Chorbishop
| Field | Governance & Canon Law |
|---|---|
| Technical focus | Eastern Christian clerical dignity |
| Status | Meaning governed by the tradition and particular law of each Church |
Chorbishop is an ancient Eastern Christian title, historically associated with rural episcopal ministry and now used in several Eastern Catholic Churches as a dignity conferred on certain priests according to their own tradition and particular law.
Overview
A chorbishop is a rank of Christian clergy below bishop. The name chorepiscope or chorepiscopus (plural chorepiscopi) is taken from the Greek χωρεπίσκοπος and means "rural bishop".
Historical chorepiscopi
The Greek chorepiskopos means a country or rural bishop. In late antiquity and the early medieval period, chorepiscopi assisted city bishops by serving Christian communities outside the principal see. Their sacramental status and competence were not uniform in every century or region: some were bishops, while later arrangements restricted the office or used related titles for presbyters. Conciliar canons progressively subordinated rural ministry to the diocesan bishop and prevented an independent parallel hierarchy.[1]
The historical office declined in the Latin West and changed form in Eastern traditions. Because the same word crossed languages, centuries, and ecclesial systems, an ancient chorepiscopus cannot be classified solely from the modern title. Ordination records, conciliar law, liturgical functions, and local evidence must determine whether a particular holder was sacramentally a bishop.
Contemporary Eastern Catholic use
Several Syriac-tradition Catholic Churches, including Chaldean, Maronite, and Syriac Catholic communities, use chorbishop as a senior presbyteral dignity. The competent patriarchal or eparchial authority confers it under the Church's particular law and custom. The title can recognize distinguished pastoral service and may carry liturgical precedence, vesture, or responsibilities, but those effects vary and should not be generalized from one Church to another.[2][3]
A modern chorbishop is not a member of the college of bishops merely by receiving this dignity. Episcopal consecration, not an honorific title, constitutes a man a bishop sacramentally. Official Holy See appointment notices can accordingly identify a priest as chorbishop before reporting his later election and appointment to an eparchy. The two statuses are sequential and distinct.[4]
Not a Latin monsignor in Eastern dress
Comparison with Latin honorary prelatures can help a newcomer understand that the holder may remain a priest, but it is not an exact equivalence. Chorbishop belongs to a particular Eastern history and ecclesial culture. Its name, rite of conferral, insignia, precedence, and pastoral meaning should be described on their own terms rather than translated into a Latin rank.
Faculties and accurate description
The title alone does not grant power reserved to episcopal ordination, such as ordaining bishops, priests, or deacons. Nor does it automatically make its holder a protosyncellus, syncellus, judicial vicar, pastor, or member of a curia. A chorbishop can hold one of those offices through a separate canonical appointment, and the attached office then supplies the corresponding faculties.
Calling every chorbishop a bishop falsifies current Eastern usage; calling the title merely decorative can erase its real ecclesial honor. Accurate terminology preserves both sacramental theology and legitimate Eastern Catholic tradition.
History
Chorepiscopi are first mentioned by Eusebius as existing in the second century.[5] In the beginning, it seems the chorepiscopi exercised regular episcopal functions in their rural districts, but from the late third century they were subject to city or metropolitan bishops. The Synod of Ancyra (314) specifically forbade them to ordain deacons or priests. The Council of Sardica (343) decreed that no chorepiscopus should be consecrated where a priest would suffice,[5] and so the chorepiscopi in the Byzantine Church gradually disappeared.[6]
The first mentions of chorepiscopi in the Western church are from the 5th or 6th century, where they were found mainly in Germany (especially Bavaria) and the Frankish lands.[7] In the Western Church, they were treated as auxiliary bishops and operated like archdeacons or vicars general.[8] They gradually disappeared as an office by the 12th century in the West[8] and were replaced by archdeacons to administer subdivisions of a diocese.
In the principality of Kakheti in medieval Georgia, the title of chorepiscopus (k'orepiskoposi or k'orikozi) became secular and was borne by several princes of that province from the early 9th century into the 11th.[9]
Present practice
Some Eastern Catholic and Oriental Orthodox churches still have chorbishops.
