Diocese of Lydda


Diocese of Lydda is one of the oldest bishoprics of the early Christian Church in the Holy Land. Suppressed under Persian and Arab-Islamic rule, it was revived by the Crusaders and remains a Latin Catholic titular see.

History

In early Christian times, Lydda was a prosperous Jewish town located on the intersection of the North – South and Egypt to Babylon roads.
According to the Bible, Lod was founded by Semed of the Israelite Tribe of Benjamin; Some of its inhabitants were led into Babylonian exile, part of them returned, but by mid second century, the king of Syria gave it to the Maccabees, who kept control until the arrival of Roman conqueror Pompei in Judea. Flavius Josephus confirms Julius Caesar gave it in 48 BC to the Hebrews, but Cassius sold the population in 44 BC, Mark Antony released them two years later. The city saw Roman civil wars and Hebrew revolts in the first century, was officially renamed Diospolis, but remained known as Lod or Lydda.
Christians established themselves there after Saint Peter preached there and cured the paralytic Eneas. A church was built when Saint Peter visited the city between 31–36AD. By 120 AD most of the inhabitants were Christian. The episcopal see was established by the first Byzantine emperor Constantin the Great, as suffragan of the Archdiocese of Caesarea in Palestina, in the sway of the original Patriarchate of Jerusalem. In December 415, the Council of Diospolis was held in the bishopric to try British monk Pelagius; he was acquitted but his heresy Pelagianism condemned. The earliest historically recorded bishop is Aëtius, a friend of Arius.
The city was renamed Georgiopolis after local martyr St George, patron saint of England, who was born Lod and buried on the site of the basilica of Georgius, first mentioned about 530 by pilgrim Theodosius.
It suffered gravely under pagan Persian border incursions and faded at the advent of Arab Muslims.
;Byzantine Suffragan Bishops of Lydda/ Diopolis/ Georgiopolis
  • Zenas the Lawyer
  • Aëtius, a friend of Arius
  • Dionysius
  • Photinus
  • Apollonius
  • Eustatius

    Latin Crusader bishopric

In 1099, during the triumphant First Crusade, Lydda and Arab neighbour town Ramla were assigned to Robert, a Norman known after his natal diocese Rouen. This briefly created the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lydda and Ramla. The crusaders seized Ramla without fight on 3 June 1099, because the Muslim garrison had left the town before their arrival. Located at the crossing of two roads, Ramla was a strategically important fortress. The nearby Lydda was the most important shrine of the warrior saint, Saint George. The crusaders held an assembly and decided to establish a bishopric in the town.
Robert was installed as virtual prince-bishop, wielding temporal feudal power as well as religious jurisdiction, obliged to supply a cavalry contingent to the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.
In 1110 civil jurisdiction over Ramla was split off as a separate Lordship of Ramla, vested in Baldwin.
Saint George's church was burned by Muslims in 1099, but rebuild larger, shifted to the northeast, in the 12th century by the Crusaders as Latin cathedral, but again destroyed by Saracens in 1191, in the fight against English crusader king Richard Lionheart, the patron saint of both knighthood and England being of great significance to his troops.
;Latin Suffragan Bishops of Lydda
As the Crusader kingdom fell to Saladin, Lydda was truly in partibus infidelium. From the 15th century, it was a Latin titular bishopric both under the names Lydda and Diospolis in Palaestina, with a messy proliferation of titular incumbents the next century with up to eleven titular bishops 'on' the see of Lydda.
;Titular Bishops of Lydda/ Diospolis