ANCYRA. - City of Galatia in Asia Minor, now Angora (Turkish Ankara), capital of present-day Turkey.
It must have received the Christian faith very early; but it appears in history only toward the end of the 2nd century, in the times of the struggle against Montanism. Among its monuments, mention should be made of the famous temple of Augustus (on whose walls the emperor's testament was found engraved), reduced to a church around the 6th century. It is from the same period the basilica of St. Clement, built of brick and with a dome, very similar to Hagia Sophia, and of which ruins remain. Some martyrs were venerated there, and especially the two brothers Plato and Antiochus.
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Antonio Ferrua
ANCYRA, DIOCESE OF THE ARMENIANS
Although A. is one of the most ancient Armenian dioceses of Asia Minor, a true and proper Armenian Catholic community appears there only around 1600, going on to reach a notable degree of development in the following century through the work of Armenian missionaries, pupils of the Urban College of Propaganda Fide and above all disciples of the abbot Mechitar (v.). It had to suffer many persecutions on the part of the Turkish government, at the instigation of the schismatic Armenians. Following the very grave one unleashed in 1827-28, and by virtue of the brief of Pius IX of 6 July 1830 which instituted the new archiepiscopal see of Constantinople, the Catholic community of A. was withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the non-united archbishop. Finally, on 30 Apr. 1850, Pius IX erected A. as an episcopal see, together with the other four Armenian sees of Artuin, Erzerum, Brussa and Trebizond.
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Serafino Akelian
THE COUNCILS OF ANCYRA
Tre concili - anzi, un concilio e due « conciliaboli » - furono celebrati in A. nel sec. IV.
The council, which assembled between Easter and Pentecost of 314, was very important and assumed almost the character of a plenary council of the Churches of Asia Minor and Syria; it issued 25 disciplinary canons, concerning mainly the treatment of the "lapsi" of the last persecution (cf. Mansi, II, pp. 513-40). All of them were incorporated into the canon law of the Byzantine Church by the Trullan Council (691), and thus had the fortune of being commented on by the great canonists of the 12th century (PG 137, 1123-96).
In 358, on the initiative of George of Laodicea — one of the principal supporters of Semi-Arianism — a new synod assembled in A., under the presidency of Basil of A., to react against the second Council of Sirmium held in 357, where the intransigent Arians, called Anomoeans, had triumphed. At the conclusion of its proceedings, a long letter was drafted, in which the doctrine of the Semi-Arians, also called "Homoiousians," is set forth.
In the winter of 375 another synod was convened in A., at which the deposition of Hypsis, the Catholic bishop of Parnassas, was decided, and a slanderous accusation was accepted against St. Gregory of Nyssa, whose arrest was ordered (but the saint managed to escape from the hands of the soldiers).
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The letter of the Synod of 358 is preserved for us in its entirety by St. Epiphanius, Haeres., 73, 2-11, and in part by St. Hilary, De Synodis, 12-25, 88-91, who gives an orthodox interpretation of it. Cf. also: Hefele-Leclercq, I, pp. 903-908; G. Rasneur, L'homoiousianisme dans ses rapports avec l'orthodoxie, in Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique, 4 (1903), p. 201.
The conciliabulum of 375 is known to us only through letters 225, 237-40, 244 of St. Basil. Hefele does not speak of it at all. See what Tillemont says about it, IX, Paris 1703, pp. 247-49.
Martino Jugie