EXARCH (EEapxos, a

See also:

• CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

chief

See also:

• PERSON, OFFENCES AGAINST THE

person or

See also:

• LEADER, BENJAMIN WILLIAMS (1831– )

leader)  , a title that has been conferred at different periods on certain chief officers or governors, both in secular and ecclesiastical matters . Of these, the most important were the exarchs of Ravenna (q.v.) . In the ecclesiastical organization the exarch of a diocese (the word being here used of the political division) was in the 4th and 5th centuries the same as primate . This dignity was intermediate between the patriarchal and the metropolitan, the name patriarch being restricted after A.D . 451 to the chief bishops of the most important cities (see PATRIARCH) . The title of Exarch was also formerly given in the Eastern Church to a general or superior over several monasteries, and to certain ecclesiastics deputed by the patriarch of Constantinople to collect the tribute payable by the Church to the Turkish government . In the modern Greek Church an exarch is a deputy, or legate a latere, of the patriarch, whose office it is to visit the clergy and churches in the provinces allotted to him . The title of exarch has been borne by the head of the Bulgarian Church (see BULGARIA), since in 1872 it repudiated the jurisdiction of the Greek patriarch of Constantinople .