What is "pentarchy"

Pentarchy \Pen"tar*chy\, n. [Gr. ?: cf. F. pentarchie. See Penta-, and -archy.] A government in the hands of five persons; five joint rulers.
--P. Fletcher. ``The pentarchy of the senses.''
--A. Brewer.

n. 1 government by five persons. 2 A governing body consisting of five persons. 3 A federation of five nations, each under its own government or ruler.

"Pentarchy" (from the Greek , Pentarchia from πέντε pente, "five", and ἄρχειν archein, "to rule") is a model historically championed in Eastern Christianity as a model of church relations and administration. In the model, the Christian church is governed by the heads ( Patriarchs) of the five major episcopal sees of the Roman Empire: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. The idea came about because of the political and ecclesiastical prominence of these five sees, but the concept of their universal and exclusive authority was firmly tied to the administrative structure of the Roman Empire. The pentarchy was first tangibly expressed in the laws of Emperor Justinian I (527–565), particularly in Novella 131. The Quinisext Council of 692 gave it formal recognition and ranked the sees in order of preeminence. Especially following Quinisext, the pentarchy was at least philosophically accepted in Eastern Christianity, but generally not in the West, which rejected the Council, and the concept of the pentarchy.

The greater authority of these sees in relation to others was tied to their political and ecclesiastical prominence; all were located in important cities and regions of the Roman Empire and were important centers of the Christian Church. Rome, Alexandria and Antioch were prominent from the time of early Christianity, while Constantinople came to the fore upon becoming the imperial residence in the 4th century. Thereafter it was consistently ranked just after Rome. Jerusalem received a ceremonial place due to the city's importance in the early days of Christianity. Justinian and the Quinisext Council excluded from their pentarchical arrangement churches outside the Empire, such as the then-flourishing Church of the East in Sassanid Persia, which they saw as heretical. Within the empire they recognized only the Chalcedonian (or Melchite) incumbents, regarding as illegitimate the non-Chalcedonian claimants of Alexandria and Antioch.

Infighting among the sees, and particularly the rivalry between Rome (which considered itself preeminent over all the Church) and Constantinople (which came to hold sway over the other Eastern sees and which saw itself as equal to Rome, with Rome " first among equals") prevented the pentarchy from ever becoming a functioning administrative reality. The Islamic conquests of Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch in the 7th century left Constantinople the only practical authority in the East, and afterward the concept of a "pentarchy" retained little more than symbolic significance. Tensions between East and West, which culminated in the East–West Schism, and the rise of powerful, largely independent metropolitan sees and patriarchates outside the Byzantine Empire in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Russia eroded the importance of the old imperial sees.

Pentarchy is a term in the history of Christianity for the idea of universal rule over all of Christendom by the heads of the five major episcopal sees of the Roman Empire.

Pentarchy may also refer to:

• A confederation of five dynasties in India controlling the Maratha Empire (1674-1818)
• The five great powers that formed the 19th-century Concert of Europe
• Pentarchy of 1933, the Executive Commission of the Provisional Government of Cuba