Diocese

Diocese (Fr., from Gr. dioikēsis, 'administration'), the territory over which a bishop exercises ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The term occurs as early as the time of Demosthenes, to signify the treasury or department of finance. It is found in Cicero, both as a Greek and as a Latin word, as the special designation of districts in Asia Minor. At this time, the area denoted by this term was but a small one, for Cicero mentions that three dioceses were included in the single province of Cilicia. But in the organisation of the Roman empire introduced by Constantine the Great, the designation diocese was applied to the larger divisions, which were subdivided into provinces or eparchies. About the middle of the 5th century, the dioceses of the empire were—the East, Asia, Pontus, Thrace, Macedonia, Dacia, Illyria, Italy, Africa, Gaul, Spain, and Britain. The city of Rome, with its seven 'suburbanian' provinces, constituted a diocese in itself, and was not included in that of Italy. The dioceses were governed collectively by four Prætorian Prefects, each of whom had several such territories under his jurisdiction, and singly by officers styled Eparchs, Counts, or Vicars. The provinces (numbering one hundred and seventeen) were under Exarchs or Rectors. The government of the Christian church, as established by Constantine, was assimilated to this division, and the term diocese and others passed over to ecclesiastical matters. At first a diocese meant an aggregate of metropolitan churches or provinces, each under the charge of an archbishop, which had previously been called a parish, into a single jurisdiction under an exarch (Balsamon, ad Can. ix., Conc. Chalced.); and the actual distribution in the 4th and 5th centuries was founded on, and closely corresponded to, the civil division. The four (later five) patriarchates corresponded to the four prætorian prefectures; and the diocese of the Orient contained fifteen provinces, all under the Patriarch of Antioch, till the erection of the patriarchate of Jerusalem in 450, when Palestine, Phœnicia, and Arabia were withdrawn from Antioch to constitute the new jurisdiction; Egypt, under the Patriarch of Alexandria, had six provinces; Asia, eleven; Pontus, eleven; Thrace, six; Macedonia, six; Dacia, five; Italy, seventeen, of which seven were in the diocese of Rome; Illyria, six; Africa, six; Spain, seven; Gaul, seventeen; and Britain, five. In a later stage of the church's history, the term diocese is applied to a single metropolitanate or province (Greg. Mag. Epist., VII. ii. 17), and lastly it came to signify the local jurisdiction of any one bishop (a meaning already applied to it as early as the second Council of Carthage, in 390 A.D., canon v.), of whatever rank. It does not appear in England till the writings of Matthew Paris in the middle of the 13th century; Bede, for example, using only the terms episcopatus, provincia, ecclesia. On the other hand, it is found as the equivalent of 'parish' in canons of the councils of Agde (506 A.D.), Epaon (517), Orleans IV. (541), and also in the capitularies of Charlemagne, VII. c. 360. England and Wales are divided ecclesiastically into two provinces—viz. Canterbury and York, the former being presided over by the Primate of All England, and the latter by the Primate of England. Each of them is subdivided into dioceses, and these again into archdeaconries, rural deaneries, and parishes. See BISHOP.