Capitolias

A titular see of Palestine, suffragan to Scythopolis in Palestina Secunda. According to the coins of the city, its special era begins A.D. 97 or 98; it dates, therefore, at least under this name, from the time of Nerva or Trajan. It was originally a part of the Decapolis. Capitolias is mentioned by many geographers, among others by Hierocles and Georgius Cyprius in the sixth and seventh centuries. Six bishops are given by Lequien (III, 715). The first, Antiochus, was present at Nicaea in 325; the second, Ananias, was at Chalcedon in 451; the last, St. Peter, is said to have suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Saracens early in the seventh century; he seems, however, to have been only a priest of Capitolias. In the twelfth century the see was an independent archbishopric, as appears from a "Notitia episcopatuum" of that time (H. Gelzer, in Byzantin. Zeithschrift, I, 253). Eubel, I, 169, mentions four Latin titulars in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The site of Capitolias is identified with the ruins at Bet-er-Ras, near Irbid, the chief village of a kaïmakamlik in the vilayet of Syria.