ΔΙΑΔΟΧΗ Church history, visualized
World Tree

Jerusalem

Bishop of Jerusalem (Patriarch) · c. 33 (James the Just — the mother church of Pentecost)

The mother church of all: James the brother of the Lord presided over the apostolic council (Acts 15) and was martyred in 62. Fifteen bishops 'of the circumcision' led the community until Hadrian razed the city in 135; a gentile line followed at Aelia, raised to a patriarchate at Chalcedon (451).

Continues today as the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem — №84 of its list — with Armenian and Latin patriarchates sharing the holy city.

The bishops

59 holders in the record.

Of the 58 links in this chain, 2 rest on a recorded succession; 40 are inferred from the numbering — the register numbers the two holders consecutively and no source says one followed the other; 16 are named by no register at all: nothing joins those two rows. Each holder below says which it is.

Glosses

  • The five sees Justinian's law speaks of five patriarchates — Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem — in that order, and the arrangement is called the pentarchy. It was never quite the fact it was legislated as…
  • The church that withdrew to Pella Eusebius reports that before Titus closed on Jerusalem the church there, warned by an oracle, withdrew across the Jordan to Pella. Whatever the warning was, the community survived the siege that ended the city and the…

Events

Texts

Early bishops of Jerusalem · List of Greek Orthodox patriarchs of Jerusalem · the communion today