Patriarchate
A
patriarchate is the office or jurisdiction of a
patriarch; a patriarch, as that term is used here, is either one of the highest-ranking
bishops in
Eastern Orthodoxy, of whom there were originally four, but now nine, or one of the ten highest-ranking bishops of
Catholicism -- the pope, the seven "patriarchs of the east," and the bishops of
Lisbon and
Venice. The original four Catholic patriarchs of the east, and the original four Eastern Orthodox patriarchs, sit in
Constantinople (now called
Istanbul, but still called Constantinople in this particular ecclesiastical usage),
Alexandria,
Antioch, and
Jerusalem. Eastern Orthodoxy recognizes not only its own patriarchs, but also the pope, in his role as Christian patriarch of
Rome, as among the patriarchs whose presence at a
council is a necessary condition for the council's
ecumenicity and
infallibility.
A patriarchate is treated in some legal juridictions as a corporate entity. For example, the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem filed a lawsuit in New York, decided in 1999, against Christie's Auction House, disputing the ownership of the Archimedes Palimpsest.