In Christian churches with episcopal polity, the rank of metropolitan bishop, or simply metropolitan (alternative obsolete form: metropolite), pertains to the diocesan bishop or archbishop of a metropolis.
Originally, the term referred to the bishop of the chief city of a historical Roman province, whose authority in relation to the other bishops of the province was recognized by the First Council of Nicaea (AD 325). The bishop of the provincial capital, the metropolitan, enjoyed certain rights over other bishops in the province, later called "suffragan bishops".
The term metropolitan may refer in a similar sense to the bishop of the chief episcopal see (the "metropolitan see") of an ecclesiastical province. The head of such a metropolitan see has the rank of archbishop and is therefore called the metropolitan archbishop of the ecclesiastical province. Metropolitan (arch)bishops preside over synods of the bishops of their ecclesiastical province, and canon law and tradition grant them special privileges.
In some churches, such as the Church of Greece, a metropolis is a rank granted to all episcopal sees. Their bishops are all called metropolitans, the title of archbishop being reserved for the primate.
As Christianity expanded in the Roman Empire, larger concentrations of believers were to be found in urban environs. The Bishop of such cities came to hold a pre-eminence of honour in the province of which his diocese was the capital, with some eventually gaining a primacy even over other provinces with their own primus inter pares. By the middle of the 3rd century Carthage had become the leading see in Roman North Africa. The Council of Nicea codified this arrangement into canon law in accordance with the growing standardisation of ecclesiastical diocesan structure along the lines of secular Roman blueprints. It also gave the first documented use of the term "Metropolitan" in reference to such bishops as had the presidency over a province.
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The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization. The church consists of 24 sui iuris churches, including the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, which comprise almost 3,500 dioceses and eparchies located around the world.
The Eastern Orthodox Church, officially the Orthodox Catholic Church, is a communion composed of up to seventeen separate autocephalous (self-governing) hierarchical churches that profess Eastern Orthodoxy and recognise each other as canonical (regular) Eastern Orthodox Christian churches. Each constituent church is self-governing; its highest-ranking bishop called the primate (a patriarch, a metropolitan or an archbishop) reports to no higher earthly authority. Each regional church is composed of constituent eparchies (or dioceses) ruled by bishops.
Autocephaly (ɔːtəˈsɛfəli; from αὐτοκεφαλία, meaning "property of being self-headed") is the status of a hierarchical Christian church whose head bishop does not report to any higher-ranking bishop. The term is primarily used in Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches. The status has been compared with that of the churches (provinces) within the Anglican Communion. In the first centuries of the history of the Christian church, the autocephalous status of a local church was promulgated by canons of the ecumenical councils.