The consensus among scholars has been that, at the turn of the 1st and 2nd centuries, local congregations were led by bishops and presbyters whose offices were overlapping or indistinguishable.

A fragment of a letter from Irenæus to Pope Victor I during the Easter controversy in the late 2nd century, also preserved by Eusebius, testifies that Telesphorus was one of the Roman bishops who always celebrated Easter on Sunday, rather than on other days of the week according to the calculation of the Jewish Passover.

By the 2nd century common era, the area had become a center of Phoenician-speaking Christianity, where bishops spoke and wrote in Punic, and even Emperor Septimius Severus was noted by his local accent.

The Didache ( dated by most scholars to the early 2nd century ),) speaks of " appointing for yourself bishops and deacons ".

The first case recorded of the partial exemption of an abbot from episcopal control is that of Faustus, abbot of Lerins, at the council of Arles, AD 456 ; but the exorbitant claims and exactions of bishops, to which this repugnance to episcopal control is to be traced, far more than to the arrogance of abbots, rendered it increasingly frequent, and, in the 6th century, the practice of exempting religious houses partly or altogether from episcopal control, and making them responsible to the pope alone, received an impulse from Pope Gregory the Great.

Several of its later bishops are known: Marinus in 325 ; Niconius in 344 ; Sylvanus at the beginning of the 5th century ; Pionius in 451 ; Leo in 787 ; Peter, friend of the Patriarch Ignatius, and adversary to Michael, in the ninth century.

As well as being arch chancellors of the Holy Roman Empire after the 9th century, bishops generally served as chancellors to medieval monarchs, acting as head of the justiciary and chief chaplain.

In the 21st century, the more senior bishops of the Church of England continue to sit in the House of Lords of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, as representatives of the established church, and are known as Lords Spiritual.

Methodists in Britain acquired their own bishops early in the 19th century, after the Methodist movement in Britain formally parted company with the Church of England.

There are no bishops mentioned during the whole 8th century and part of the 9th in Bordeaux.

The Lutician uprising of 983 practically annihilated it ; bishops continued to be named, but they were merely titular, until the downfall of the Wends in the twelfth century and the German eastward settlement in the diocesan region revived the bishopric.

There were two more nominal bishops, but on the petition of the latter of these, the electoral prince John George, the secularisation of the bishopric was undertaken and finally accomplished, in spite of legal proceedings to reassert the imperial immediacy of the prince-bishopric within the Empire and so to likewise preserve the diocese, which dragged on into the seventeenth century.

From the middle of the 13th century onward the bishops were princes of the Empire and ruled Bamberg, overseeing the construction of monumental buildings.

In the early 3rd century the Canons of the Apostolic Constitutions decreed that only lower clerics might still marry after their ordination, but marriage of bishops, priests, and deacons were not allowed.

Popes, bishops, and priests married and sired children for over a thousand years after Christ Celibacy was first written into law for all priests in the 12th century at the First Lateran Council ( 1123 ).

For a period ending in the mid-20th century, long-serving cardinal priests were entitled to fill vacancies that arose among the cardinal bishops, just as cardinal deacons of ten years ' standing are still entitled to become cardinal priests.

The councils of Gaul held in the first half of the sixth century had given to bishops absolute authority over religious communities, even going so far as to order the abbots to appear periodically before their respective bishops to receive reproof or advice, as might be considered necessary.

In the early 5th century, this status was challenged by the bishops of Alexandria, but the Council of Chalcedon confirmed in Canon XXVIII:

Both the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church recognise as ecumenical the first seven councils, held from the 4th to the 9th century ; but while the Eastern Orthodox Church accepts no later council or synod as ecumenical, the Roman Catholic Church continues to hold general councils of the bishops in full communion with the Pope, reckoning them as ecumenical, and counting in all, including the seven recognized by the Eastern Orthodox Church, twenty-one to date.

Although London ( and the rest of Middlesex ) was lost by the East Saxons in the 8th century, the bishops of London continued to exert spiritual authority over Essex as a kingdom, shire and county until 1845.

