New Advent
 Home   Encyclopedia   Summa   Fathers   Bible   Library 
 A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z 
New Advent
Home > Catholic Encyclopedia > S > Siunia

Siunia

Please help support the mission of New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more — all for only $19.99...

A titular see, suffragan of Sebastia in Armenia Prima. Siunia is not a town, but a province situated between Goghtcha, Araxa, and Aghovania, in the present Russian districts of Chamakha, or Baku, and Elisavetpol. The real name should be Sisacan, the Persian form, for Siunia got its name from Sisac, the son of Gegham, the fifth Armenian sovereign. Its first rulers, vassals of the kings of Armenia or the shahs of Persia, date back to the fourth century of our era; about 1046 it became an independent kingdom, but only till 1166. The Church of Siunia was established in the fifth century or perhaps a little earlier. It soon became a metropolis subject to the Catholicos of Armenia, and, as we see in a letter of the patriarch Ter Sargis in 1006, it counted twelve crosiers, which must signify twelve suffragan sees. The archdiocese contained 1400 villages and 28 monasteries. In the ninth century the metropolitan see was fixed in the convent of Tatheo, situated between Ouronta and Migri, sixty-two miles south-east of Lake Gokcha. Separated for a brief interval from Noravank, the See of Siunia was reunited to it, but was definitively separated again in the thirteenth century. In 1837 the Diocese of Siunia was, by order of the Synod of Etchmiadzin, suppressed and subjected directly to the catholicos under the supervision of the Bishop of Erivan, who had a vicar at Tatheo. The complete list of the bishops and metropolitans of Siunia, from the fifth century till the nineteenth century, is known; amongst them we may mention Petros, a writer at the beginning of the sixth century, and Stephanos Orbelian, the historian of his Church. It is not known why the Roman Curia introduced this episcopal title, which does not appear in any Greek or Latin "Notitia episcopatuum", and was never a suffragan of Sebastia.

Sources

LE QUIEN, Oriens christianus, I (Paris, 1740), 1443; BROSSET, Listes chronologiques des princes et des métropolites de Siounie in Bulletin de l'Académie des Sciences de Saint-Pétersbourg, IV (1862), 497-562; STEPHANOS ORERLIAN, Histoire de la Siounie, tr. BROSSET (Saint-Petersburg, 1864).

About this page

APA citation. Vailhé, S. (1912). Siunia. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14031a.htm

MLA citation. Vailhé, Siméon. "Siunia." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 14. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14031a.htm>.

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Douglas J. Potter. Dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. July 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.

Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is webmaster at newadvent.org. Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads.

Copyright © 2023 by New Advent LLC. Dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

CONTACT US | ADVERTISE WITH NEW ADVENT