Persian Church - Organization and Structure

Organization and Structure

The head of the church, the Patriarch of the Church of the East, also bears the title of Catholicos. Like the churches from which it developed, the Church of the East has an ordained clergy divided into the three traditional orders of deacon, priest (or presbyter), and bishop. Also like other churches, it has an episcopal polity: organization by dioceses, each headed by a bishop and made up of several individual parish communities overseen by priests. Dioceses are organized into provinces under the authority of a metropolitan bishop. The office of metropolitan bishop is an important one, and comes with additional duties and powers; canonically, only metropolitans can consecrate a patriarch. The Patriarch also has the charge of a province: the Province of the Patriarch.

For most of its history the church had six or so Interior Provinces in its heartland in Mesopotamia and western Persia, and an increasing number of Exterior Provinces elsewhere. Most of these latter were located farther afield within the territory of the Sassanids (and later of the Caliphate), but very early on, provinces formed beyond the empire's borders as well. By the 10th century, the church had between 20 and 30 metropolitan provinces including in China and India. The Chinese provinces were lost in the 11th century, and in the subsequent centuries, other exterior provinces went into decline as well. However, in the 13th century, during the Mongol Empire, the church added two new metropolitan provinces in northern China, Tangut and Katai and Ong.