Nacolia

Nacolia

(Nacoleia).

A titular metropolitan see in Phrygia Salutaris. This town, which took its name from the nymph Nacola, had no history in antiquity. It was there that Valens defied the usurper Procopius; under Arcadius it was occupied by a garrison of Goths who revolted against the emperor. At first dependent on Synnada, the see became autocephalous between 787 and 862, and metropolitan between 1035 and 1066. Seven of its bishops are known, among them being Constantine, one of the chief supporters of Iconoclasm under Leo the Isaurian, who feigned to abjure his error before the patriarch, St. Germanus, and was condemmed as an heresiarch at the Second Council of Nicaea (787). Nacolia is the modern village of Seyyid el-Ghazi, chief town of Nahié, in the Villayet of Brusa, about twenty-two miles southeast of Eski Sheir. The name of the village is derived from Seyyid (Sidi) el-Battal, an Arab sheikh who was slain in 739 by troops of Leo the Isaurian, and buried in a tekke of Bektashi dervishes founded by the mother of the Seljukian sultan, Aladdin the Great. Seyyid el Ghazi contains some unimportant ruins.

Ramsay in Journal of Hellenistic Studies, III (1882), 119 sq.; Le Quien, Oriens Christ., I 839; Cuinet, La Turquie d'Asie, IV, 213; Radet, En Phrygie (Paris, 1895), 22.

S. PÉTRIDÈS