Parium

Titular see, suffragan of Cyzicus in the Hellespontus. The Acts of the martyr St. Onesiphorus prove that there was a Christian community there before 180. Other saints worthy of mention are: Menignus, martyred under Decius and venerated on 22 November; Theogenes, bishop and martyr, whose feast is observed on 3 January; Basil, bishop and martyr in the ninth century, venerated on 12 April. Le Quien (Oriens christ., I, 787-90) mentions 14 bishops, the last of whom lived in the middle of the fourteenth century. An anonymous Latin bishop is mentioned in 1209 by Innocent III (Le Quien, op. cit., III, 945) and a titular bishop in 1410 by Eubel (Hier. Cathol. med. ævi, I, 410). At first a suffragan of Cyzicus, Parium was an autocephalous archdiocese as early as 640 (Gelzer, “Ungedruckte . . . Texte”, 535) and remained so till the end of the thirteenth century. Then the Emperor Andronicus II made it a metropolis under the title of Pegon kai Pariou. In 1354 Pegæ and Parium were suppressed, the metropolitan receiving in exchange the See of Sozopolis in Thrace (Miklosich and Müller, “Acta patriarchatus Constantinopolitani”, I, 109, 111, 132, 300, 330). This was the end of the episcopal see. The ruins of Parium are at the Greek village of Kamares (the vaults), on the small cape Tersana-Bournou in the caza and sandjak of Bigha.