Gindarus

A titular see of Syria Prima, in the Patriarchate of Antioch. Pliny (Hist. nat. V, 81) locates it in Cyrrhestica, as does Strabo (XVI, 2, 8) who says it was a celebrated haunt of brigands. Ptolemy (V, xiv) speaks of it as being in the region of Seleucia, and Stephen of Byzantium (s.v.) makes it a small town situated near Antioch. The first and only known Bishop of Gindarus was Peter, who assisted at the Council of Nicæa in 325 (Gelzer, Patrum Nicænorum nomina, p. 61) and at that of Antioch in 341 (Lequien, Oriens Christ., II, 789). Yet the episcopal see is not mentioned in the sixth-century “Notitia” of Antioch (Echos d’ Orient, 1907, 144), nor in that of the tenth century (op. cit., 1907, 94); it is also missing from the list of cities of Syria given by the geographer Hierocles and George of Cyprus. It is probable that it was never an important town, and that its see, of early creation, soon disappeared. Under the Emperor Theodosius the Great, Gindarus was only a small village which he fortified (P.G., XCVII, 517), and in the time of Justinian I, when the relics of the martyr, St. Marinus, afterwards transferred to Antioch, were found there, Gindarus possessed only a periodeutes and not a bishop. It is now Djenderis, on the Afrin-Sou, in the vilayet and the sanjak of Aleppo, not far from Kal’at Semaan, the famous monastery of St. Simon Stylites.