Avramea, Byzantine i'lie.ssal.y,4H

93

S vnekdem us of H ierocles is so striking that we can suggest that they consistute a sim ple repetition, with only the exception o f Dios and Pyktos.*^ Larisa is m entioned as the m etropolis o f T hessalia Secunda', a peculiar title which causes further confusion concerning the reliability o f the N otitia as we know that this title could not be used before the beginning o f the 9th century when the them e of Thessalonika was created and the town was nom inated as m etropolis o f 'Thessalia Prima'.

In the N otitiae 5 and 6 which can be roughly dated to the end o f the 9th century, the m etropolitan of Larisa was ranked in the 43th and 45th place respectively.! 1 N evertheless, only a few years later Larisa clim bed in a spectacular way to the 34th place. T his em erges from the D iatvposis o f Leo VI, a list that was evidently draw n up betw een 901-907, i.e. during the first Patriarchate o f N icholas I. T he bishoprics which cam e under the m etropolitan o f Larisa were those o f D em etrias, Pharsala, Thaum akos, E zeros, Loidoriki, Trikke, Echinos, K olydros and Stagoi. From the nine suffragan bishoprics only those o f Pharsala, Thaum akos and Ezeros belonged to the im m ediate region o f Larisa. The rasing of Neal Patrai to m etropolis did not seem to have caused any problem s to Larisa which kept all its 9th century bishoprics apart from the ones w hich initially declined and then vanished under the Slav pressure (Thebes, G om foi, M etropolis, Saltoum ioni, Saltouborge, K aisareia, D iocletianoupolis, Pyktos). It m ust also be noted that Larisa extended its ecclesiastical influence over Phokis as it included am ongst its dependent bishoprics L oidoriki, a town w hich does not appear as a Thessalian place-nam e either in the M iddle Ages or in the contemporm'y period.

D uring the course o f the lOth century, the m etropolitan see o f L arisa was relegated to the 36th place, but well before its end, it regained its previous status with exactly the sam e bishoprics as in the D iatvp o sis. N evertheless, it certainly suffered territorial losses after the creation of the archbishopric of Pharsala which was the head o f a newly created hom onym ous ecclesiastical province (eparchia). ’3

19 Darrouzes, 32; Hierocles, Synecdeinus, 16 11 Darrouzes, A/oWic?e, 265,268

12 ibid, 284

A new decrease of the ecclesiastical territory o f Larisa was to com e at the beginning o f the 11th century. In 1018, and after the restoration of the Byzantine pow er in Bulgaria, Basil II granted by a sigillion ( 1020) an extended authority to the Bulgarian church: the new ly appointed archbishop o f O chrida obtained authority over thirty diocesan bishops and Stagoi was one of the bishoprics that were attached to the new diocese. It was som e time later and certainly before the m iddle o f the 11th century that L arisa m anaged not only to regain Stagoi but also to extend its ecclesiastical ju risd ictio n rem arkably. It com prised thirty suffragan bishoprics that extended to m odern Pieria in the north (K olydros), to the region o f Pindos in the W est (Litza) to Phokis in the south (Loidoriki) and to the island o f Skopelos in the East. 15

O f these, the tow ns o f K allindos and V iaina have not been identified yet while G ian o p o u lo s' iden tificatio n o f K atria with K astri by the lake K arla is rath er problem atic, Special m ention should be m ade here for the bishoprics o f R adobisdio and P atsounas place-nam es w hich show very close phonetical sim ilarities with R adovisidon and Pazi respectively, two villages which according to one reading o f the Partitio R om aniae belonged to penirientia ofP etrio n . Avram ea, having initially placed Petri a in Eastern Thessaly on the basis o f a reference by John Tzetzes com es to condradict herself by identifying Radobisdio with a location called 'Radosivou' situated close to E lassona, as recorded in a docum ent issued in favour of the m onastery o f O lym piotissa in 1336. In her argum ent she is also follow ed by K oder-H ild.l^ A no th er bishopric w hich has not been identified by A vram ea in her list o f the T hessalian bishoprics, is that of K apouliana. The m ention of a certain D am ianos bishop o f K apoua and Phanari at the end o f the 14th century leads us to place K apouliana south o f Trikala and across the river Pleres. -1

Gelzer, ‘Texte, 46

^5 Darrouzes, Notiiiae, 326-327, 339 Giannopulos, 'Katalogoi\ 204 Carile, Pariitio, 286

Avramea, Byzantine Thessaly, 174-180 19 Koder, TH J2 (1987), 85

^6 Byzantine Thessaly, 174-180