Bishop (redirected from Episkopos)

bishop: see orders, holy.

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bishop

In some Christian churches, the chief pastor and overseer of a diocese, an area containing several congregations. From the 4th century AD until the Reformation, bishops held broad secular and religious powers, including the settling of disputes, ordination of clergy, and confirmation of church members. Some Christian churches (notably the Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox churches) continue the bishop's office and the doctrine of Apostolic succession. Others, including some Lutheran and Methodist churches, retain bishops but not the principle of apostolic succession; still others have abolished the office altogether. Popes, cardinals, archbishops, patriarchs, and metropolitans are gradations of bishops. In Roman Catholicism, the pope selects the bishop; in Anglicanism, the dean and chapter of the cathedral of the diocese elect the bishop; in Methodism a synod chooses the bishop. See also episcopacy.

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bishop

1. (in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Greek Orthodox Churches) a clergyman having spiritual and administrative powers over a diocese or province of the Church

2. (in some Protestant Churches) a spiritual overseer of a local church or a number of churches

3. a chesspiece, capable of moving diagonally over any number of unoccupied squares of the same colour

4. mulled wine, usually port, spiced with oranges, cloves, etc

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Bishop 

in the Orthodox, Catholic, and Anglican churches the highest order of clergyman, head of a territorial unit of ecclesiastic administration (eparchy, diocese). Christian literary documents of the early second century (the Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch) attest to their managing the property of the early Christian communities. By the late second century the bishops had already concentrated spiritual and juridical authority in their hands and had also possessed themselves of the right to dispose of the community’s property; gradually a monarchical episcopate developed. In the fourth century there began to emerge among the bishops a hierarchical division into patriarchs, metropolitans (some of these bearing the title of archbishop), and bishops proper. The title of bishop has been preserved in some Protestant churches in addition to the Anglican, but in them a bishop is not a clergyman but a person exercising what are for the most part purely administrative functions.