BOSTRA. - A city in the Hawran, ancient capital of the Roman province of Arabia established by Trajan in the year 106. Christianity was introduced there very early: it already had a bishop in the 3rd century, and ORIGEN visited it twice. Its bishop TITUS wrote against Mani, a work now lost. It still preserves many important ruins from the Roman period and those of a great Christian church; an inscription tells us that it was dedicated to SS. SERGIUS and BACCHUS and that it had been built under Archbishop JULIAN in the year 407 (era of Bostra), 6th indiction: thus between September 512 and March 513. The old publications by REY, DE VOGÜÉ and H. C. BUTLER give a misleading idea of it; recent excavations have revealed its real form, namely that of a rotunda inscribed in a square and having at its center a four-leaf structure formed by pillars and columns (cf. J. W. CROWFOOT, *Churches at B. and Samaria-Sebaste*, British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, Supplementary Paper, 4, 1937).
This plan is related to that of the Armenian church of ZWARTHNOTZ, with S. LORENZO in Milan and the churches of APamea and Antioch recently discovered; all these are related to the type of building erected in the center of the Stoa of Hadrian in Athens, which may have been a church. The type of roofing of the church remains an unsolved problem: probably the central part was covered with a wooden dome, like the Anastasis in Jerusalem, the “new” church of Jerusalem built by Justinian and described by Procopius. The church was decorated with frescoes and mosaics.
At B. the Catholic episcopate was re-established in 1687. The series of bishops has been unbroken since 1836. The metropolitan resides in Damascus or in Habab, where the most important parish is located. There are 5,700 faithful, 22 places of worship, 10 churches, 14 priests, and 27 schools.
GUGLIELMO DE VRIES