Telmessos or Telmessus (; ; ), also Telmissus (),Michel Lequien, Oriens christianus in quatuor Patriarchatus digestus, Paris 1740, Vol. I, coll. 971–972 later Anastasiopolis (), then Makri or Macre (), was the largest city in Lycia, near the Carian border, and is sometimes confused with Telmessos in Caria. It was called Telebehi in the Lycian language. The well-protected harbor of Telmessos is separated from the Gulf of Telmessos by an island.
The name of the modern town on the site is Fethiye.
History Late Bronze Age The Hittite name was Kuwalapašša, while the Lycian name was Telebehi.
In the 13th century BC, the Annals of Hattusili III mentions the city as a part of Lukka (Lycia) and conquered by the Hittites. Another Hittite document mentions the cities of Kuwalapašša and Dalawa sent aid to Hittites during the war against Iyalanda.
Iron Age Telmessos was a flourishing city in the west of Lycia, on the Gulf of Fethiye. It was famed for its school of diviners, consulted among others by the Lydian king Croesus, prior to declaring war against Cyrus.
Telmessos was a member of the Delian League in the 5th century BC. It was taken by Alexander the Great in 334 BC, when he came to the town after the siege of Halicarnassus.
Middle Ages Telmessos was renamed Anastasiopolis in the 8th century AD, apparently in honour of Emperor Anastasios II, but this name did not persist. The city came to be called Makri, after the name of the island at the entrance to the harbor. This name is attested for the first time in 879 AD.
However, an inscription of the 7th century found in Gibraltar and bearing the ethnonym "Makriotes" (from Makri) may indicate an earlier existence of name Makri.Jaime B. Curbera (1996) "Two Greek Christian Inscriptions from Spain". Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 110 (1996) 290–292.
Its ruins are located at Fethiye.
Church history
Le Quien (Oriens christianus, I, 971) mentions two bishops of Telmessus: Hilary (370) and Zenodotus, at the Council of Chalcedon (451). The latter is called "Bishop of the Metropolis of Telmessaei and the Isle of Macra". The Notitiae Episcopatuum mentions Telmessus among the suffragans of Myra until the 10th century, when it is no longer called Macra; in 1316 mention is made of the See of "Macra and Lybysium". Lybysium or Levissi, about four miles south-west of Makri, had in the early 20th century 3000 inhabitants, nearly all Greeks.
The see is included, under the name Telmissus, in the Catholic Church's list of titular sees.Annuario Pontificio 2013 (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013, ), p. 985 The historically important former Bishop of Montreal, Ignace Bourget's first episcopal title was as bishop of the Catholic titular see of Telmessos.Léon Pouliot, Monseigneur Bourget et son temps, (Editions Bellamarin, 1972), p. 9. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Telmessos is also a titular episcopal see of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The current holder of the see, Archbishop Job, is primate of the Patriarchal Exarchate for Orthodox Parishes of Russian Tradition in Western Europe, based in Paris.
See also Aristander of Telmessus, seer to Alexander the Great Birds Without Wings 2004 novel by Louis de Bernières set in the early 1900s in a fictional Anatolian village called Eskibahçe where Telmessos is the nearest town.
References
Sources
Archaeological World Clive Foss, "The Lycian Coast in the Byzantine Age", Dumbarton Oaks Papers 48:1-52 (1994). at JSTOR
External links