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Updated: June 28, 2025
Twenty-five metropolitans or archbishops composed their hierarchy; but several of these were dispensed, by the distance and danger of the way, from the duty of personal attendance, on the easy condition that every six years they should testify their faith and obedience to the catholic or patriarch of Babylon, a vague appellation which has been successively applied to the royal seats of Seleucia, Ctesiphon, and Bagdad.
These chief ministers were called diocesans. Ministers in still more prominent places came to have a still wider authority and were called metropolitans, those over large districts were called patriarchs, and so the grasping for supremacy went on.
This time my post of observation is inside the cathedral, which is artistically draped with purple hangings and crowded with the most distinguished personages of the Empire, all arrayed in gorgeous apparel Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses, Imperial Highnesses and High Excellencies, Metropolitans and Archbishops, Senators and Councillors of State, Generals and Court dignitaries.
But the order of public proceedings required a more regular and less invidious distinction; the office of perpetual presidents in the councils of each province was conferred on the bishops of the principal city; and these aspiring prelates, who soon acquired the lofty titles of Metropolitans and Primates, secretly prepared themselves to usurp over their episcopal brethren the same authority which the bishops had so lately assumed above the college of presbyters.
The only reason why Maud preferred such a dull place as Dreamland to the splendid metropolis up the coast was that she might have a quiet time of it, and not be annoyed by the impudent metropolitans. In fact, she was tired of her lovers all save one, a fine young fellow named Jason, but better known in Dreamland as John.
But they soon changed this humble tone, imperceptibly extended the limits of their authority, turned their influence into dominion, and their councils into laws; and openly asserted, at length, that Christ had empowered them to prescribe to his people, authoritative rules of faith and manners.... The order and decency of these assemblies required that some one of the provincial bishops met in council, should be invested with a superior degree of power and authority; and hence the rights of metropolitans derive their origin."
But the author of the twelve anathemas foresaw and dreaded the opposition of John of Antioch, who, with a small, but respectable, train of metropolitans and divines, was advancing by slow journeys from the distant capital of the East. Impatient of a delay, which he stigmatized as voluntary and culpable, Cyril announced the opening of the synod sixteen days after the festival of Pentecost.
The Bishop of Rome would soon have been reduced to the condition of other metropolitans had his dignity rested on the greatness of his capital. He now became the interpreter of his own decrees, an arch-pontiff ruling by divine right. His power became indefinite and unlimited.
General laws of the Church, and also imperial edicts, were transmitted first to the patriarchs, and from them to the metropolitans, and from these to the bishops. Bishops might not leave their diocese without permission of the metropolitan, nor the metropolitan without that of the patriarch.
W. Farren, at the Strand Theater, whither she contributed so much to attract choice audiences, are fresh in the memory of metropolitans. Looking back to Mrs. Glover's "long and brilliant career upon the stage, we may pronounce her one of the most extraordinary women and accomplished actresses that have ever graced the profession of the drama." Mrs.
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