Thaumaci

A titular see in Thessaly, suffragan of Larissa, commanding the defile of Coele at the entrance to the Thessalonian plain. Vainly besieged in 198 B.C. by Philip, it was taken in 191 by the consul Acilius Glabrio in the war against Antiochus. The Greeks call it to-day Domokos; it is the chief town of the demos of Thaumakoi, and a well-fortified place; it has 1600 inhabitants, and is beautifully situated on a rock crowned by a medieval fortress, west of which are some old walls. During the last Greco-Turkish war, in 1897, it was the final halting place of the vanquished Greek army. We do not know if Thaumaci was a bishopric whilst Thessaly owned allegiance to the pope; in any case, when Illyricum, in 732, was withdrawn from the pope's jurisdiction by the emperors of Constantinople, this city became a suffragan of Larissa. In 1882, during the annexation of Thessaly to Greece, the diocese became dependent upon the autocephalous Church of the Kingdom of Greece. After a while the diocese was suppressed by the new organization of this Church (1899). Le Quien, "Oriens christianus", II, 127, names only three bishops of Thaumaci from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century; it would be easy to augment this list. After the Frankish conquest in the thirteenth century, Thaumaci became a Latin bishopric, and four of its titularies are mentioned: Gualo, 1208; Marcus Morellus, about 1334; John, d. 1366; and another John, a Franciscan monk, who replaced him.

LE QUIEN, Oriens christianus, III, 981, 1123; EUBEL, Hierarchia catholica medii aevi I, 233.

S. Pétridès.