Pentarchy

The Pentarchy, the Five Great Sees or early Patriarchates, were the five major centers of the Christian church in the early Middle Ages:

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• Rome (Sts. Peter and Paul)
• Constantinople (St. Andrew)
• Antioch (St. Peter)
• Alexandria (St. Mark)
• Jerusalem (St. James)

These were the four most important cities in the Roman Empire of the 4th century (the period when Christianity first received support from the Roman state), plus Jerusalem.

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After the 7th century Arab conquests, and the Byzantine loss of the Rome-Ravenna corridor, only Constantinople remained securely within a state calling itself the "Roman Empire" — the Pope at Rome was independent (see Gregory the Great), Jerusalem and Alexandria were under Muslim rule, and Antioch was on the front lines of hundreds of years of recurring border warfare between the Byzantine Empire and the Arab Caliphate. These historical-political changes, combined with the northward shift of the center of gravity of Christendom during the Middle Ages, and the fact that the majority of Christians in Muslim-ruled Egypt and Syria were Monophysites who refused to recognize the authority of either Rome or Constantinople, meant that the original ideal of five great co-operating centers of administration of the whole Christian church grew ever more remote from practical reality.

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Today it would be difficult to identify a leading claimant to the patriarchate of Antioch, and there are multiple claimants to the patriarchal throne of Jerusalem dating from the time of the Crusades.

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See: See:...

Patriarchates: REDIRECT Patriarchate...

Christian church: The term Christian Church expresses the idea of Christianity (the Christian religion) seen in its role as an institution. The phrase "the Church" in its widest sense (as "the Body of Christ") has a similar breadth....