Word Finder - episcopate

definition

Bishops seen as a group.

example

The American Roman Catholic episcopate regularly meets together.

definition

The tenure in office of a bishop.

example

Bishop Smith's episcopate ran for more than 30 years.

definition

A bishop's jurisdiction, the extent of his diocese.

definition

To act as a bishop.

Although there is very little authentic information about Fabian, there is evidence that his episcopate was one of great importance in the history of the early church.

In the very earliest centuries we find the episcopate, united in council,, drawing up symbols of faith, which every believer was bound to accept under pain of exclusion, condemning heresies, and casting out heretics.

For this exercise of the primacy as for the others, we must conceive of the pope and the episcopate united to him as a continuation of the Apostolic College and its head Peter.

In addition to the encyclical letter, nineteen resolutions were put forth, and the reports of twelve special committees are appended upon which they are based, the subjects being intemperance, purity, divorce, polygamy, observance of Sunday, socialism, care of emigrants, mutual relations of dioceses of the Anglican Communion, home reunion, Scandinavian Church, Old Catholics, &c., Eastern Churches, standards of doctrine and worship. Perhaps the most important of these is the famous "Lambeth Quadrilateral," which laid down a fourfold basis for home reunion - the Holy Scriptures, the Apostles' and Nicene creeds, the two sacraments ordained by Christ himself and the historic episcopate.

The bishop has acquired control of the sacraments, presbyters and deacons acting only under his orders; the episcopate appears as a unit, bishops being bound to respect one another's disciplinary decrees.

Granvelle was made first archbishop of Malines, and all the odium attaching to the increase of the episcopate was laid at his door, though he was in reality opposed to it.

In this way, Qwing to the dislocation of the ancient aristocracy, to the enlarged jurisdiction,of a power so democratic as the episcopate, and to the increased privileges of the burghs, feudalism received a powerful check in Italy.

His advocacy of an American episcopate, in connexion with which he wrote the Answer to Dr Mayhew's Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (London 1764), raised considerable opposition in England and America.

The third and fourth oecumenical synods (Ephesus, 43 1; Chalcedon, 451) were primarily tribunals for the trials of Nestorius and Dioscorus; it was secondarily that they became organs of the universal episcopate for the definition of the faith, or legislative assemblies for the enactment of canons.

He died at Bournemouth on the 21st of December 1889, and was succeeded in the episcopate by Westcott, his schoolfellow and lifelong friend.

He submitted to the opinion of the episcopate in the various parts of Christendom the divergence between the Easter usage of Rome and that of the bishops of Asia.

The day after his son's funeral Taylor caught fever from a patient whom he visited, and, after a ten days' illness, he died at Lisburn on the 13th of August 1667, in the fifty-fifth year of his life and the seventh of his episcopate, and was buried in the cathedral of Dromore.

He first appears (c. 357) as a supporter of Acacius, bishop of Caesarea, the leader of that party in the episcopate which supported the Homoean formula by which the emperor Constantius sought to effect a compromise between the Homoeusians and the Homousians.

In spite of the advice of Gregory of Nazianzus and of the Western Church, the recognition of Paulinus's sole episcopate was refused, Flavian being consecrated as Meletius's successor.

Meanwhile, and throughout his long episcopate of thirty-two years, he foreshadowed the zeal and the enlightened policy later to be displayed in the prolonged period of his pontificate, building and restoring many churches, striving to elevate the intellectual as well as the spiritual tone of his clergy, and showing in his pastoral letters an unusual regard for learning and for social reform.

Later the secret was betrayed and came to the ears of persons who, as he says, "urged my sins against my laborious episcopate."

James, the Lord's brother, who, partly because of his relationship to Christ, stood supreme in the church at Jerusalem, as also Timothy and Titus, who acted as temporary delegates of St Paul at Ephesus and in Crete, are justly considered to have been forerunners of the monarchical episcopate.

Even when introduced, the monarchical episcopate was not thought necessary for the ordination of other bishops or presbyters.

Roman theologians generally reckon only seven orders, although, if we count the episcopate an order distinct from the presbyterate, the sum is not seven, but eight.

According to common opinion, the matter and form of ordination to the episcopate were the imposition of the consecrating bishop's hands with the words, " Receive the Holy Ghost."

The monarchical episcopate is rejected.

The Lutheran Bugenhagen, who was in priest's orders, ordained seven superintendents, afterwards called bishops, for Denmark in 1527, and Norway, then under the same crown, derives its present episcopate from the same source.

The Anglican priesthood being gone, the episcopate also lapses.

