6 - Hierarchy of Authority

Summary

Command hierarchy is as much in evidence as status hierarchy in this first age of papal decretals, though the two structures do not map tidily on to each other. By the end of the fourth century a complex chain of command with many levels had developed in the Christian Church. The bishop in his city played a pivotal role, but below bishops were large communities of clerics, sometimes running their own churches, and between an ordinary bishop and the bishop of Rome there might be two layers in the hierarchy of authority. This hierarchy of power regulated elections to bishoprics. It went with an increasingly precise geographical division of the Christian world into dioceses. Could a cleric move from one diocese to another? This was the kind of practical problem that arose.