Myriophytum

A titular see of Thracia Prima and suffragan of Heraclea. The early history of this city is not known. We find it mentioned for the first time in connection with an earthquake which destroyed it in the year 1063 of our era (Muralt, "Essai de chronologie byzantine", II, 8). It was visited by John Cantacuzene about 1350 (Hist., III, 76). As a suffragan of Heraclea we find it, under the title of Peristasis and Myriophytum, mentioned first in a "Notitia episcopatuum" of the end of the fifteenth century (Gelzer, "Ungedruckte . . . Texte der Notitiae episcopatuum", 633). The title of Peristasis existed already in 1170 (Parthey, "Hieroclis Synecdemus", 103). In the sixteenth century Myriophytum displaced Peristasis, and the diocese took the name of Myriophyturn and Peristasis (Le Quien, "Oriens christianus", I, 1151). No change has since taken place, except that among the Greeks in 1908 it was elevated to an autocephalous metropolitan see. To-day Myriophytum is a rather busy port on the Sea of Marmora; the city numbers 5000 Greeks and 400 Turks. The schismatic archdiocese includes only ten parishes with about 22,000 souls, of whom Peristasis alone includes about 6000.

DRAKOS, Thrakika (in Greek Athens, 1892), 72-93.

S. VAILHÉ