Assuras, sometimes given as Assura or Assur, was a town in the

Roman province The Roman provinces (Latin: ''provincia'', pl. ''provinciae'') were the administrative regions of Ancient Rome outside Roman Italy that were controlled by the Romans under the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire. Each province was rule ...

Proconsular Africa Africa Proconsularis was a Roman province on the northern African coast that was established in 146 BC following the defeat of Carthage in the Third Punic War. It roughly comprised the territory of present-day Tunisia, the northeast of Algeri ...

. Ruins of its temples and theatres and other public buildings are at ''Henchir-Zenfour''.

Bishopric

At an early stage Assuras became the centre of a Christian

diocese In Ecclesiastical polity, church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop. History In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided Roman province, pro ...

. Records are extant of the names of seven of its bishops. The first of these is Fortunatianus. He was deposed because of defecting from the Catholic faith in the

Decian persecution The Decian persecution of Christians occurred in 250 AD under the Roman Emperor Decius. He had issued an edict ordering everyone in the Empire to perform a sacrifice to the Roman gods and the well-being of the emperor. The sacrifices had to ...

. Saint

Cyprian Cyprian (; la, Thaschus Caecilius Cyprianus; 210 – 14 September 258 AD''The Liturgy of the Hours according to the Roman Rite: Vol. IV.'' New York: Catholic Book Publishing Company, 1975. p. 1406.) was a bishop of Carthage and an early Chri ...

of Carthage speaks of him in a letter that he wrote to the Christians of Assuras in about 252, which shows that he tried to recover the see from which he had been driven. He was replaced by Epictetus, who died before 256, the year in which his successor Victor took part in a council at Carthage convoked by Cyprian to deal with the problem of the '' lapsi''.Pius Bonifacius Gams
''Series episcoporum Ecclesiae Catholicae''
Leipzig 1931, p. 464Stefano Antonio Morcelli
''Africa christiana''
Volume I, Brescia 1816, pp. 85–87Joseph Mesnage
''L'Afrique chrétienne''
Paris 1912, pp. 168–169 Anatole Toulotte
''Géographie de l'Afrique chrétienne''
vol. I Proconsulaire, Rennes-Paris 1892, pp. 128-133 Praetextatus was at the council held at Cabarsussi in 393 by a breakaway group of

Donatists Donatism was a Christian sect leading to a schism in the Church, in the region of the Church of Carthage, from the fourth to the sixth centuries. Donatists argued that Christian clergy must be faultless for their ministry to be effective and th ...

led by Maximianus and signed its acts. The participants were condemned in the following year by a council that the main Donatist body, which recognized Primianus as Bishop of Carthage, held at Bagai.

Saint Augustine Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Af ...

says Praetextatus was one of the twelve bishops who consecrated Maximianus as Bishop of Carthage. The successor of Praetextatus, Rogatus, was converted to the Catholic faith some time after 397. The Catholic Bishop of Assuras Evangelus took part in councils held at Carthage in 397, 401, and 411. The last of these was a meeting of Catholic and Donatist bishops, but Assuras was represented only by Evangelus, since the Donatist bishop of the town had died shortly before. The last Bishop of Assuras known by name was Peregrinus, who was one of the Catholic bishops summoned to a meeting in Carthage in 484 by the Vandal King

Huneric Huneric, Hunneric or Honeric (died December 23, 484) was King of the (North African) Vandal Kingdom (477–484) and the oldest son of Gaiseric. He abandoned the imperial politics of his father and concentrated mainly on internal affairs. He was m ...

and then exiled to

Sardinia Sardinia ( ; it, Sardegna, label=Italian, Corsican and Tabarchino ; sc, Sardigna , sdc, Sardhigna; french: Sardaigne; sdn, Saldigna; ca, Sardenya, label=Algherese and Catalan) is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after ...

. Assuras is still mentioned as a bishopric in an early 8th-century Byzantine ''

Notitiae Episcopatuum The ''Notitiae Episcopatuum'' (singular: ''Notitia Episcopatuum'') are official documents that furnish Eastern countries the list and hierarchical rank of the metropolitan and suffragan bishoprics of a church. In the Roman Church (the -mostly Lati ...

'' of the

Patriarchate of Alexandria The Patriarch of Alexandria is the archbishop of Alexandria, Egypt. Historically, this office has included the designation "pope" (etymologically "Father", like "Abbot"). The Alexandrian episcopate was revered as one of the three major episco ...

. No longer a residential diocese, Assuras is today listed by the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

as a

titular see A titular see in various churches is an episcopal see of a former diocese that no longer functions, sometimes called a "dead diocese". The ordinary or hierarch of such a see may be styled a "titular metropolitan" (highest rank), "titular archbish ...

.''Annuario Pontificio 2013'' (Libreria Editrice Vaticana 2013 ), p. 840

References

{{Reflist Catholic titular sees in Africa Former populated places in Africa