during the pre-Constantine era."[1] Half Nicomedia was now Christian; Bithynia and Western Pisidia were widely Christianised; in Asia and Caria the Christians were very numerous; the southern provinces of Syria, Pamphilia, and Isauria sent twenty-five bishops to the Nicene Council and Cilicia sent nine. Thrace, Macedonia, Dardania, Epirus, and Greece were all provinces of the Church with their own metropolitans, though little is known of their history. North and west there were young churches planted as far away as the banks of the Danube, and missionary work was already begun among the Goths to the north-west of the Black Sea.
In Palestine there was quite a number of churches—Professor Harnack gives the names of about thirty—with Jerusalem as their capital. There were three churches in Phoenicia and a good number in Cœle-Syria, with the important bishopric of Antioch at their head. Less than a century after this time Chrysosotom reckons the number of members of the chief church—perhaps, as Gibbon considered, meaning the total Christian population of this city—to be 100,000. Then there were churches in Arabia, and as early as the time of Origen numerous bishoprics in towns south of the Hauran. In Egypt the Christians were very numerous, those in Alexandria far outnumbering the Jews; churches were flourishing in the Nile towns as far up as Philæ and on the two oases. Lastly, Edessa was now an important Christian centre, and there were several churches in Mesopotamia, and some even beyond the confines of the empire in Parthia and Persia.
- ↑ Expansion of Christianity, Eng. Trans., vol. ii. p. 326.
