Located in Turkey, the settlement of Satala ( Satał, ), according to the ancient geographers, was situated in a valley surrounded by mountains, a little north of the Euphrates, where the road from Trapezus to Samosata crossed the boundary of the Roman Empire, when it was a bishopric, which remains a Latin Catholic titular see. Later it was connected with Nicopolis by two highways. Satala is now Sadak, a village of 500 inhabitants, in the Kelkit district of Gümüşhane Province in Turkey. History This site must have been occupied as early as the annexation of Lesser Armenia under Vespasian. Trajan visited it in 115 and received the homage of the princes of the Caucasus and the Euxine. It was he doubtless who established there the Legio XV Apollinaris and began the construction of the great castra stativa (permanent camp) which it was to occupy till the 5th century. The town must have sprung up around this camp; in the time of Ptolemy it was already important. In 530 the Persians were defeated by the Byzantine Empire under its walls. Justinian I constructed more powerful fortifications there, but these did not prevent Satala from being captured in 607-8 by the Persians. In the Middle Ages and Ottoman period an important east-west route between Erzurum and Sivas or Tokat ran past Satala; however by that time Satala had ceased being an important settlement. Ecclesiastical History In the Late Roman province of Armenia Prima, Satala was a suffragan of its capital Sebaste's Metropolitan Archbishop. The Christians were already numerous in the time of Diocletian. Le Quien seven of its bishops: Euethius, at Nicaea, 325 Elpidius, 360 Poemenius, about 378 Anatolius, 451 Epiphanius, 458 Gregory, 692 Philip, 879. The see is mentioned in the Notitiae episcopatuum until the thirteenth century, and we know the name of the bishop, Cosmas, in 1256. Titular see In the 18th century, the diocese was nominally restored as Titular bishopric of Satala. As such it had the following incumbents, all of the fitting episcopal (lowest) rank : Isaac Soffiali (1785.01.07 – ?) Ignacy Bardziński (1809.03.27 – 1813.12.15) Nikodem Puzyna (1814.09.26 – 1819.10.22) Gianfrancesco Guglielmo Tippmann (1832.12.17 – 1857.06.20) Vital-Justin Grandin, Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (O.M.I.) (1857.12.11 – 1871.09.22) Tommaso Teofilo Kulinski (1872.02.23 – 1883.03.15) Lazzaro Mladenoff, Lazarists (C.M.) (1883.06.12 – 1918.03.04) In 1933 it was renamed Satala in Armenia. It is vacant, having had as such the following