For according to the Pontifical, the episcopate is the " summum sacerdotium "; the bishop in consecration receives " the sacerdotal grace "; it is " his office to consecrate, ordain, offer, baptize, confirm."

The power of the collective episcopate to maintain Catholic unity was disproved long before it was overshadowed by the centralized authority of Rome; before the Reformation, its last efforts to assert its supremacy in the Western Church, at the councils of Basel and Constance, had broken down; and the religious revolution of the 16th century left it largely discredited and exposed to a double attack, by the papal monarchy on the one hand and the democratic Presbyterian model on the other.

The episcopate, however, was preserved by Peter Magnusson, who, when residing as warden of the Swedish hospital of St Bridget in Rome, had been duly elected bishop of the see of Westeraes, and consecrated, c. 1524.

The episcopate of the new metropolitan was marked by a vigour and activity that were felt not merely in his own diocese, but as far as Tours, Orleans and Paris.

Its episcopate in the 10th century still numbered thirty members, but in 1076 the Church could not provide three bishops to consecrate a new member of the episcopate, and for that purpose Gregory VII.

In the 13th century the native episcopate had disappeared.

He also exerted himself to promote the establishment of the Indian episcopate.

His episcopate, which lasted some thirty years, was characterized by great missionary zeal, and by so much success that, according to the (doubtless somewhat rhetorical) statement of Gregory of Nyssa, whereas at the outset of his labours there were only seventeen Christians in the city, there were at his death only seventeen persons in all who had not embraced Christianity.

It was probably during the earlier years of his episcopate that Philoxenus composed his thirteen homilies on the Christian life.

But as the claims of the church to be the guardian through its episcopate of the apostolic tradition, of the Christian faith itself, were magnified, and unity in practice as well as in doctrine came to be regarded as essential, this distinction became a theoretical rather than a practical one.

Between s o and 176 the authority of the episcopate had been immensely strengthened, and along with it a settled order had been introduced into the Churches.

In 1900 the archbishops again acted together, when an appeal was addressed to them by the united episcopate, to decide the vexed questions of the use of incense in divine service and of the reservation of the elements.

He succeeded in driving the raiders away, rebuilt the walls, and during the fifty-eight years of his episcopate the town grew and prospered.

His episcopate, however, is chiefly remembered owing to its tragic close.

When the Lambeth articles put forward as a basis of union were discussed, it was evident that all the free churches were agreed in accepting the three articles dealing with the Bible, the Creed and the Sacraments as a basis of discussion, and were also agreed in rejecting the fourth article, which put the historic episcopate on the same level as the other three.

The great monument of his episcopate is the eleven famous charges in which he from time to time reviewed the position of the English Church with reference to whatever might be the most pressing question of the day - addresses at once judicial and statesmanlike, full of charitable wisdom and massive sense.

In 366 Liberius gave a favourable reception to a deputation of the Eastern episcopate, and admitted into his communion the more moderate of the old Arian party.

This theory of the independence of the episcopate with regard to the Roman bishop was first propounded by Cyprian, in his treatise De unitate ecclesiae.

This was done for the first time, in 1870, at the Vatican Council, whose decrees, recognizing the universal episcopate and the infallibility of the pope, marked the triumph of that ultramontane doctrine by which they had been long anticipated.

He, however, triumphed over them, and his episcopate was peaceful.

Almost immediately the entire assembly with one voice cried out anathema on the impious Nestorius and his impious doctrines, and after various extracts from the writings of church fathers had been read the decree of his exclusion from the episcopate and from all priestly communion was solemnly read and signed by all present, whose numbers had by this time swelled to one hundred and ninety-eight.

As a result the ecumenical council came into existence especially for the purpose of settling disputed questions of doctrine, and giving to the collective episcopate the opportunity to express its voice in a final and official way.

At the council of Nicaea, and at the ecumenical councils which followed, the idea of an infallible episcopate giving authoritative and permanent utterance to apostolic and therefore divine truth, found clear expression, and has been handed down as a part of the faith of the Catholic Church both East and West.

The infallibility of the episcopate guarantees the infallibility of a general council in which not the laity and not the clergy in general, but the bishops as successors of the apostles, speak officially and collectively.

Meanwhile the Roman episcopate developed into the papacy, which claimed supremacy over the entire Christian Church, and actually exercised it increasingly in the West from the 5th century on.

The Lutheran state churches of Denmark, Sweden and Norway have retained the episcopate.

The episcopate in all three countries accommodates itself to something like the Lutheran consistorial system of ecclesiastical government.