ANTIOCHIA di PISIDIA. — City of Asia Minor, founded by Seleucus I (312–280 B.C.) with colonists from Magnesia, on a site famous for the sanctuary of the Phrygian god Men. It stood at an elevation of 1,200 meters above sea level, on a height on the southern slope of the mountains of Phrygia Paróreia, on the border of Pisidia (Strabo, XII, 8, 14). Declared a free city by the Romans, it was assigned to Pisidia (Pliny, Hist. Nat., V, 24). Under Augustus, perhaps as early as 30–27 B.C., it was constituted an imperial colony (Colonia Caesarea A.); it later became the capital of Pisidia.
In addition to an early Christian basilica with a mosaic pavement, W. Ramsay discovered there in 1912 an inscription in honor of P. S. Quirino (v.), and in 1914 the Latin text, engraved on stone (10 slabs), of the Res gestae divi Augusti (completed by excavations of the University of Michigan in 1924), corresponding to the text of the monument at Ancyra in Galatia and of Apollonia in Pisidia. Near the ruins of A. (the arches of a Roman aqueduct that brought the waters of Sultan Dagh to the city) now stands the Turkish town of Yalovač, in Iconium (v.), approximately 120 km to the east.
A. flourished on the great commercial route that led from Ephesus, across Asia Minor, to the East, and had attracted many Jews, to whom the Seleucids had already granted civil rights (Flavius Josephus, Ant. Iud., XII, 3, 4). In their synagogue, between 45 and 47, St. Paul announced Jesus the Messiah and Son of God in a lengthy discourse, obtaining many conversions (Act. 13, 14–52). Paul and Barnabas (on their first apostolic journey) came from Perge, approximately 168 km from A.
Prevented by Jewish hostility from preaching on the following Sabbath, Paul continued his apostolate in A., “turning to the Gentiles” (for a year, according to J. Holzner), amid many dangers and vexations, until the intrigues of the Jews expelled him together with his companion. They departed for Iconium, “shaking the dust from their feet against them.” But on their return they passed through A. again, encouraging the community and organizing it hierarchically (Act. 14, 20–23). At the end of his life, Paul (II Tim. 3, 11) recalled the persecutions he had suffered there; it is likely that some of the five scourgings and three beatings mentioned in II Cor. 6, 5; 11, 23–25 are to be included among them.
A see founded by the Apostle, A. has had bishops known since the 3rd century. Among the earliest, M. Le Quien mentions Eudoxius, Optatus, and Anthimus. At the Council of Nicaea (325), Antonius of A. appears among the bishops of the province of Isauria, while at the head of the fourteen bishops of Pisidia was the bishop of Iconium, Eulalius. Even before 381, however, A. was the see of the metropolitan of Pisidia: at the Council of Constantinople (381), Optimia signed as head of the fifteen representatives of the dioceses of Pisidia (Mansi, II, p. 695; III, p. 570). In the subsequent councils, down to the 7th century, various names of metropolitans of A. of Pisidia appear. The city was then overwhelmed by the Islamic invasion. Taken in 1097 by the crusaders of Bohemond of Taranto, the see was restored there by the Latins; since the Middle Ages it has been a titular archiepiscopal see. The Greek-”Orthodox” metropolitan of Pisidia now resides at Isbarta.