Pentarchy

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The Pentarchy, a Greek word meaning "government of five", designates the Five Great Sees or early Patriarchates, which were the five major centres of the Christian church in the early Middle Ages:

Rome (Sts. Peter and Paul), i.e. the Pope, the only Pentarch in the Western Roman Empire.
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.

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 Non-Chalcedonians 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.

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.

17th-century Eastern Orthodox pentarchy

When in 1589 the metropolitan see of Moscow became an independent patriarchate (and so was no longer directly subordinated to the formerly Byzantine Ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople), some Orthodox counted it as being part of a new pentarchy, consisting of Constantinople, Moscow (in place of Catholic Rome), and the Greek Orthodox-recognized claimants to Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. However, the office of Patriarch of Moscow was left vacant after 1700, and formally abolished on 25 January 1721. In more recent centuries, multiple autocephalous patriarchates (each heading a national branch of the Orthodox church) have been created.

Other meanings

In its most general use, the word "Pentarchy" can be used to refer to five rulers or powers. In 19th-century Italy, the liberal pentarchy was a group of five parliamentary leaders of the Republican and Extreme Radical wings of the left in the chamber after the introduction of universal suffrage: Crispi, Cairoli, Nicotera, Zanardelli and Baccarini, all assuming an attitude of bitter hostility to Depretis, the Right. It can also be used to refer to the five great European powers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia), as recognized in the Congress system.

Pentarchy

17th-century Eastern Orthodox pentarchy

Other meanings

See also