Ostracine

Ostracine is a Roman Catholic Titular bishopric and suffragan of Pelusium in the former (Egyptian) Roman province of Augustamnica prima.

History

Pliny the Elder (Hist. naturalis, V, xiv) places the town sixty-five miles from Pelusium. Ptolemy (IV, v, 6) locates it in Cassiotis, between Mount Cassius and Rhinocolura. Hierocles, George of Cyprus and other geographers always mention it as in Augustamnica.

We learn from Josephus ("Bellum Jud.", IV, xi, 5) that Vespasian stopped there with his army on the way from Egypt into Palestine; the city then had no ramparts. It received its water from the Delta by a canal. A Roman garrison was stationed there.

Le Quien (Oriens christianus, II, 545) speaks of three bishops, Theoctistus, Serapion and Abraham, who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries.

There is in this region, near the sea, a small town called Straki, which probably replaced Ostracine.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Vailhé, S. (1911). "Ostracine". In Herbermann, Charles. Catholic Encyclopedia. 11. Robert Appleton Company.  The entry cites:
  • AMELINEAU, La Geographie de l'Egypte a l'epoque copte (Paris, 1893), 288.

Further reading

• Ostracine is mentioned in The Youth of Jesus (Lorber Verlag - Bietigheim) received by the Inner Word by Jakob Lorber during the years 1843 to 1851. The Holy Family went there by the help of the Roman authorities, esp. the governor of Syria Cyrenius, who resided in Tyre at that time and who brought them by his own ship to Ostracine.