OBEDIENCE ( Lat. °Int dientia, front obredire, obcdire, to obey, from of), before -f audire, to hear). In canon law, the duty by which the various gradations in ecclesiastical organiza tion are held subject to the several superiors placed immediately above each, respectively, in the hierarchical scale. Thus priests and in ferior clergy ONVO canonical obedience to the bishop, and priests are hound thereto by a solemn promise administered at ordination. The bishop primitively took a similar oath to the metropolitan : but by the modern law, the juris diction of the metropolitan is confined to the occasions of his holding a visitation, or pre siding- in the provineial synod. 11i:hops, by the present law of the P,oman Catholic Church, take an oath of obedience to the Pope. This obe dience, however. is strietly limited by the canons, and is only held to bind in things consistent with the divine and natural law. In eeelesiastieal history the word oltedience has a special signi fication, and is applied to the several parties in the Church which, during the great Western sehktn. adhered to the rival popes. Applied to
the monastic institute, obedience means the voluntary submission whieh all member: of re ligious Orders VOW, at the religious profession, to their immediate superiors, of whatever grade in the Order. as well as to the superior general, and still more to the rules and constitutions of the order. This torms. in all orders, one of the vows. It is. however, expressly confined to lawful things. 'The mune obedience is some times given to the written precept or other for mal instrument by which a superior in a reli gious order communicates to one of his subjects any special precept or iustructioi—as. for ex ample, to undertake a certain office, to proceed upon a particular mission, to relinquish a cer tain appointment. etc. The instruction, or the instrument containing it, is called an obedience, because it is held to bind in virtue of religious