The Primacy of Constantinople

by Archimandrite Panteleimon Manousakis, 

Assistant Professor, College of the Holy Cross, Boston 

In the past we had the opportunity to discuss the need for primacy in the Church in general.[1] Our discussion demonstrated, to the best of our abilities, that such a primacy is required by the very structure of the Church’s ecclesiology and, furthermore, it is a prerequisite necessitated by the Church’s theology. It was that same theology that gave us the insight to primacy’s personal character insofar as it can be exercised only by a person. That person is, in principle, the bishop of Rome. Yet, the separation of the Catholic from the Orthodox Church meant, first and foremost, that the Orthodox Churches have been deprived from the benefits embodied in such a personal primacy. What would have been expected was that, in the absence of the Roman primacy, the ministry of that primacy ought to have been exercised by and recognized unanimously and unambiguously by the Orthodox themselves in the see next after the elder Rome in the taxis of the Pentarchy, namely the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the New Rome, and more specifically in the person of the Patriarch of Constantinople. In fact, the ancient appellation of Constantinople as New Rome would have assumed on this occasion a quasi-prophetic meaning, as it would have anticipated that this church was destined to become the Rome for the Eastern Churches in the event that the communion with the elder Rome were to be severed.

  So much seems to be suggested by the spirit of the canons which afforded Constantinople with prerogatives and privileges comparable only to those of Rome (cf., the 3^rd canon of the Second Ecumenical Council and the 28^th canon of the Fourth Ecumenical Council). Thus, on the authority of these two Ecumenical Councils, the Church of Constantinople was granted a unique status among the remaining Eastern Patriarchates (Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem), as, for the first time, a see is given jurisdictional rights beyond the borders of its immediate locality (ὑπερορίως, ultra montes).

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