§ 84. The Constituent Parts of the Church

CHAPTER TWO. Church authority in the regional churches. 1. THE CHURCH TERRITORY.

The constituent parts of the Church.

We have seen what the personal composition of the Church is.[1] In order the more easily to grasp the constitution of the Church in general, and in particular the constitution of the regional churches that together make up the ecumenical Church, as well as the organs through which church authority acts in its gradation, we must review the constituent parts of the Church, and how the church territory is organized both in general and in its particulars.[2]

1. Christianity was first established in the larger and more important cities of the Greco-Roman state, and there the first church communities were founded with their own particular bishops. But already in the earliest times of the Church it began to spread also to smaller places and villages.[3] In these smaller places and villages the bishop of the city on which they politically depended at first sent city priests to perform the church service; but a little later permanent priests too were appointed, and separate church communities were formed—our present-day parishes—which in the canonical sources are called either rural (ἐγχωρίους), or hamlet (ἀγροικικάς), or such as consisted of a few households of one clan (μονοίκια).[4] Several such parishes were entrusted to the oversight of one particular bishop, who was subordinate to the city bishop and was called a chorepiscopus, a rural bishop; and these parishes together made up one small church district, which today is called a protopresbyterate, a deanery (blagochinie), and so forth.[5] All these deaneries, together with the parishes subordinate to them, together made up a district that depended on the bishop of the city and that today is called an eparchy.[6] For the sake of maintaining church unity among several such eparchies the chief means were councils, which used to assemble every year twice, or at least once. The usual place for these councils was the chief city of the respective political province, and there deliberation over church needs took place under the presidency of the bishop of that chief city.[7] And since, for the sake of other business besides church affairs, the bishops of the lesser cities also had recourse to that bishop of the chief city, and since he was the intermediary for their connection with the rest of the Church, little by little the bishops of these chief cities in the political provinces[8] began to exercise oversight over the other bishops of the respective province—an oversight which in the fourth century turned into formal authority over those bishops in external church matters—and so a new church district was formed, whose head, named after the political designation of the chief city, was called a metropolitan, while the district itself today bears the name metropolitanate.[9] According to the political division of the lands, several such metropolitanates lying within the bounds of one great political circuit together formed one great church district, whose head was the metropolitan of the chief city of that political circuit; and these great districts themselves were called exarchates, or patriarchates,[10] which were equal to one another in authority, each with its own independent jurisdiction, while unity among them was maintained by the means already mentioned, of which we shall speak further.[11]

II. The founding of the various church districts belongs to church authority together with state authority.[12] The participation of state authority in this has its ground, first, in the fact that the canons expressly require that in the ordering of church districts the political ordering of the state must be authoritative,[13] and second, in the fact that between Church and State there must exist a close bond, and that from this participation of state authority the Church receives a firm guarantee that its external constitution will be fully preserved and its rights secured against anyone’s arbitrariness.[14]

The founding of a church district, or the raising of a lesser one to a higher degree, and likewise the abolition or union of two districts into one—all this belongs in the first place to the conciliar authority of the respective regional church. Thus in the founding of an eparchy, or the raising of an eparchy to the rank of a metropolitanate, or of a metropolitanate to a higher rank, and in general in every change to the church organism, the canons recognize in this an eminent right belonging to councils.[15] In connection with, and dependent upon, this voice of the church councils, canon law also recognizes a lawful participation therein on the part of state authority.[16] One-sided action in this by church or state authority—namely, that one of them, independently of the other, might establish an eparchy or some other church district—is regarded in canon law as unlawful, and the Fourth Ecumenical Council, by a special canon, condemns the attempt made by certain bishops to free themselves, on the strength of charters obtained from state authority, from the authority of the lawful metropolitan and themselves become metropolitans;[17] while that the state authority itself never considered itself entitled to introduce any changes into the church organism without church authority is evident from the conduct of that authority in similar matters.[18] What is said here about the larger church districts holds equally for parishes within the bounds of the respective eparchies.[19] This canonical practice is valid also today in the Orthodox Church.[20]

