Capra (Mauretania Caesariensis)

Roman Empire - Mauretania Caesariensis (125 AD)

Capra was an ancient Roman–Berber town in the province of Mauretania Caesariensis. The civitas was located in the present-day area of Béni Mansour and Béni Abbès, Algeria. It was a bishopric in the Roman Catholic Church.

Ecclesiastical history

Victor Vitensis speaks of Capra Picta as a town in that province, where some Catholics sent there into exile under the Arian Genseric, king of the Vandals from 428 to 477, converted a great number of the local population to Christianity.[1]

In the Notitia Provinciarum et Civitatum Africae,[2] Primus, bishop of the church in Capra, appears in the list of the Catholic bishops whom Huneric summoned to Carthage in 484 and then exiled.[3][1][4]

Titular see

No longer a residential bishopric, Capra is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.[5]

The ancient diocese was nominally restored in 1933 and since had the following incumbents, both of the lowest (episcopal) or intermediary (archiepiscopal) ranks :

References

  1. ^ a b Stefano Antonio Morcelli, Africa christiana, Volume I, Brescia 1816, pp. 117–118
  2. ^ Johann Peter Kirsch, "Notitia Provinciarum et Civitatum Africae" in Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1911)
  3. ^ Notitia Provinciarum et Civitatum Africae
  4. ^ Pius Bonifacius Gams, Series episcoporum Ecclesiae Catholicae, Leipzig 1931, p. 464
  5. ^ Annuario Pontificio 2013 (Libreria Editrice Vaticana 2013 ISBN 978-88-209-9070-1), p. 858