Bodone

A titular see of Albania. The name is a dialectic form of Dodone, in Epirus, near Janina at the foot of Mount Tomaros, or Tmaros, the present Olitsika (C. Carapanos, Dodone et ses ruines, Paris, 1878). At an early date a Christian church was built here on the site of the temple of Zeus. Theodorus, a Bishop of Dodona, was present at Ephesus, in 431; Philotheus appeared at Chalcedon in 451; Uranius, in 458, signed the letter of the bishops of Epirus Vetus to Emperor Leo; Philippus in 516 subscribed a synodal report of the bishops of Epirus to Pope Hormisdas concerning the election of John to the See of Nicopolis, the metropolis of the province (Hierocles, Synecdemos, 651, 5). When Naupactus was substituted for Nicopolis about the end of the tenth century, Dodona was the first suffragan see; the "Nova Tactica" (Georgius Cyprius ed. Gelzer, 1661) has Mounditza, but this is an evident mistake for Bounditza, a form derived from Bodone (Parthey, Notit. episcop., App. 48). In fact the later "Notitiae" wrote only Bounditza (ibid., III, 524), or Bonditza (ibid., X, 616; XIII, 467). John, Bishop of Bonditza signed a synodal act in 1229 (P.G., CXIX, 797). The present name is Bonitza. When the Greek residential bishopric disappeared is unknown; the Roman curia used for a long time the forms Bodona and Bodonensis, and a decree of 1894 directed this see to be suppressed at the death of its titular.

LEQUIEN, Or. Christ., 1, 139; GAMS, Series episcop., 429; ARABANTINOS, Chronography of Epirus, Gr. (Athens, 1857), II, 34.

L. Petit.