Gardiki (Trikala), Greece
Encyclopedia
History
Cardica is a Latinized medieval form for Gardicium, the true ancient Greek name being Gardikion. Cardica is its name as a Roman Catholic titular seeTitular see
A titular see in various churches is an episcopal see of a former diocese that no longer functions, sometimes called a "dead diocese". The ordinary or hierarch of such a see may be styled a "titular bishop", "titular metropolitan", or "titular archbishop"....
in the former Roman province
Roman province
In Ancient Rome, a province was the basic, and, until the Tetrarchy , largest territorial and administrative unit of the empire's territorial possessions outside of Italy...
of Thessaly
Thessaly
Thessaly is a traditional geographical region and an administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, and appears thus in Homer's Odyssey....
.
It figures only in later Notitiae episcopatuum
Notitiae Episcopatuum
The Notitiae Episcopatuum are official documents that furnish Eastern countries the list and hierarchical rank of the metropolitan and suffragan bishoprics of a church....
of the twelfth or thirteenth century as a suffragan of Larissa
Larissa
Larissa is the capital and biggest city of the Thessaly region of Greece and capital of the Larissa regional unit. It is a principal agricultural centre and a national transportation hub, linked by road and rail with the port of Volos, the city of Thessaloniki and Athens...
. Lequien (II, 979) mentions five Latin Bishops of Cardica, from 1208 to 1389, the first being Bartholomew, to whom many letters of Pope Innocent III
Pope Innocent III
Pope Innocent III was Pope from 8 January 1198 until his death. His birth name was Lotario dei Conti di Segni, sometimes anglicised to Lothar of Segni....
are addressed. Lequien was unacquainted with any Greek bishop of the see. Manuscript lists, however, contain eight names: John, 1191-1192; Metrophanes, degraded in 1623; Gregorius or Cyrillus, 1623; Sophronius, 1646-1649; Gregorius, about 1700; Meletius, 1743; Paisius, eighteenth century; Gregorius, about 1852.
When Thessaly was united with Greece in 1881, the see had been vacant since 1875. It was suppressed in 1899, and Gardikion, commonly Gardiki, became a little village with about 300 inhabitants in the Prefecture of Trikala, in the mountainous region of Aspropotamos.