Utimma was an ancient city in the Roman province of Africa Proconsularis [1] (now northern Tunisia ) during the Byzantine and Roman Empires. [2] [3] the exact location of Utimma is lost to history but it is believed to be between Sidi Medien and Henchir-Reoucha in Tunisia.
Classical antiquity is the period of cultural history between the 8th century BC and the 5th or 6th century AD centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome known as the Greco-Roman world. It is the period in which Greek and Roman society flourished and wielded great influence throughout Europe, North Africa and Western Asia.
In the history of Rome, the Latin term civitas, according to Cicero in the time of the late Roman Republic, was the social body of the cives, or citizens, united by law. It is the law that binds them together, giving them responsibilities (munera) on the one hand and rights of citizenship on the other. The agreement (concilium) has a life of its own, creating a res publica or "public entity", into which individuals are born or accepted, and from which they die or are ejected. The civitas is not just the collective body of all the citizens, it is the contract binding them all together, because each of them is a civis.
The Roman provinces were the lands and people outside of Rome itself that were controlled by the Republic and later the Empire. Each province was ruled by a Roman who was appointed as governor. Although different in many ways, they were similar to the states in Australia or the United States, the regions in the United kingdom or New Zealand, or the prefectures in Japan. Canada refers to some of its territory as provinces.
The town of Utimma was also the home of a suppressed and titular see of the Roman Catholic Church. [4] [5] There are two known bishops of this diocese both attendee at the Council of Carthage (411), the Catholic Ottavio and Donatist Bonifacio. [6] [7] Today Utimma survives as a titular bishopric, [8] [9] the current bishop is Theodorus van Ruijven. [10]
A cathedra or bishop's throne is the seat of a bishop. It is a symbol of the bishop's teaching authority in the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, and the Anglican Communion churches. Cathedra is the Latin word for a chair with armrests, and it appears in early Christian literature in the phrase "cathedrae apostolorum", indicating authority derived directly from the apostles; its Roman connotations of authority reserved for the Emperor were later adopted by bishops after the 4th century. A church into which a bishop's official cathedra is installed is called a cathedral.
A titular see in various churches is an episcopal see of a former diocese that no longer functions, sometimes called a "dead diocese".
The word diocese is derived from the Greek term dioikesis (διοίκησις) meaning "administration". Today, when used in an ecclesiastical sense, it refers to the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop.
