Autocephali
autocephali
(Greek: autokephaloi, independent)
Certain bishops in early Christian times, not subject to any patriarch or metropolitan , but dependent directly on a triennial provincial synod or on the Holy See.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Autocephali
(Gr., autokephaloi, independent).
A designation in early Christian times of certain bishops who were subject to no patriarch or metropolitan, but depended directly on the triennial provincial synod or on the Apostolic See. In case of heresy, e.g., or other grave offenses, they could only be judged by these tribunals. Such were the bishops of Cyprus (cf. Council of Ephesus, Act. VII; Trullan Council, can. 39), the Bishops of Iberia and Armenia as late as the time of Photius, those of Britain before the coming of St. Augustine, and for a while those of Ravenna. The extension of the patriarchal authority diminished their number. Quite similar were certain Oriental bishops in the Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch, who were subject directly to the patriarch of the civil (imperial) diocese to which belonged, and who owed no obedience to their immediate metropolitans; they were not unlike the modern “exempt” bishops immediately subject to the Apostolic See. The most ancient list of them is given in the ninth-century “Notitia” of Leo the Wise, where they are entitled archbishops and metropolitans, though they had no suffragans. Occasionally priests were called “autocephali”, e.g. the clergy of a patriarchal diocese. (See Soz., Hist. Eccl., VI, 21, and Eus., Hist. Eccl., V, 23, with the note of Valesius, also BISHOP, EXEMPTION, RAVENNA.)
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NEHER, in Kirchenlex., I, 1733; THOMASSIN, De Vet. et nov. ecc discipl., I, 3, c. 41, n. 17; PHILLIPS, Kirchenrecht, VII, 440; LAURENTIUS, Inst. Jur. Eccl. (Freiburg, 1905), # 214.
THOMAS J. SHAHAN Transcribed by the Cloistered Dominican Nuns of the Monastery of the Infant Jesus, Lufkin, Texas Dedicated to the unity of Christians
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IICopyright © 1907 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Autocephali
(), a term applied, in the Greek Church, to bishops not subject to patriarchal jurisdiction. Such were, in the Greek Church, the Archbishop of Bulgaria and some other metropolitans, I who claimed to be independent of the see of Constantinople; in the Church of Antioch, the Archbishop of Salamis, in Cyprus; and among the Latins, the Archbishop of Ravenna, who denied all dependence on the popes. Such also was the ancient liberty of the British Church, of which the remaining seven bishops, in the time of St. Augustine, acknowledged no superior but the Archbishop of Caerleon (Spelman, Con. Brit. A.D. 601). Originally all metropolitans were independent of any patriarch or exarch, ordering the affairs of their own province with their provincial bishops, and accountable to no superior but a synod; but in process of time the bishops of the great cities of the empire arrogated to themselves rights over the provinces of their dioceses, such as that of ordaining metropolitans, convoking the synod of the diocese, and of inspection over all the provinces in their obediences. Such were the rights of the Bishop of Rome over the diocese of the vicariate of Rome, or the suburbicarian churches (6th can. of Nicaea), and those of the see of Alexandria over Egypt, Libya, and the Thebaid. Besides these autocephali, those bishops who were subject to no metropolitan, but were immediately dependent on the patriarch, who was to them instead of a metropolitan, were so styled. In the diocese of Constantinople there were thirty-nine, or, as some accounts have it, forty-two such bishops; in that of Antioch, sixteen; in that of Jerusalem, twenty-five. The earliest mention of such bishops is in the Notitia of the Emperor Leo in the ninth century. Bingham, Orig. Eccl. bk. 2, ch. 29, 1, 2, 3; Landon, Eccl. Dict. s.v.