ANCYRA

ANCYRA. Now Ankara, a city of central Asia Minor (q.v.), the capital of the Roman province of Galatia and early the site of a Christian church, it rose to prominence and occasional notoriety as a theological center. Two important councils held there dealt with issues such as the reconciliation to the Church of those who lapsed during persecution and the penitential system (A.D. 314), and the Semi-Arian issue of Christology (q.v.) and the “homoousios” (358)-which term Bishop Basil of Ancyra rejected along with Arianism (q.v.). One of its best-known bishops, Marcellus (d. ca. 375), was roundly condemned by most of his eastern peers as a Trinitarian Modalist, but supported by Rome, Athanasius (qq.v.), and the West in general. The see was raised to the dignity of a metropolitanate in the 4th c. and continued to be one of the most important church centers in the region for the remainder of the first millennium. In the 20th c. Ankara became the capital of the Turkish Republic under Kemal Ataturk, marking the conclusion of the Ottoman Empire (q.v.).