The School of Antioch

ANTIOCH

• Antioch was the center of Christendom outside Palestine.

• The community strongly supported St. Paul’s anti-Judaizing policy. According to tradition, the first bishop of the city was St. Peter, and by the beginning of the 2nd century, the Church had a well-established organization, with the celebrated St. Ignatius as its bishop.

• By the 4th century, the see ranked after Rome and Alexandria as the third patriarchal see of Christendom, reaching its greatest extent of jurisdiction at the end of that century.

• Gradually, however, the rise in power of the see of Constantinople, and to a lesser extent the erection of Jerusalem into a Patriarchate, reduced the importance of Antioch, and its influence also suffered later with the Nestorians.

• Antioch was captured temporarily by the Persians in 540 and 611, and was absorbed into the Arab caliphate in 637. The Byzantine empire recaptured the city in 969, and it served as a frontier fortification until taken by the Seljuq Turks in 1084. In the same year it was captured by the Crusades and was taken by the Mamluks in 1268.

• Antioch was captured by the Ottoman Turks in 1516 and it remained a part of the Ottoman Empire until shortly after World War I, when it was conveyed to Syria under a French mandate. The province of Hatay, of which Antakya is the capital, became autonomous in 1938, and the following year was ceded to Turkey.