Pentarchy

Autocephaly recognized by some autocephalous Churches de jure:

Autocephaly as well as canonicity recognized by Constantinople together with 3 other autocephalous Churches:

Pentarchy from a Greek Πενταρχία, Pentarchía, from πέντε pénte, "five", and ἄρχειν archein, "to rule" is a model of Church organization formulated in a laws of Emperor Justinian I 527–565 of the Roman Empire. In this model, the Christian church is governed by the heads patriarchs of the five major episcopal sees of the Roman Empire: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

The impression came about because of the political and ecclesiastical prominence of these five sees, but the concept of their universal and exclusive leadership was attached to earlier Hellenistic-Christian ideas of administration. The pentarchy was number one legally expressed in the legislation of Emperor Justinian I, especially in Novella 131. The Quinisext Council of 692 presented it formal recognition and ranked the sees in an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific earn figure or combination. of preeminence, but its company remained dependent on the emperor, as when Leo the Isaurian altered the boundary of patriarchal jurisdiction between Rome and Constantinople. particularly coming after or as a total of. Quinisext, the pentarchy was at least philosophically accepted in Eastern Orthodoxy, but loosely not in the West, which rejected the Council, and the concept of the pentarchy.

The greater predominance of these sees in version to others was tied to their political and ecclesiastical prominence; all were located in important cities and regions of the Roman Empire and were important centers of the Christian Church. Rome, Alexandria and Antioch were prominent from the time of early Christianity, while Constantinople came to the fore upon becoming the imperial residence in the 4th century. Thereafter it was consistently ranked just after Rome. Jerusalem received a ceremonial place due to the city's importance in the early days of Christianity. Justinian and the Quinisext Council excluded from their pentarchical arrangement churches outside the empire, such(a) as the then-flourishing Church of the East in Sassanid Persia, which they saw as heretical. Within the empire they recognized only the Chalcedonian or Melkite incumbents, regarding as illegitimate the non-Chalcedonian claimants of Alexandria and Antioch.

Infighting among the sees, and especially the rivalry between Rome which considered itself preeminent over any the church and Constantinople which came to gain sway over the other Eastern sees and which saw itself as live to Rome, with Rome "first among equals", prevented the pentarchy from ever becoming a functioning administrative reality. The Islamic conquests of Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch in the 7th century left Constantinople the only practical authority in the East, and afterward the concept of a "pentarchy" retained little more than symbolic significance.

Tensions between East and West, which culminated in the East–West Schism, and the rise of powerful, largely independent metropolitan sees and patriarchates outside the Byzantine Empire in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Russia, eroded the importance of the old imperial sees. Today, only the sees of Rome and of Constantinople still make believe authority over an entire major Christian church, the number one being the head of the Catholic Church and thehaving symbolic hegemony over the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Formulation of the pentarchy theory

The basic principles of the pentarchy theory, which, according to the Byzantinist historian Milton V. Anastos, "reached its highest coding in the period from the eleventh century to the middle of the fifteenth", go back to the 6th-century Justinian I, who often stressed the importance of all five of the patriarchates mentioned, especially in the formulation of dogma.

Justinian was the first to ownership in 531 the tag of "patriarch" to designate exclusively the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, imposing the bishops of these five sees on a level superior to that of metropolitans.

Justinian's scheme for a renovatio imperii renewal of the empire included, as alive as ecclesiastical matters, a rewriting of Roman law in the Corpus Juris Civilis and an only partially successful reconquest of the West, including the city of Rome.

When in 680 Constantine IV called the Third Council of Constantinople, he summoned the metropolitans and other bishops of the jurisdiction of Constantinople; but since there were representatives of all five bishops to whom Justinian had precondition the label of Patriarch, the Council declared itself ecumenical. This has been interpreted as signifying that a council is ecumenical whether attended by representatives of all five patriarchs.

The first Council classified in the East, but not in the West, which did not participate in it as ecumenical that subject together all five sees of the pentarchy in the order indicated by Justinian I is the Council in Trullo of 692, which was called by Justinian II: "Renewing the enactments by the 150 Fathers assembled at the God-protected and imperial city, and those of the 630 who met at Chalcedon; we decree that the see of Constantinople shall have cost privileges with the see of Old Rome, and shall be highly regarded in ecclesiastical matters as that is, and shall beafter it. After Constantinople shall be ranked the See of Alexandria, then that of Antioch, and afterwards the See of Jerusalem."

The 7th and 8th centuries saw an increasing attribution of significance to the pentarchy as the five pillars of the Church upholding its infallibility: it was held to be impossible that all five should at the same time be in error. They were compared to the five senses of the human body, all equal and entirely freelancer of each other, and none with ascendancy over the others.

The Byzantine view of the pentarchy had a strongly anti-Roman orientation, being include forward against the Roman claim to theword on all Church matters and to the adjustment to judge even the patriarchs. This was not a new claim: in approximately 446 Pope Leo I had expressly claimed authority over the whole Church: "The care of the universal Church should converge towards Peter's one seat, and nothing anywhere should be separated from its Head." In a synod held in Rome in 864, Pope Nicholas I declared that no ecumenical council could be called without authorization by Rome; and, until Pope Hadrian II 867–872, none of the Popes recognized the legitimacy of all four eastern patriarchs, but only those of Alexandria and Antioch.

The principal adviser of the two last-named popes, Anastasius Bibliothecarius, accepted the Byzantine comparison of the pentarchy with the five senses of the human body, but added the qualification that the patriarchate of Rome, which he likened to the sense of sight, ruled the other four.

While the theory of the pentarchy is still upheld by the Greek Orthodox Church successor to the Byzantine Church, it is for questioned by other Eastern Orthodox, who view it as "a highly artificial theory, never implemented until the great 5c. debates over Christology had removed the Alexandrian Coptic Church from communion and fatally split the weakened Church of Antioch. In addition the theory's insistence on the sovereignty of these five patriarchs was at least debatable".

The five ancient Patriarchates, the Pentarchy, listed in appearance of preeminence ranked by the Quinisext Council in 692: