Palestine A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha

The diocese of Caesarea-Palaestina is ancient – one of the earliest Christian bishoprics ever established. Records of the diocese (Greek: ‘administration’)

date as far back as the 2nd century and its bishopric became a metropolitan see. Under the Byzantines the diocese was the metropolis of Palaestina Prima.

It was initially directly subject to the Church of Antioch, one of the five major Christian churches during the early Byzantine period. After the All Palestine ecclesia of Aelia Capitolina was granted by autocephaly and independence in the mid-5th century by the Council of Chalcedon (see below), with top ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the ‘Three Palestines’, for many centuries the metropolitan Church of Caesarea-Palaestina continued to see itself as a ‘mother church’ and as ‘first among equals’ of the churches of Palestine.

The most distinguished bishop of the diocese was Eusebius of Caesarea, who was among the most famous bishops to attend the First Council of Nicaea in 325. Today the historic metropolitan see of Caesarea-Palaestina, or the archiepiscopal see of Caesarea in Palaestina, is preserved by the modern Orthodox Palestinian Church. The Archiepiscopal See of Caesarea-Palaestina is also known as a Latin titular see of the Catholic Church (Segreteria di Stato Vaticano 2013: 867; Riley-Smith 1978). A titular (non-diocesan)

metropolitan or archbishop of the Catholic Church is a title used to signify a diocese that no longer functions, often because the diocese once flourished but the land was conquered by Muslims.17 In later days, ‘titular see’ was seen by the Catholic Church as important to preserve the historic memories of ancient metropolitan churches such as that of Caesarea Maritima. In the period between the creation of this titular Bishopry of Caesarea-Palaestina in 1432 and 1967 twenty-eight Catholic bishops have occupied this honorary position. From 1975 to 2012 the Eastern Orthodox Metropolitan of Caesarea was Basilios Blatsos, who was also an Exarch of Palaestina Prima, under the jurisdiction of the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem (formerly the Patriarchate of Aelia Capitolina).

In Roman Provincia Palaestina Jerusalem was renamed by Emperor Hadrian as Aelia Capitolina. Under the Byzantines the name Jerusalem became largely extinct; officially Aelia Capitolina became the common name for the city (Drijvers 2004: 2). At the Council of Nicaea Eusebius and Macarius, the Bishop of Aelia Capitolina, were accompanied by seventeen other bishops representing all the major cities of Palestine (Palaestina Prima and Palaestina Secunda) (Wallace-Hadrill 1982: 165).18

In ecclesiastical matters, the elites of urban spaces in Palestine interacted with, and often dominated, their surrounding countryside. In the event, however, the council gave the Bishop of Aelia Capitolina (Jerusalem)

the first place among the bishops of Palestine, while leaving the Rites of the Church of Caesarea applicable to the whole of greater Palestine.

Caesarea-Palaestina also retained its position as metropolis to the Church of Aelia Capitolina and was directly subject to the Church of Antioch.

This ambiguous situation created by Nicaea was subsequently used by the Bishop of Aelia Capitolina, Maximus, to ordain bishops for Palestine and to assemble a council of bishops for the whole country. Inevitably this situation brought about conflicts between the Church of Aelia Capitolina and the older (ancient) Church of Caesarea-Palaestina. The latter persisted and continued to claim for a while ecclesiastical primacy over Palestine (Du Pin and Wotton 2010: 107).