Cambysopolis

A titular see of Asia Minor. The name is owing to a mistake of some medieval geographer. After his victory at Issus (333 B.C.) Alexander the Great built, near the ancient town of Myriandros, a city called after him Alexandria Minor (or ad Issum, more frequently Scabiosa, i.e. mountainous). It became a suffragan of Anazarbus, metropolis of Cilicia Secunda. Lequien (II, 903) mentions a dozen bishops; among them St. Helenus, St. Aristion, and St. Theodore, martyrs, and Paulus, a Monophysite (E.W. Brooks, The Sixth Book of the Select Letters of Severus, II, 98). In an Antiochene "Notitiae episcopatuum" of the tenth century [A.P. Kerameus, Maurocordatos' Library (Greek), Constantinople, 1884, p. 66], instead of Alexandria Scabiosa, we read the strange form Alexandroukambousou, in one word. A little later, and surely in the twelfth century, this corrupt form was mistaken for two names and thus arose Alexandrou and Kambysou (polis). Hence came two episcopal titles connected with one city, and the name Cambysopolis passed into all the Greek and Latin "Notitiae episcopatuum". The Roman Curia today preserves only the title Cambysopolis; the only correct name, Alexandria Scabiosa, exists no more. The city is now called Alexandretta (by the Turks, Iskanderoun); it is situated on the bay of the same name in the vilayet of Aleppo, and is united to the latter city by a carriage-road. It has about 7000 inhabitants (3000 Greeks, 500 Catholics of Latin and Eastern Rites). The Catholic parish is conducted by Carmelites, and there are attached to it Sisters of St. Joseph.

CUINET, Turquie d'Asie, II, 201-208; ALISHAN, Sissouan (Venice, 1899), 499-502.

S. VAILHÉ