ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

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The diocese of Thrace (Latin Dioecesis Thraciae, in Greek Διοίκησις Θρ'κης) was a diocese of the late Roman Empire, including the eastern provinces of the Balkan Peninsula (an area extending over the current south-eastern Romania, central and eastern Bulgaria, Greece and Turkish Thrace). This diocese was established following the diocletian reforms, and was administratively subordinate to the prefect of the eastern prefect.

Emperor Anastasius (491-518), when he built the Long Walls in Thrace, divided the diocese of Thrace into two: the "diocese of Thrace" and the "Diocesis of the Long Walls". It is ignored the extension of the new diocese but JB Bury hypothesized that it was located north of Constantinople.

The diocese of Thrace was tormented by the discord between civil and military authorities and incursions by barbarians. Justinian (535-536) suppressed the title of Vicar of Thrace (the maximum civil authority of the diocese) and of vicar of the Long Walls, and entrusted the administration of the diocese to a Praetor Justinianus of Thrace with full civil authority and miliar. Subsequently, from the diocese were separated the provinces of Lower Mesia and the Scizia that, associated with the Caria, the Cyclades and Cyprus entered into the Prefecture of the five provinces, under the Quaestor Iustinianus government of the army, independent both from the prefect of the prefect of the East and from the magister militum.

Lost much of the Thrace following the invasions of the Slavs and Avari, which began to settle permanently in the Byzantine Balkans since the early 1980s, the diocese of Tracia was suppressed by the establishment of the Themata system (VII century).

The diocese included the provinces of Europe, Thrace, Haemimontus, Rodope, Mesia II and Scizia.

Bibliography
JB Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire, Vol. II, 1923, Chapter 21.

Other projects

Diocese of the Roman Empire
Thrace