Lystra

Lystra

A titular see in the Province of Lycaonia, suffragan of Iconium. On his first visit to this town St. Paul healed a lame man, upon which the populace, filled with enthusiasm, wished to offer sacrifice to him and to Barnabas, whom they mistook respectively for Jupiter and Mercury. The two Apostles restrained them with difficulty. These same people, stirred up by Jews from Iconium, afterwards stoned St. Paul (Acts, xiv, 6-19; II Tim., iii, 11). On at least two other occasions the Apostle returned to this city (Acts, xiv, 20; xvi, 1-3), established there a Christian community, and converted his future disciple Timothy, the son of a Jewish mother and a pagan father. The Jews were undoubtedly numerous, though they had no synagogue. Pliny (Historia Naturalis, V, 42), places Lystra in Galatia, Ptolemy (V, 4) locates it in Isauria, and the Acts of the Apostles in Lycaonia. The Vulgate (Acts, xxvii, 5) also mentions it, but the reference is really to Myra in Lycia. Some coins have been found there belong to a Roman colony founded by Augustus at Lystra "Colonia Julia Felix Germina Lystra". The exact site of the town has been discovered at Khatum Serai, twelve miles south of Iconium; it is marked by some ruins on a hill about one mile north of the modern village. Lequien (Oriens Christ., I, 1073-76) mentions five bishops of Lystra between the fourth and the ninth centuries, one of whom, Eubulus, about 630 refuted Athanasius, the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch.

STERRET, The Wolfe Expedition to Asia Minor (Boston, 1888), 142, 219; LEAKE, Journal of a Tour in Asia Minor (London, 1824), 101, 103; RAMSAY, The Church in the Roman Empire (London, 1894), 47-54; IDEM, St. Paul the Traveller, and the Roman Citizen (London, 1895), 114-9; BLASS, Acta Apostolorum (Gottingen, 1895), 159-61; BEURLIER in VIG., Dict. De la Bible, s.v. Lysire.

S. VAILHE