Patriarch

Patriarch (pronounced pey-tree-ahrk)

(1) The male head of a family or tribal line.

(2) A person regarded as the father or founder of an order, class etc.

(3) Any of the very early Biblical personages regarded as the fathers of the human race, comprising those from Adam to Noah (antediluvian patriarchs) and those between the Deluge and the birth of Abraham (the postdiluvian).

(4) Any of the three great progenitors of the Israelites: Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob.

(5) Any of the sons of Jacob (the twelve patriarchs), from whom the tribes of Israel were descended.

(6) In early Christian church, any of the bishops of any of the ancient sees of Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, Jerusalem, or Rome having authority over other bishops.

(7) In casual use, the oldest or most venerable member of a group or community; a person regarded as the founder of a community, tradition etc.

(8) In the Roman Catholic Church, one of the titles bestowed on a pope.

(9) In the Mormon Church, another word for Evangelist.

(10) In certain churches (especially the Uniat (Eastern Christians who profess the same doctrines as the rest of the Roman Catholic Church)), a title given to a number of bishops, indicating their rank as immediately below that of the pope.

(11) In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the bishops of the four ancient principal sees of Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, and also of Russia, Romania, and Serbia, the bishop of Constantinople (the ecumenical Patriarch) being highest in dignity among these.

(12) In some of the sects of Eastern Christianity, the head of the Coptic, Armenian, Syrian Jacobite, or Nestorian Churches, and of certain other non-Orthodox Churches in the East (including the Egyptian Coptic church which is headed by a pope).

1175–1225: From the Middle English patriark(e), from the Late Latin patriarcha, later reinforced by the Old French patriarche, from the Byzantine Greek πατριάρχης (patriárkhēs) (the founder of the tribe/family) and patriárchēs (high-ranking bishop), from the Ancient Greek πατριά (patriá) (generation, ancestry, descent, tribe, family) + -αρχης (-arkhēs) (-arch).  The Late Latin sufficx –arch is from the Classical Latin -archēs, from the Ancient Greek -άρχης (-árkhēs), from ἀρχή (arkhḗ) (rule, government), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European hzergh- (to begin, rule, command).

The most familiar early use, dating from the twelfth century, was a patriarke (one of the Old Testament fathers; progenitors of the Israelites) and it was used also as an honorific title of certain bishops of the highest rank in the early Church, notably those of Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome.  The use of the noun patriarchy describe an "ecclesiastical province under a patriarch; church government by patriarchs" emerged in the 1560s and the sense of a "system of society or government by fathers or elder males of the community" was recorded first in the 1630s, the meaning "the father and ruler of a family" dates from 1817.  Patriarch, patriarchy, patriarchdom & patriarchship are nouns, patriarchal, patriarchic & patriarchical are adjectives and patriarchally is an adverb.  The rare antipatriarch is mostly a historic reference but is still used by clerics accusing each-other of some heresy.

Constantinople

The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople is one of more than a dozen autocephalous (from the Ancient Greek αὐτοκεφαλία (property of being self-headed)) churches (or "jurisdictions") of the Eastern Orthodox Church.  The structure, within the model of a hierarchical Christian church, is one where head bishops do not report to any higher-ranking bishop.

Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is, by virtue of the historical location of Constantinople as capital of the old Byzantine (and former Eastern Roman) Empire, regarded as primus inter pares (first among equals) among all the Eastern Orthodox prelates.  The office is best understood as something similar to that of the Archbishop of Canterbury within the worldwide Anglican community: a spiritual leader.  The seats of Lambeth and Constantinople are thus not comparable with that of the Holy See in Rome where the pontificate exists as an absolute theocracy within the city and an administrative and doctrinal hierarchy beyond although some popes took not long to work out their authority was more impressive on paper than on the ground.

The position of the Uniat churches in the Eastern mix is sometime misunderstood.  The Uniat are Eastern Christians who profess the same doctrines as the rest of the Roman Catholic Church although their rites and discipline are drawn as much from Byzantine as from the Latin Rites and within many non-Uniat churches, there are Uniat factions which maintain an allegiance to the Pope.  As a theological point, the word "Uniat," though in wide use as a descriptor, is not often used by Eastern Catholics because it’s thought to imply something less than complete allegiance to the Holy See.

The Roman Catholic Pope Francis and Bartholomew I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, waiting for their Uber to take them to the Black & White Ball.