The following accounts for the divisions of the secular (secular as opposed to regular, not secular as in temporal and opposed to religious) church in the Middle Ages British Isles.
Ecclesiastical divisions
Township – Generally, particularly in northern England, a subdivision of a large parish. As parishes began to be used for secular administrative purposes, non-subdivided parishes formed a single township.
Chapelry – In England and Lowland Scotland, a rural ecclesiastical subdivision of a parish (corresponding roughly to a township) with its own small local succursal or ‘chapel-of-ease’ subordinate to the parish church.
Pendicle – In Scotland, a chapel-of-ease subordinate to a plebania.
Parish – this was territory of the basic local church, the parish church being the main or only one within the well-defined boundaries, its minister being a priest. It was traditional in the Middle Ages on Rogation Days to “beat the bounds” of the parish, which were well-marked. The priest assigned to its benefice was called the rector.
In the Late Middle Ages, the parish also became the smallest basic unit for civil administration of national government and of local government (except for burghs and tuwns) in every country in the Isles. Ecclesiastical and civil parishes remained the same and did not become separate identities until the 19th century.
Plebania – In Scotland, the mother church of a large parish with several subordinate chapels-of-ease. The priest over such a parish was sometimes called a dean and sometimes an abthane (the latter not the same as the title in the Celtic Church of Scotland). Its use is roughly parallel to that of minster in late medieval England.
Peculiar – In England, this was a church not subject to the diocese within which it was geographically located. They could be subject to an archbishop, a monarch, dean and chapter, or else one of the military orders. For example, thirteen parishes in the Diocese of London were peculiars of the Archbisop of Canterbury.
Collegiate church – An important parish church allowed a group of many priests who were together called a college, whose chief was called a provost or, less commonly, a warden, or, even more rarely, an archpriest.
Deanery – Also called a rural deanery (the rural tag meaning outside the see of the diocese), these were composed of a number of parishes of a diocese grouped together for better administration, often, but not always, part of an archdeaconry.
Archdeaconry – Larger dioceses in terms of geography or population were divided into from one to three divisions called archdeaconries, which were themselves usually, but not always, subdivided into deaneries. Its priest was called an archdeacon.
Diocese – a group of parishes organized under a bishop, who was called the ordinary. If a successor was chosen while an incumbent still held office, that bishop was a coadjutor. In larger dioceses with a need for several bishops in addition to the ordinary, the subordinate bishops, who often had a titular office, were called suffragans.
Under the late Roman Empire, a diocese collected a group of contiguous provinces under one umbrella, such as the Diocese of Britannia, which included the provinces of Britannia Prima, Britannia Secunda, Maxima Caesariensis, Flavia Caesariensis, and Valencia. Its chief official was called a vicarius, or vicar.
See – the seat of a bishop within his diocese, the name of which may or may not be the same as the diocese, though in the latter case, sometimes both titles were used interchangeably; for example, the Bishop of Moray was also called the Bishop of Elgin, the first after the diocese, the second after the see.
Archdiocese – the diocese presided over directly by the metropolitan or archbishop of a province. All the other bishops in his diocese, ordinary or otherwise, were his suffragans.
Province – the group of dioceses organized into one body under a metropolitan or archbishop, composed of an archdiocese and a number of suffragan dioceses. There were two of these in England: Canterbury and York; two in Scotland: St. Andrews and Glasgow; and four in Ireland: Armagh, Tuam, Cashel, and Dublin.
Under the late Roman Empire, a province was the smallest unit of local imperial administration, governed by a rector.
Patriarchate – dating back to the early church, a patriarchate is composed of several provinces within a geographic region, of which there were only five originally: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.
The patriarchate was the ecclesiastical counterpart to the praetorian prefecture of the late Roman Empire, though the two sets of jurisdiction were anything but coextensive. For example, the Praetorian Prefecture of Galliarum took in the Dioceses of Galliae, Hispaniae, and Mauretania Tingitana in Africa (roughly, Mediterranean Morocco); and where there were five patriarchates, there were just four praetorian prefectures.
From 560 to 1741 there was a sixth, the Patriachate of Aquilea, but it became subordinate to Rome after the Synod of Pavia in 698; it was never recognized as a patriarchate by the other four, especially since it split from Rome over the Three Chapters that arose controversy after the Council of Chalcedon. The schism involved the dioceses of Aquilea, Milan, and Istria (a peninsula off Illyria of a people called the Histrii). The bishop of Aquilea was recognized as their Patriarch, and the dissident dioceses were able to stay independent as they came under Lombard rule in 568 and were therefore no longer subject to the Roman Exarch at Ravenna.
After its subordination to Rome in 698, the patriarchate was only titular; it was abolished in 1752. Meanwhile, another titular patriachate had been created for Venice in 1451; that one still exists.
The Three Chapters Controversy was ended at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, the last of the universally recognized Seven Ecumenical Councils (1st Nicaea, 325; 1st Constantinople, 381; Ephesus, 431; Chalcedon, 451; 2nd Constatinople, 553; 3rd Constantinople, 680-681; 2nd Nicaea, 787).
Several other jurisdictions under the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Uniate churches under Rome each have a chief bishop using the title Patriarch.
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