Diocese

The quality of these courts was low, and not above suspicion as the Bishop of Alexandria Troas found that clergy were making a corrupt profit.

[5] Bishops had no part in the civil administration until the town councils, in decline, lost much authority to a group of 'notables' made up of the richest councilors, powerful and rich persons legally exempted from serving on the councils, retired military, and bishops post-AD 450.

A similar, though less pronounced, development occurred in the East, where the Roman administrative apparatus was largely retained by the Byzantine Empire.

In modern times, many dioceses, though later subdivided, have preserved the boundaries of a long-vanished Roman administrative division.

For Gaul, Bruce Eagles has observed that "it has long been an academic commonplace in France that the medieval dioceses, and their constituent pagi, were the direct territorial successors of the Roman civitates.

This became commonplace during the self-conscious "classicizing" structural evolution of the Carolingian Empire in the 9th century, but this usage had itself been evolving from the much earlier parochia ("parish"; Late Latin derived from the Greek παροικία paroikia), dating from the increasingly formalized Christian authority structure in the 4th century.

[7] Dioceses ruled by an archbishop are commonly referred to as archdioceses; most are metropolitan sees, being placed at the head of an ecclesiastical province.

[11] In the Eastern Catholic Churches that are in communion with the Pope, the equivalent entity is called an eparchy or "archeparchy", with an "eparch" or "archeparch" serving as the ordinary.

[citation needed] After the English Reformation, the Church of England retained the existing diocesan structure which remains throughout the Anglican Communion.

The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia in its constitution uses the specific term "Episcopal Unit" for both dioceses and pīhopatanga because of its unique three-tikanga (culture) system.

[15] From about the 13th century until the German mediatization of 1803, the majority of the bishops of the Holy Roman Empire were prince-bishops, and as such exercised political authority over a principality, their so-called Hochstift, which was distinct, and usually considerably smaller than their diocese, over which they only exercised the usual authority of a bishop.

[17] The Lutheran Church - International, based in Springfield, Illinois, presently uses a traditional diocesan structure, with four dioceses in North America.

The Church of Scotland is governed solely through presbyteries, at parish and regional level, and therefore has no dioceses or bishops.

[citation needed] Churches of Christ, being strictly non-denominational, are governed solely at the congregational level.

[citation needed] Continental Reformed churches are ruled by assemblies of "elders" or ordained officers.

This is usually called Synodal government by the continental Reformed, but is essentially the same as presbyterian polity.