a Primas ; the oldest bishop being usually chosen to this office. The bishop of Carthage, however, was not only primate of Africa proconsularis, but at the same time, corre- sponding to the proconsul of Carthage, the ecclesiastical head of l^f^umidia and Mauretania, and had power to summon a general council of Africa." § 55. The Patriarchs. Mien. Le QuiEif (French Dominican, t 1733) : Orieus Cliristianus, in quatuoi- patriai'chatus digestus, quo exhibentur ecclesiffi, patriarcba* caBterique prassules totius Orientis. Opus posthumum, Par. 17^0, 3 vols. fol. (a tliorough description of the oriental dioceses from the beginning to 1732). P. Jos. Cautelius (Jesuit) : Metropolitananim urbium historia civilis et ecclesiastica, in qua Eomanse Sedis dignitas ' Kai TJ/ TifJ-Tj Trporjyelff^aL avTov. ^ Cyprian, Epist. 45, says of his province of Carthage : "Latius fusa est no.stra proviiicia ; habet enim Xumidiam et Mauretaniam sibi cohaerentes." 272 THIRD PEEIOD, A.D. 311-590. et imperatorum et regum in earn merita explicantur, Par. 1685 (im- portant for ecclesiastical statistics of the West, and the extension of the Eoman patriarchate). Bingham (Anglican) : Antiquities, 1. ii. c. 17. Jon. El. Theod. Wiltsch (Evangel.) : Handbuch der kirchl. Geographie u. Statistik, Berl. 1846, vol. i. p. 56 sqq. Feiede. Maassex (R. C.) : Der Primat des Bischofs von Rom. u. die alten Pa- triarchalkirchen, Bonn, 1853. Thomas Greenwood : Cathedra Petri, a Political Histo.ry of the Latin Patriarchate, Lond. 1859 sqq. (vol. i. p. 158-489). Comp. my review of this vrork in the Am. Theol. Rev.. New York, 1864, p. 9 sqq. Still abov^e the metropolitans stood the five Patriarchs/ the oligarchical summit, so to speak, the five towers in the edifice of the Catholic hierarchy of the Graeco-Koman empire. These patriarchs, in the ofiicial sense of the word as already fixed at the time of the fourth ecumenical council, were the bishops of the four' great capitals of the empire, Rome, Alex- andria, Antioch, and Constantinople ; to whom was added, by way of honorary distinction, the bishop of Jerusalem, as presi- dent of the oldest Christian congregation, though the proper continuity of that ofiice had been broken by the destruction of the holy city. They had oversight of one or more dioceses ; at least of two or more provinces or eparchies.^ They ordained the metropolitans ; rendered the final decision in church con- troversies ; conducted the ecumenical councils ; published the decrees of the councils and the church laws of the emperors ; and united in themselves the supreme legislative and executive j^ower of the hierarchy. They bore the same relation to the metropolitans of single provinces, as the ecumenical councils to the provincial. They did not, however, form a college ; each acted for himself. Yet in important matters they con- ' UaTpidpxv^ ; patriarcha ; sometimes also, after the political terminology, i^apxos. The name patriarch, originally applied to the progenitors of Israel (Heb. vii. 4, to Abraham ; Acts vii. 8 sq., to the twelve sons of Jacob ; ii. 29,