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1. Terminology In ecclesiastical usage,  patriarchate denotes the administrative sphere of a patriarch. Since late antiquity,  patriarch (Greek  patriárches - a compound of  patḗr, “father,” and árchein, “be a commander,” “rule” – originally meaning “clan chief” or “progenitor”) was a title of senior Christian clergy. As early as the first ecumenical Council of Nicaea (325), we can see a regional structure of the church with centers at Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch; they were joined in 381 by the new capital, Constantinople, and in 451 by Jerusalem.These five episcopal sees, …

Despite their culturally Serbian or South Slavic character, the two most important ecclesiastical institutions of the early modern Serbian Orthodox Church – the patriarchate of Peć (Patriarchate 4.) and the metropolitanate of Sremski Karlovci – were territorial churches. All Orthodox Christians living within their jurisdiction belonged to them, regardless of ethnic background. Their historical reference point was not the Serbian nation but the medieval Serbian state and its dynasty, the House of…