to David, as founder of the Davidic Messianic house), was at first in the Eastern church an honor- ary title for bishops in general (so in Gregory Nazianzen, and Gregory of Nyssa), but after the council of Constantinople (381), and still more after that of Chalcedon (451), it came to be used in an official sense and restricted to the five most eminent metropolitans. In the West, several metropolitans, especially the bishop of Aquileia, bore this title honoris causa. The bishop of Rome declined that particular terra, aa placing him on a level with other patriarchs, and preferred the name papa. " Pa- triarch " bespeaks an oligarchical church government ; " pope," a monarchical. '■' According to the political division of the empire after Constantine. Comp. § 54. § 55. THE PATRIAKCHS. 273 suited with one another, and had the right also to keep resident legates {apocrisiarii) at the imperial court at Constantinople. In prerogative they were equal, hut in the extent of their dioceses and in influence they diiFered, and had a system of rank among themselves. Before the founding of Constantinople, and down to the Nicene council, Rome maintained the first rank, Alexandria the second, and Antioch the third, in both ecclesiastical and political importance. After the end of the fourth century this order was modified by the insertion of Constantinople as the second capital, between Rome and Alex- andria, and the addition of Jerusalem as the fifth and smallest patriarchate. The patriarch of Jerusalem j)resided only over the three meagre provinces of Palestine ; ' the patriarch of Antioch, over the greater part of the political diocese of the Orient, which comprised fifteen provinces, Syria, Phenicia, Cilicia, Arabia, Mesopotamia, &c. ; " the patriarch of Alexandria, over the whole diocese of Egypt with its nine rich provinces, -<:Egyptus prima and secunda, the lower and upper Thebaid, lower and upper Libya, &c. ; ^ the patriarch of Constantinople, over three dioceses, Pontus, Asia Minor, and Thrace, with eight and twenty provinces, and at the same time over the bishoprics among the barbarians ; * the patriarch of Pome gradually extended his influence over the entire West, two prefectures, the Italian and the Gallic, with all their dioceses and provinces.^ The patriarchal system had reference primarily only to the imperial church, but indirectly afiected also the barbarians, who received Christianity from the empire. Yet even within the empire, several metropolitans, especially the bishop of ^ Comp. Wiltsch, i. p. '206 sqq. The statement of Ziegler, which Wiltsch quote* and seems to approve, that the fifth ecumenical council, of 553, added to the patri- archal circuit of Jerusalem the metropolitans of Berytus in Phenicia, and Ruba in Syria, appears to be an error. Euba nowhere appears iu the acts of the council, and Berytus belonged to Phoenicia prima, consequently to the patriarchate of An- 'ioch. Le Quien knows nothing of such an enlargement of the patriarchate of llierosolyma. = Wiltsch, i. 189 sqq. => Ibid. i. Ill sqq. '