Izmir

IZMIR. - Ancient city of Asia Minor, in present-day Turkey. It is one of the seven Churches of Asia mentioned in the Apocalypse, where the letter of St. John to the bishop of S. is found (2:8-11).

Ignatius (v.), bishop of Antioch, passed through it on his journey to Rome and was greeted there by the representatives of the communities of Ephesus, Magnesia and Tralles; he addressed to his friend Polycarp, bishop of S., a letter, and another to his Church. Polycarp (v.) was put to death in the amphitheater at the age of 86. The Church of S. relates in its famous letter the intrepid fortitude of Polycarp's companions amid the tortures (cf. Martyrium Polycarp). A martyr of S. is also Pionius (v.), commemorated in the Hieronymian Martyrology on 10 and 12 March, depending on the Passio (BHG, 2nd ed., no. 1546; H. Delehaye, Les passions des martyrs et les genres littér., Brussels 1921, pp. 28-53), as are the Greek synaxaria which place him on 11 March (id., Synaxarium Eccl. Constantinop., col. 530). Polycarp of Ephesus relates that Thraseas, bishop of Eumenia, was martyred at S. (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., V, 18, 14; 24, 4). At S. the Hieronymian Martyrology assigns to 22 January the bishop Valerius.

Archaeological explorations have made it possible to identify primitive S. on the hill of Hacimutsos, 8 km. distant from the present city, which occupies the same site as the Hellenistic one. Around 60 B.C. it was part of the Roman province of Asia; under Hadrian it assumed the name of Hadriane. An earthquake demolished it in 178 A.D. and Aelius Aristides promoted its reconstruction. The Byzantines ruled there until 1071, the year in which it was conquered by Sulaymân ibn Qutaymâ. After the latter's death, S. became independent until 1097, when the Byzantines reconquered it. By the Treaty of Nymphaeum of 13 March 1261 between the emperor of Nicaea, Michael Palaiologos, and Genoa, S. became a Genoese possession until about 1330, the time when it was occupied by the Turks. These were driven out in 1344 by the Crusaders and the city was governed by the Genoese and the Knights of St. John or of Rhodes until the conquest made by Timûr in 1402 and the Turkish reconquest by Murâd II in 1425. In 1920 S. was occupied by the Greeks, who had to abandon it in 1922 to Turkey.

Some bishops of S. who took part in councils are known, such as Eutychius at that of Nicaea in 325, Idduas at Ephesus in 431, Aitericus at Chalcedon in 451. Courageous was the attitude of the metropolitan Metrophanes against Photius.

Between 1261 and 1320 a Catholic church is mentioned twice as being in use by the Genoese. In the period 1344-1417 two churches were erected, one dedicated to St. Francis and the other to St. Anthony of Padua; and in a letter of Pope Gregory XI of 1373 the churches of St. Mark and St. George are mentioned. In that period S. had Latin archbishops (Eubel, I, p. 456), the best known of whom is Paul, who became Latin patriarch of Constantinople; in 1595 it was C. G. Madruzzi, later a cardinal. With the Turkish reconquest S. became a titular see until 1624, when the archdiocese was erected again, but the apostolate had even earlier been continued by the Franciscans, who had the only Catholic church; the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda approved the new residences of the Jesuits in 1624 (Fr. De Camillac and Br. G. Collaro da Tinos) and of the Capuchins in 1634, who had had in administration in 1627 a new parish in S. for the French Catholics. A third Catholic church was founded in 1630 by the Jesuits, who established a school much frequented by Greeks and Armenians. With the war between Venice and the Turks (1645-69) the latter confiscated the convent and alienated the church of the Franciscans, who rebuilt it in 1692. In 1659 an apostolic vicariate was erected and the first vicar was L. Macripodari (1659-89). The Church of S. increased greatly in the 18th century; in 1743 the Armenian metropolitan Sergius converted to Catholicism; the Dominicans too settled in S. and the Franciscans founded a hospital; the French Catholics had their parish of St. Polycarp, the others that of the Immaculate Conception. A fire afflicted the sacred buildings in 1773. The Lazarists succeeded the Jesuits in 1783. King Louis XVI had the church of the Capuchins rebuilt. A new parish entrusted to the Franciscans was erected in 1790 in the village of Burnabat (Burnowa). In 1818 Pope Pius VII restored the archdiocese, raising to archbishop the apostolic vicar L. Cardelli, a Franciscan (1818-32). In the 19th century the Church of S. became ever more flourishing, with the arrival of new religious Orders (Mechitarists of Vienna, Brothers of the Christian Schools, Salesians, Assumptionists, various congregations of sisters).

At S. on 13 June 1869 an Eastern Catholic Council was held. On 14 June 1874 the cathedral and parish church of St. John the Baptist was consecrated by Archbishop V. Spaccapietra. The religious houses suffered destruction during the Greco-Turkish wars of 1922 and the Catholics from then on kept diminishing. United with the archbishopric is the apostolic vicariate of Asia Minor with the missions of Konia and Scalanuova.

Enrico Jesi