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Updated: June 14, 2025
While the ancient patriarchates which had formed the substructure of the triple dais on which the Apostolic See rested were falling into irretrievable confusion, while the new State-made patriarch at Constantinople was trying to nominate and, if he could, to consecrate his elders and superiors at Alexandria and Antioch, who descended from Peter, the essential prerogative of the Apostolic See itself came forth into full light.
Certain ecclesiastics of the Church of Rome even at the present time bear the honorary title Patriarch; but, to quote the words of the Encyclopædia Britannica, "In a strictly technical sense, however, that church recognizes only five Patriarchates, those of Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Rome." Art. Patriarch.
When temporal calamities less than these fell upon the cities of Alexandria and Antioch, the seats of the other two original Petrine patriarchates, the authority of their prelates sunk almost to nothing.
In 1767 the independent patriarchates were abolished, and from that date the religious control of the Greeks was as complete as the political control of the Turks.
The established religion is the Russo-Greek, or Græco-Russian, known officially as the Orthodox Catholic Faith. It maintains the relations of a sister church with the four patriarchates of Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria. The Emperor is the head of the church. With the exception of the Jewish, all religions are allowed to be professed.
Thus arose metropolitan sees, and the great patriarchates of the Catholic Church Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome, Alexandria, Constantinople. This centralization was rendered necessary by the course of events; but it had otherwise no divine authority and might be modified just as validly as it was created.
All this meant that the bishop of Constantinople's hand was to be over the East, as the bishop of Rome's hand was over the West. Then, ever since the Council of Chalcedon, the two great eastern patriarchates had been torn to pieces by the conflicts of parties. The Eutychean heresy fought a desperate battle for mastery.
When the Mohammedan conquest had reduced the importance of the other patriarchates, the conflict for supremacy lay between the Patriarch of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople. At last the Patriarch of Rome gained the greater prestige and authority and was called pope, and became supreme head of the Western or Roman Catholic Church.
Here again Cæcilius had a strong call on him for intercession, for a subtle form of freethinking was there manifesting itself, the issue of which was as uncertain as it might be frightful. The Bishop of Alexandria, that second of the large divisions or patriarchates of the Church, the great Dionysius, the pupil of Origen, was an exile from his see, like himself.
The primitive colleges of presbyters soon fell under the rule of the bishops, the bishops under the patriarchs; and then Rome suffered her first great defeat in losing the Eastern patriarchates, which she could not subjugate.
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