The churches of the West Syriac tradition — namely the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Syriac Catholic Church, the Maronite Church, the Malankara Syriac Orthodox Church, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church — also preserve the office, calling it corepiscopos or khuroyo. Within these traditions, the chorbishop serves as an elevated clerical rank among priests, and are sometimes referred to as an archpriest. Historically, a chorbishop exercised administrative oversight over small villages and rural communities on behalf of the local bishop. In contemporary practice, the title has largely become an honorary rank, with chorbishops carrying out the same routine pastoral duties as standard parish priests. However, a chorbishop retains the authority to ordain individuals to minor orders when delegated to do so by the bishop. He wears a black cassock with violet trim, a matching waist band (cincture), and a pectoral cross, as part of his non-liturgical wear. In addition to the normal liturgical vestments of a priest, he wears an outer cope, symbolically similar to the masnapso of bishops.
In the Maronite Church, a chorbishop is the highest of the three Median Orders, ranking above the orders of archdeacon and periodeut. Like a bishop, a chorbishop is ordained, and entitled to all vestments proper to a bishop, including the mitre (hat) and crozier (staff).[10] The Synod of Mount Lebanon (1736) limited only the jurisdiction of a chorbishop, permitting him to ordain to the minor orders (cantor, reader and the subdiaconate), but not the major orders of diaconate, priesthood, or episcopacy.[11] The manuscript tradition of the Syriac Maronite Church demonstrates that the same text is used for the imposition of hand for both bishops and chorbishops.[12] The title of the ordination for a chorbishop reads, in fact, "The chirotony by which are completed the chorbishops and the metropolitans and the high orders of priesthood."[13] The role of protosyncellus (vicar general) is often filled by a chorbishop.
Books
- Zaplotnik, John Leo (1927). De vicariis foraneis. "Chapter IV." (in Latin). Washington: Catholica universitas Americae, 1927.
See also
References
- Back to citation Catholic Encyclopedia (1913): Chorepiscopi — Historical account of rural bishops and the changing canonical forms of the chorepiscopate.
- Back to citation Orientalium Ecclesiarum — Vatican II decree affirming the dignity, institutions, liturgical rites, traditions, discipline, and apostolic patrimony of the Eastern Catholic Churches.
- Back to citation Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, canons 27–310 — Binding common law for Churches sui iuris, patriarchal and major archiepiscopal structures, eparchies, exarchies, hierarchs, curias, governance, and Eastern ecclesiastical offices.
- Back to citation Holy See Press Office: appointment of Chorbishop Azad Sabri Shaba — Official contemporary evidence for Chaldean Catholic use of chorbishop as a presbyteral dignity distinct from episcopal ordination, followed in this instance by election and appointment to the episcopate.
- Back to citation occurrence 5.0 Back to citation occurrence 5.1 Ott, Michael T. (1913). "Chorepiscopi". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
- Back to citation – AmericanCatholic.org
- Back to citation Jean Gaudemet (2000). "Chorepiscopus". Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. Routledge. p. 294. ISBN 1-57958-282-6.
- Back to citation occurrence 8.0 Back to citation occurrence 8.1 King, Archdale (1948). "Syrian Rite". The Rites of Eastern Christendom (2nd ed.). Gorgias Press LLC. p. 85. ISBN 9781593333911. Retrieved May 9, 2014.
- Back to citation Rapp, Stephen H. (2003), Studies in Medieval Georgian Historiography: Early Texts And Eurasian Contexts, p. 397. Peeters Publishers, ISBN 90-429-1318-5
- Back to citation Father Elia of St. Sharbel's named a chorbishop Archived 2006-05-24 at the Wayback Machine. (August 5, 2001) Catholic Post. Accessed 2006-08-20.
- Back to citation Coll Lac, Vol. 2, col. 277; Mansi, Vol. 38, cole. 157ff; R. Janin, Les Églises orientales et les rites orienteaux, pp. 459,460.
- Back to citation Doueihi, STD, Bishop Stephen Hector (2008). The Maronite Pontifical. Richmond, VA: Saint Maron Publications. p. 376.
- Back to citation Vat. 309 (75c.)