EXARCH, a title that has been conferred at different periods on certain chief officers or governors, both in secular and ecclesi astical matters. Of these, the most important were the exarchs of Ravenna (q.v.). In the ecclesiastical organization the exarch of a diocese (the word being here used of the political division) was in the 4th and 5th centuries the same as primate. This dignity was intermediate between the patriarchal and the metropolitan, the name patriarch being restricted after A.D. 451 to the chief bishops of most important cities. On the other hand the title of Exarch was also formerly given in the Eastern Church to a general or superior over several monasteries, and to certain ecclesiastics deputed by the patriarch of Constantinople to collect the tribute payable by the Church to the Turkish government. In the modern Greek Church an exarch is a deputy, or legate a latere, of the patriarch, whose office it is to visit the clergy and churches in the provinces allotted to him.