Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Byzantium

Ecclesiastical problems under the Palaeologi

Page 9

With the name of Andronicus the Elder is connected the last important reform of the ecclesiastical organization in the history of Byzantium, a new distribution of the eparchies in accordance with the reduced territory of the Empire. In spite of some changes under the Comneni and Angeli, the distribution of the eparchies and episcopal sees at the end of the thirteenth century corresponded nominally to the distribution usually ascribed to Leo the Wise in about 900. But in the thirteenth century circumstances completely changed. The territory of the Empire was reduced: Asia Minor was almost entirely lost; in Europe, the Slavonic and Latin states occupied the major part of the land which had belonged before to the Empire.

Nevertheless the list of the metropoles submitted to the Apostolic and Patriarchal throne of the city protected by God, Constantinople, which was drawn up under Andronicus the Elder, entirely disregards the modest extent of the territory of the Empire: the list enumerates a long line of cities in foreign regions and lands, which in ecclesiastical respects were subject to the patriarch of Constantinople. Of the more distant points indicated in this list one may notice several metropoles in the Caucasian regions, in the Crimea, Russia, Galich, and Lithuania. The distribution of the metropoles under Andronicus the Elder is also important, because with some changes which were introduced later, it is still in force in Constantinople.

The list at present in force of the metropoles of the Oecumenical throne, wrote a Russian specialist in the field of the Christian East, J. Sokolov, goes back to ancient times and in one part is a direct and undoubted continuation from the Byzantine epoch 

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