EPISCOPACY, the general term technically applied to that system of church organization in which the chief ecclesiastical au thority within a defined district, or diocese, is vested in a bishop (from Late Lat. episcopatus, the office of a bishop, episcopus). As such it is distinguished on the one hand from Presbyterianism, government by elders, and Congregationalism, in which the indi vidual church or community of worshippers is autonomous, and on the other from Papalism. The origin and development of episco pacy in the Christian Church, and the functions and attributes of bishops in the various churches, are dealt with elsewhere (see CHURCH HISTORY and BISHOP). Under the present heading it is proposed only to discuss briefly the various types of episcopacy actually existing, and the different principles that they represent.
The deepest line of cleavage is naturally between the view that episcopacy is a divinely ordained institution essential to the ef fective existence of a church as a channel of grace, and the view that it is merely a convenient form of church order, evolved as the result of a variety of historical causes, and not necessary to the proper constitution of a church. The first of these views is closely connected with the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession. Ac cording to this, Christ committed to his apostles certain powers of order and jurisdiction in the Church, including that of trans mitting these powers to others through "the laying on of hands"; and this power, whatever obscurity may surround the practice of the primitive Church, was very early confined to the order of bishops, who by virtue of a special consecration became the suc cessors of the apostles in the function of handing on the powers and graces of the ministry. A valid episcopate, then, is one de rived in an unbroken series of "layings on of hands" by bishops from the time of the apostles (see ORDER, HOLY) . This is the Catholic view, common to all the ancient Churches whether of the West or East, and it is one that necessarily excludes from the union of Christendom all those Christian communities which pos sess no such apostolically derived ministry. This high theory of episcopacy which, if certain of the Ignatian letters be genuine, has a very early origin, has, of course, fallen upon evil days. The power of the collective episcopate to maintain Catholic unity was disproved long before it was overshadowed by the centralized au thority of Rome ; before the Reformation, its last efforts to assert its supremacy in the Western Church, at the councils of Basel and Constance, had broken down; and the religious revolution of the 16th century left it largely discredited and exposed to a double attack, by the papal monarchy on the one hand and the demo cratic Presbyterian model on the other. Within the Roman Cath olic Church the high doctrine of episcopacy continued to be main tained by the Gallicans and Febronians (see GALLICANISM and FEBRONIANISM) as against the claims of the Papacy, and for a while with success; but a system which had failed to preserve the unity of the Church even when the world was united under the Roman empire could not be expected to do so in a world split up into a series of rival states, of which many had already reorganized their churches on a national basis. "Febronius," indeed, was in favour of a frank recognition of this national basis of ecclesiasti cal organization, and saw in Episcopacy the best means of reunit ing the dissidents to the Catholic Church, which was to consist, as it were, of a free federation of episcopal churches under the presidency of the bishop of Rome. The idea had considerable success; for it happened to march with the views of the secular princes. But the Revolution intervened; and when, during the re ligious reaction that followed, men sought for an ultimate author ity, they found it in the papal monarch, exalted now by ultramon tane zeal into the sole depositary of the apostolical tradition (see