CAESAREA MARITIMA. - A city of Palestine built between 25 and 12 B.C. by Herod the Great, who dedicated it to Caesar Augustus. There, 38 km south of Carmel, the Tower of Strato had previously stood. Herod dedicated the port to Augustus, calling it Sebastos, built a temple in honor of the emperor and the goddess Roma, an amphitheater and other pagan buildings, of which imposing ruins remain. When Judea passed under the direct dominion of Rome, C. became the seat of the procurators, who established themselves in Herod's palace (Acts 23:35).
Christianity entered there very early. The deacon Philip resided there with his prophetess daughters (Acts 8:40; 21:18). St. Peter baptized there Cornelius, a centurion of the Italic cohort (Acts 10), the first uncircumcised man to enter the Church. King Herod Agrippa I, who had himself proudly proclaimed a god there, suffered an ignominious death there (Acts 12:19-22; cf. Flavius Josephus, Antiq. Jud., XIX, 8, 2). St. Paul, who had passed through there on his way from Jerusalem to Tarsus, landed there on his return from the second and third apostolic journeys and, after being arrested in Jerusalem, was held there as a prisoner for two years (from 58 to 60), under the procurators Felix and Festus: here he appealed to Caesar and, after defending himself also before Agrippa II and Berenice, embarked for Rome (Acts 9:30; 18:22; 21:8; 23:23-27:2).
It was therefore an episcopal see from the most ancient times. In 195 a synod was held there which established that Easter must be celebrated on Sunday. Around the year 230 Origen, exiled from Alexandria, transferred his famous school there, where many disciples studied, among them St. Gregory the Wonderworker. One can therefore speak also of a school of C. that remained always faithful to the memory of Origen. Toward the end of the 3rd century the bishop St. Pamphilus taught there, himself a disciple of Pierius of Alexandria. The disciple and successor of Pamphilus was Eusebius, the historian, of tendencies favorable to the Arians.
Of more pronounced Arian tendencies was the bishop Acacius, head of the party of the "Homoeans." The scholarly tradition did not die out at C. The bishop Gelasius published his historical writings, now lost, in the second half of the 4th century, and from them Rufinus drew, it seems. The rich library with its adjoining archive must have been lost in the 7th century with the Muslim invasion, and from that moment the city shared the fate of the others in Palestine. When, toward the end of the 11th century, C. was conquered by the Crusaders, it became the seat of a Latin metropolis dependent on the Latin patriarchate of Jerusalem. Conquered by Saladin, it was retaken by the Crusaders on 7 September 1101, fortified by St. Louis IX of France, destroyed by Baibars in 1265. C. today is the seat of a Melkite bishop.