Berissa
Berissa, also spelled
Berisa or
Verissa, is a Roman Catholic
titular see in the former
Roman province of
Pontus Polemoniacus, in Asia Minor, which Kiepert and Ramsay identified with the modern village of
Baulus or
Bolus, south-west of
Tokat.
In the time of
St. Basil it was included in the diocese of
Ibora, as appears from letters LXXXVI and LXXXVII of the great bishop, but soon after became an independent bishopric in
Armenia Prima, with
Sebasteia as metropolis. This important change took place before 458, when its bishop, Maxentius (written wrongly Ausentius), subscribed with his colleagues of Armenia Prima the synodal letter to the
Emperor Leo I (Mansi, XII, 587-589).
Hierocles, at the beginning of the sixth century, does not treat it as an independent city; but it is mentioned as such by
Justinian in a
Novella of 536, among the cities of
Armenia Secunda. It must be remembered that this emperor, when creating the province of
Armenia Quarta in 536, gave to Armenia Prima the name of Armenia Secunda, without altering the established ecclesiastical organization, so that Berissa remained a suffragan see of Sebasteia.
Among its later bishops may be mentioned Thomas, who was present at the
fifth ecumenical council at Constantinople, in 553 (Mansi, IX, 175), and another at the sixth in 680 (ibid., XI, 66). It appears still later in the "Notitiae Episcopatuum" as suffragan to Sebasteia, and its name is written sometimes
Berisse, sometimes
Berisse; Merisse and Kerisse are merely palaeographical mistakes.
Berissa was a Latin bishopric as late as the fifteenth century, when Paul II appointed the Franciscan Libertus de Broehun to succeed the deceased bishop, John (Wadding, Annales Minorum, VI, 708).
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