Folia Canonica 5. (2002)
PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE "Tra Chiesa universale e Chiesa particolare", Budapest, 2nd February 2002 - Gennadios of Sassima: The Canonical Status of the Ecumenical Patriarch in the Canonical Order of the Orthodox Churches: Nature and Extension of its Authority
THE CANONICAL STATUS OF THE ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH 273 ognized to it. At first these local synods were convoked extraordinarily to resolve various problems of general interest and concerns. So although they made an important contribution to the formation and implementation of the “primacies of honor”, they cannot be seen as the only decisive factor in their emergence. Other factors, such as Apostolic foundation, political importance of the cities concerned, the extent of missionary activity and ecclesiastical authority in general played a large part* 5 in developing the “primacies of honor”, which initially emerged in the local synods, where the bishops of the mother churches would usually preside. The evolution of the “primacies of honor” was particularly favored by neighboring bishops’ coming together to consecrate a bishop for a vacant see. The purpose of these Episcopal assemblies was to preserve the unity of the Church by confirming the communion of the body of bishops to which the newly consecrated bishop would be admitted, and they greatly helped to implement the “primacies of honor”, because the celebrant during the consecration was usually the bishop of the mother Church honored with the “primacies of honor”. It is characteristic that the bishop’s consecration took place before the principal part of the Eucharist, in which the sacrifice takes place, began. Immediately after the consecration, one of the bishops “offers the sacrifice to hands of him who has been consecrated”, and the new bishop thereafter acts as principal celebrant in the Eucharist. The “offering of the sacrifice” to the newly consecrated bishop plainly showed not only that the local church in the person of the bishop felt itself completely to be the Church, but also that the new bishop was already in communion with the other bishops, that the local church’s Apos- tolicity was sacramentally valid from the point, and its koinonia with the other churches was guaranteed.6 While the “primacies of honor“ in the local synods were largely of a president or chairman, they penetrated more deeply into the practice and consciousness of the Church through episcopal consecration. The combination of the honor of presiding in the synods and of actively participating in Episcopal consecrations as principal celebrant became the pivot of the universal development of the cuschurches from the very beginning? (Letter L,5). Two more contemporary witness confirm this traditional perspective regarding “mother churches”. The first is that of the Synod of Constantinople of 382. In transmiting the Acts of the 2nd Ecumenical Council, the synod acknowledges Cyril as the Bishop of the Church of Jerusalem, "the mother of all Churches" (Theodorei, Ecclesiastical History, V,9,17). The other witness is the inscription which Pope Damascus put on the tomb of Hippolytus of Rome; in that inscription, Rome is regarded as “mater et magistra omnium ecclesiarum ”. 5 Cf. J. Meyendorff, Orthodoxie et Catholicité, Paris 1965, 24-26. 6 Cf. A. SCHMEMANN, La notion de la Primauté dans l ’ Ecclésiologie Orthodoxe, in La Primauté de Pierre dans I' Eglise Orthodoxe, Neuchâtel-Paris 1965, 133.
