Cappadocia

CAPPADOCIA. - A Roman province situated on the plateau of Anatolia, with the free city of Caesarea (today Kayseri) as its capital. Its boundaries were Galatia, Pontus, Armenia, Cilicia and Lycaonia.

There were Jews of C. among those who heard the first preaching of St. Peter (Acts 2:9), and the same apostle addresses his first letter also to the faithful of C., perhaps evangelized by St. Paul on his journey toward Galatia. In the 2nd century the Legio Fulminata, in which Christian soldiers were not lacking, was quartered in Caesarea. This city was already an episcopal see at least as early as 200, since at that time its bishop Alexander, formerly a disciple of Pantaenus and of Clement in the School of Alexandria, was arrested during the persecution of Septimius Severus. The influence of the Alexandrians is accentuated by the fact that Firmilian, bishop of Caesarea (d. 264), was a disciple of Origen. Thus it is explained that the theology of the three great Cappadocians has so much affinity with that of Alexandria. The circumstance also contributed to this, that the paternal grandmother of St. Basil, Macrina, was in her turn a disciple of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, another fervent disciple of Origen.

C. was exposed in the 4th century to the vicissitudes of the Arian controversy. In the see of Caesarea, after Dianius and Eusebius, St. Basil the Great (v.) was consecrated bishop in 370, who with his brother St. Gregory of Nyssa and his friend St. Gregory of Nazianzus constitutes the most brilliant glory of Christian C. Basil's stance in favor of orthodoxy and against the intrigues of the Arians aroused the wrath of Valens, who spent the winter of 371-72 in C. and in vain sought to intimidate Basil by means of the prefect of the East, Modestus. Basil became the fulcrum of orthodoxy throughout Asia Minor. Out of spite and to diminish his influence, Valens divided the province of C., creating a second one with Tyana as its capital, whose bishop sought to escape the metropolitan jurisdiction of Caesarea. Basil then multiplied the episcopal sees in his province. Many centuries of Turkish domination have completely destroyed every Christianity in C. The paintings of the ancient rock churches remain.

The monastic life, begun in C. through the work of Eustathius in the 4th century, was later practiced by St. Basil, by St. Gregory of Nazianzus and by other monks for whom St. Basil composed rules that for the first time legislated on cenobitism.

Ignazio Ortiz de Urbina