Bothrys

Bothrys

A titular see situated in Phoenicia. Bothrys is the Greek name of a city founded by Ithobaal, King of Tyre and father of Jezabel (897-866 B.C.), on the seashore near Cape Lithoprosopon (Menander, in Josephus "Ant. Jud.", VIII, 13, 2). It is mentioned by all the ancient geographers, Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, Stephanus Byzantius, Hierocles, etc. The city belonged to Phoenicia Prima, and became a suffragan of Tyre in the Patriarchate of Antioch. In 551 it was destroyed by an earthquake, on which occasion the cape cracked in the very middle so that quite a large harbor was opened (Malalas, Chronogr., XVIII, in P.G., XCVII, 704). Theophanes, relating the same event (ad an. 543), calls the city Bostrys, which form is also found elsewhere. Three Greek bishops are known: Porphyrius in 451, Elias about 512; and Stephen in 553 (Lequien, II, 827). According to a Greek "Notitia episcopatuum", the see still existed in the tenth century and was then called Petrounion. Its present Arabic name is Batroun. There are 2,500 inhabitants (1,200 Maronites, 1,200 Greeks). It is the centre of a caza in the mutessariflik of Lebanon and the seat of a Maronite diocese suffragan to the Maronite patriarchate. There are 60,000 Catholics, 50 churches or chapels, 30 priests, 1 seminary, 64 elementary schools, and 12 monasteries of Baladites, Aleppines, and monks of St. Isaiah in this Diocese.

S. VAILHÉ