illyricum cese were six provinces. 1. Dalmatia. 2. Savia. 3. Pan- tale. Of nonia Superior. 4. Pannonia Inferior. 5. Noricum Medi- Dalmatia. terraneum. 6. Noricum Ripense. In Dalmatia, Carolus à Sancto Paulo reckons four episcopal dioceses. 1. Salona, the metropolis. 2. Jadera, now called Zara. 3. Epidaurus, now τοῦ ἐκ Γοτθίας τελευτὴν, πολλοὶ διελύθησαν, κ. τ.λ. ED.]

9 [Hær. 70. Audian. n. 15. (t. 1. p. 828 a.) Μετὰ δὲ τὴν τῶν ἐπισκόπων αὐτῶν τούτων Οὐρανίου καὶ Σιλουανοῦ

Of Savia.

Of Panno

rior and

Inferior.

Ragusa. 4. Scodra, or Scutari. But Scodra is wrong placed in Dalmatia; for, as has been noted before, [in the twelfth section,] 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.

17. 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.

18. Between the river Dravus and the Danube lay the two nia Supe- Pannonias, Superior and Inferior, which are now the southern part of Hungary. In the former of these Carolus à Sancto Paulo out of Lazius [in his Catalogue of Bishoprics of Illyricum] speaks of four dioceses. 1. Vindobona, or Vienna. 2. Sabaria. 3. Scarabantia. 4. Celia [or Celeïa]. To which Holstenius adds Petavia, now called Petow, [or Petau,] which the other confounds with Patavia or Batava Castra in Noricum, now called Passau in Bavaria. Victorinus Martyr, [who flourished about the year 270,] was bishop of this city, though Baronius, [Bellarmin,] and many others commonly style him Pictaviensis, as if he had been bishop of Poictiers in France, whereas he was bishop of this city in Pannonia Prima, called Petavia, as is observed by Spondanus, and Pagi, and Du Pin, in their critical remarks upon the life of that ancient writer, [as well as by Launoy 10, who wrote an entire dissertation on the subject.] In Pannonia Inferior there were but three dioceses. 1. Curta. 2. Carpis. 3. Stridonium, the birthplace of St. Jerom.

10 See Du Pin, Biblioth. (Paris. 1683. v. 1. p. 194.) Victorin, évêque de Petav, ville de l'ancienne Pannonie, située sur le Drave en Styrie, &c.-See ibid. (n. a.) Le sçavant

M. de Launoi a fait une dissertation exprés, qu'il n'a point été évêque de Poitiers en France, mais d'une ville de Pannonie appellée Petovio ou Petabio. Il fait voir, &c.

Mediterra

neum and

19. More westward from Pannonia was the province of Of Noricum Noricum, confined on the north with the Danube, and on the south and west with Venetia and Rhætia, two Italic provinces. Ripense. 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, Tyrol, 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.

diocese of

Rome.

1. ITALY, in the sense we are now to speak of it, as it was of the extaken for the whole jurisdiction of the Præfectus Urbis and tent of the Vicarius Italia, under the Roman emperors, was of some- of the what larger extent than now it is; for not only the islands of bishop 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 shown before 13; 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 13 See ch. 1. s. 5. of this Book, p. 222.