Footnotes

[4] In the canonical sources of the older period παροικία designated the territory of a single bishop, our present-day eparchy; but when there later ceased the custom, according to which every city, together with the places subject to it, was to have its own particular bishop, so that the bishop no longer personally performed pastoral duties in them, the name parish (παροικία) passed quite correctly to the territory of the parish priest in the present-day sense. Cf. on the parishes of the ancient period Beveregii Synodicon Annot. in can. 9. antioch., pag. 190. On the parishes mentioned in the text Zonaras speaks in his commentary on canon 17 of Chalcedon: “Αὕτη δὲ (σύνοδος), περὶ παροικιῶν, αἵτινες εἶεν ἂν ἐνορίαι μικραὶ καὶ οὐ πολυπληθεῖς, ἃς εἰς ἀγροικικὰς καὶ ἐγχωρίους διαιρεῖ. Ἀγροικικὰς μὲν οὖν φασιν εἶναι τὰς ἐν ἐσχατιαῖς κειμένας, καὶ ὀλίγους ἐχούσας τοὺς ἐν αὐταῖς οἰκοῦντας, αἵ καὶ μονοίκια λέγονται· ἐγχωρίους δὲ, τὰς ἀγροῖς καὶ κώμαις πλησιαζούσας, καὶ πλείονας τοὺς κατοίκους ἐχούσας.” Ath. Synt. II, 259. See further Suicer, s. v. παροικία.

[8] For a better understanding of what we say here and of what we shall discuss in the following §§, it is necessary to know the political division of the Greco-Roman state as it was established by Constantine the Great, and in accordance with which the ecclesiastical division was also regulated. The whole state was divided into four prefectures: the East, Illyricum, Italy, and Gaul. Each prefecture had several dioceses, (διοίκησις), each diocese several provinces (ἐπαρχία), and again each province several smaller districts (παροικία). The Eastern prefecture was divided into five dioceses, namely: 1. the East in the narrower sense, with Antioch as its capital, and in it fifteen provinces; 2. the Egyptian, with Alexandria as its capital, and in it six provinces; 3. the Asian, with Ephesus as its capital, containing ten provinces; 4. the Pontic, with Caesarea in Cappadocia as its capital, containing eleven provinces; and 5. the Thracian, with Constantinople as its capital, and in it six provinces. The Illyrian prefecture had two dioceses: 1. the Macedonian, with Thessalonica as its capital, and in it eight provinces, and 2. the Dacian, containing four provinces. The Italian prefecture had two vicariates: 1. the Roman, with ten provinces, and 2. the Italian, with seven provinces and Milan as its capital; then 3. Western Africa, with Carthage as its capital, and 4. Western Illyricum, which was added to this prefecture after the death of Constantine the Great, its capital having been Sirmium. The prefecture of Gaul extended 1. over Gaul itself, in which there were fourteen provinces; 2. over Italy, divided into five provinces; and 3. over Britain, in which there were also five provinces. See E. Du Pin Op. cit. pag. 22—36. Cf. Beveregii Synodicon. Annot. in 2 can. concil. Constantinop. II, pag. 93—94. In accordance with this political division the division of the ecclesiastical regions was likewise regulated.

[12] This is likewise acknowledged by Roman Catholic canon law. See Article XVIII of the Austrian Concordat of August 18, 1855 (F. Walter, Fontes juris ecclesiastici antiqui et hodierni. Bonnae, 1862. p. 285). It will therefore not be quite accurate when Dr. Vering says that “zur Errichtung und Veränderung von beneficia majora ist nur der Papst competent” (Kirchenr., II Aufl. S. 462). We would not have even taken notice of this, had the same gentleman not overreached himself by speaking on the same subject according to the canon law of the Orthodox Church, and written: “so wurde den christlichen Kaisern bei den Orientalen, indem sich mit dem Schisma Hand in Hand der Cäsaropapismus ausbildete, das Recht zuerkannt, nach ihrem eigenen Ermessen Bisthümer und Metropolen zu gründen” (Ibid. S. 502).

[20] For the Church in the Kingdom of Greece, see the law on eparchies of 9 July 1852 and the law on the division of parishes of 8 June 1856; for the Church in Russia, the ukases of 6 May 1786, 16 October 1799, 21 February 1804 (T. Barsov’s Collection of Decrees. N. 383. 384. 385.) and arts. 71 and 92 of the consistorial statute of 1883; for the Karlovac metropolitanate, the synodal constitution of 14 May 1875, §. 19. pt. 1.; for the Sibiu metropolitanate, the organic statute of 28 May 1869; for the Bulgarian Exarchate, the constitution of 4 February 1883; for the Church in the Kingdom of Serbia, the law on church authorities of 27 April 1890, art. 7; for the Church in the Kingdom of Romania, the law of 29 May 1893, art. 1; for the Bukovina-Dalmatia metropolitanate, the synodal constitution of 21 August 1884, §. 14. pt. 8., and in particular for the Bukovina eparchy the imperial decision of 24 Oct. 1843, and for the Dalmatian eparchy together with Boka Kotorska the imperial decision of 28 July 1853.

§ 84. The Constituent Parts of the Church

§ 84. Саставни дијелови цркве