The Pentarchy

The ordering of the ancient Church around five sees: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, in that order of honour. It is not a constitution handed down from the Apostles but a settlement arrived at by councils, and the canons that fix it say so plainly: Constantinople was given its place because it is the city of the emperor and the senate, not because an Apostle founded it. Honour in this scheme is precedence, not jurisdiction. No see in it governs another, and the order was never a ladder of authority, which is the whole of the Orthodox case against the later Roman reading of it. Since 1054 the East has continued with four.