Sinis

Sinis

Sinis, a titular See in Armenia Secunda, suffragan of Melitene. The catalogue of titular bishoprics of the Roman Curia formerly contained a see of Sinita, in Armenia. When the list was revised in 1884, this name was replaced by Sinis, mentioned as belonging to Armenia Secunda, with Melitene, now Malatia, as its metropolis. Ptolemy, V. 7, 5, mentions a town called Siniscolon in Cappadocia at Melitene, near the Euphrates. Müller in his "Notes à Ptolemy" ed. Didot, I (Paris, 1901), 887, identifies this with Sinekli, a village near the Euphrates, "ab Argovan versus ortum hibernum", about nineteen miles north of Malatia in the vilayet of Mamouret ul-Aziz. But it seems certain that Siniscolon is a mis-reading for "Sinis Colonia", a form found in several Manuscripts. Ramsay, "Asia Minor", 71, 272, 314, reads Sinis for Pisonos in "Itinerar. Anton." and especially for Sinispora in the "Tabula Peutingeriana" (Sinis, Erpa), and places Sinis Colonia twenty-two Roman miles west of Melitene, on the road to Cæsarea. There is no mention of this town in the Greek "Notitiæ episcopatuum" among the suffragans of Melitene, and none of its bishops is known, so it seems never to have been a bishopric.

S. PÉTRIDÈS.