A major advance in manufacturing began in Europe in the late 14th century when the safety and thoroughness of incorporation was improved by wet grinding ; liquid, such as distilled spirits or perhaps the urine of wine-drinking bishops was added during the grinding-together of the ingredients and the moist paste dried afterwards.

Partly as a result of these factors, some scholars have identified a distinctive form of Celtic Christianity, in which abbots were more significant than bishops, attitudes to clerical celibacy were more relaxed and there was some significant differences in practice with Roman Christianity, particularly the form of tonsure and the method of calculating Easter, although most of these issues had been resolved by the mid-seventh century.

British Methodism does not have bishops ; however, it has always been characterized by a strong central organization, the Connexion, which holds an annual Conference ( note that the Church retains the 18th century spelling " connexion " for many purposes ).

In the early centuries of Christianity, this title was applied, especially in the east, to all bishops and other senior clergy, and later became reserved in the west to the Bishop of Rome, a reservation made official only in the 11th century.

The title was from the early 3rd century a general term used to refer to all bishops.

But at that time, and down to the 9th century, other bishops too referred to themselves as vicars of Christ, and for another four centuries this description was sometimes used of kings and even judges, as it had been used in the 5th and 6th centuries to refer to the Byzantine emperor.

There are a great many bishops who have never had a cross on their bosom, nor a mitre on their head, who appeal not to the authority of the Pope at Rome, but to the Almighty Dollar, a pope much nearer home.

Some churches founded outside the Anglican Communion in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, largely in opposition to the ordination of openly homosexual bishops and other clergy are usually referred to as belonging to the Anglican realignment movement, or else as " orthodox " Anglicans.

Abbesses are, like abbots, major superiors according to canon law, the equivalents of abbots or bishops ( the ordained male members of the church hierarchy who have, by right of their own office, executive jurisdiction over a building, diocesan territory, or a communal or non-communal group of persons — juridical entities under church law ).

However, there are certain limitations: they may not administer the sacraments and related functions whose celebration is reserved to bishops, priests, deacons, or seminarians ( the male clergy ), namely, Holy Orders ( they may make provision for an ordained cleric to help train and to admit some of their members, if needed, as altar servers, Eucharistic ministers, or lectors-the minor ministries which are now open to the non-ordained ).

The lack of apostolic succession through bishops is the primary basis on which Protestant communities are not considered churches by the Orthodox churches and the Roman Catholic Church.

Today, Methodism follows this ancient Alexandrian practice as bishops are elected from and by the order of the presbyterate: the Discipline of the Methodist Church, in ¶ 303, affirms that " ordination to this ministry is a gift from God to the Church.

* Two further suffragans, the Bishop of Ebbsfleet and the Bishop of Richborough, are provincial episcopal visitors for the whole Province of Canterbury, licensed by the archbishop as " flying bishops " to visit parishes throughout the province who are uncomfortable with the ministrations of their local bishop who has participated in the ordination of women.

Within these churches, bishops are seen as those who posess the full priesthood and can ordain clergy including other bishops.

Eastern Orthodox bishops, along with all other members of the clergy, are canonically forbidden to hold political office.

; Patriarch: Patriarchs are the bishops who head certain ancient autocephalous or sui iuris churches, which are a collection of metropolitan sees or provinces.

In the Roman Catholic Church, the title is purely honorific and carries no extra jurisdiction, though most archbishops are also metropolitan bishops, as above.

In the Ecumenical Patriarchate, bishops of modern dioceses are often given a titular see alongside their modern one ( for example, the Archbishop of Thyateira and Great Britain ).

; Honorary Assistant bishop, Assisting Bishop, or Bishop Emeritus: These titles are usually applied to retired bishops who are given a general licence to minister as episcopal pastors under a diocesan's oversight.

Chorbishops are not generally ordained bishops – they are not given the sacrament of Holy Orders in that degree – but function as assistants to the diocesan bishop with certain honorary privileges.

Most cardinals are already bishops at the time of their appointment, the majority being archbishops of important archdioceses or patriarchs, and a substantial portion of the rest already titular archbishops serving in the Vatican.

Recent popes have appointed a few priests, most of them influential theologians, to the College of Cardinals without requiring them to be ordained as bishops ; invariably, these men are over the age of 80, which means they are not permitted to take part in a conclave.