§ 100. Historical Survey

Historical Survey.

In the earliest period of the Church, as we have already mentioned, every city had its own bishop, and even in small places (ἐν χώραις) there existed their own bishops, who, in dependence on the city bishop, exercised a certain episcopal jurisdiction. This is explained by the position of the Church at that time and by the need, through the presence of a bishop in every place, to preserve the people in faithfulness to the Church amid the persecutions to which the Church was exposed at the hands of the Roman state authority. Given such a state of affairs, it was very difficult to establish the regional boundaries within which each bishop was to exercise his authority, and as a result frequent confusions occurred in church administration: it happened that one bishop would ordain clergy from the territory of another bishop, that certain priests were dependent on two bishops, and it even happened that in one place there were two bishops at once.[1] Only once the Christian Church ceased to be persecuted within the Roman state could the legislative authority of the Church establish the exact boundaries of the territories to which the authority of each bishop was to extend—in other words, could it establish a proper eparchial administration.

We have seen what, in the 4th century, constituted an eparchy, or, as it was then called, παροικία.[2] The Fourth Ecumenical Council tells us that in the 5th century an eparchy under the authority of its bishop was made up of: the city parish, and then the parishes that existed in all the places that were dependent on that city in political relations.[3] And so that, in the words of canon 2 of the II Ecumenical Council, ‘churches should not be belittled,’ and so that the number of bishops should not be multiplied without need, the canons forbid the appointment of bishops in small towns or villages, for which a single presbyter suffices—and this so that ‘the name and authority of the bishop should not be cheapened’;[4] it is further ordained that in determining the boundaries of a church territory, the political division of the land must always be taken into account,[5] and that, in case of a dispute as to which eparchy this or that parish is to belong to, a period of thirty years, during which this or that bishop exercised authority over the disputed parish, must serve as the basis for decision.[6] The spiritual head of an eparchy is the bishop.[7]