To distinguish abbots from bishops, it was ordained that their mitre should be made of less costly materials, and should not be ornamented with gold, a rule which was soon entirely disregarded, and that the crook of their pastoral staff ( the crosier ) should turn inwards instead of outwards, indicating that their jurisdiction was limited to their own house.

While Ignatius of Antioch offers the earliest clear description of monarchial bishops ( a single bishop over all house churches in a city ) he is an advocate of monepiscopal structure rather than describing an accepted reality.

He called a secret meeting of the Irish bishops in his house in November 1626, the result being the " Judgement of the Arch-Bishops and Bishops of Ireland ".

Members of the Commons were all elected, while members of the upper house were summoned to parliament by the monarch, usually on the basis of a title which would be inherited after the holder's death, or because they held a position in the realm that warranted special recognition, such as the bishops of the English and Welsh dioceses.

Either Black Rod or his deputy, the Yeoman Usher, is required to be present when the House of Lords, upper house of Parliament, is in session, and plays a role in the induction of all new Lords Temporal into the House ( but not of bishops as new Lords Spiritual ).

A considerable number of Monophysite bishops from all parts of the East, including Theodosius of Alexandria, Anthimus the deposed patriarch of Constantinople, Constantius of Laodicea, John of Egypt, Peter and others, who had come to Constantinople in the hope of mitigating the displeasure of the emperor and increasing the sympathies of Theodora, were held by Justinian in one of the imperial fortresses under house arrest.

In 1971 the Catholic bishops of Victoria and Tasmania purchased land adjacent to Monash University to house their seminary, Corpus Christi College.

When in London Knight lived in a house in Cannon Row, Westminster, afterwards ( 1536 ) assigned, in accordance with an act of 27 Henry VIII, to the bishops of Norwich.

In 1148 the abbey church was dedicated by the bishops of Exeter, Llandaff, and St. Asaph, and during Fitzharding's lifetime the abbey also built the chapter house and gatehouse.

The presence of clerical and lay delegates is for the purpose of discerning the consensus of the church on important matters ; however, the bishops form an upper house of the sobor, and the laity cannot overrule their decisions.

In addition, the apostolate also accepts priests, bishops and deacons from outside the community as " Associate Priests " — although these priests do not participate in the day-to-day workings of the apostolate, they do wear the pax caritas cross, strive to live " the Madonna House way of life ," and meet yearly at the main house for retreats.

There are thought to be approximately 40 bishops operating " underground ," some of whom are in prison or under house arrest.

Wardley Hall is an early medieval manor house and a Grade I listed building which is the official residence of the Roman Catholic bishops of Salford.

He belonged to the house of Amboise, a noble family possessed of considerable influence: of his nine brothers, four were bishops.

His living was a comparatively rich one, his house was better than many bishops palaces, and his position was that of a clerical magnate.

This house, whose directors were to form young priests to the apostolic life and transmit to the bishops the offerings made by charity, was, and is still situated in Paris in the Rue du Bac.

Three elements have been important in holding the Communion together: First, the shared ecclesial structure of the component churches, manifested in an episcopal polity maintained through the apostolic succession of bishops and synodical government ; second, the principle of belief expressed in worship, investing importance in approved prayer books and their rubrics ; and third, the historical documents and standard divines that have influenced the ethos of the Communion.

These conferences demonstrated that the bishops of disparate churches could manifest the unity of the church in their episcopal collegiality despite the absence of universal legal ties.

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.

" It spoke of episcopal succession as something that churches that do not have bishops can see " as a sign, though not a guarantee, of the continuity and unity of the Church " and that all churches can see " as a sign of the apostolicity of the life of the whole church ".

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.

On the basis of these traditions, the churches in question often claim to have inherited specific authority, doctrines and / or practices on the authority of their founding apostle ( s ), which is understood to be continued by the bishops of the see ( seat ) or throne of the church that each founded and whose original leader he was.

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

Some Protestant churches including the Lutheran and Methodist churches have bishops serving similar functions as well, though not always understood to be within apostolic succession in the same way.

During the early centuries of Christianity the title " pope " was applied generally to all bishops ; it now has more specific meanings that vary between churches.

In the Eastern churches, latifundia entailed to a bishop's see were much less common, the state power did not collapse the way it did in the West, and thus the tendency of bishops acquiring secular power was much weaker than in the West.

As well as traditional diocesan bishops, many churches have a well-developed structure of church leadership that involves a number of layers of authority and responsibility.

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

While traditional teaching maintains that any bishop with apostolic succession can validly perform the ordination of another bishop, some churches require two or three bishops participate, either to ensure sacramental validity or to conform with church law.

Most Eastern Orthodox churches allow varying amounts of formalised laity and / or lower clergy influence on the choice of bishops.

The Catholic Church does recognise as valid ( though illicit ) ordinations done by breakaway Catholic, Old Catholic or Oriental bishops, and groups descended from them ; it also regards as both valid and licit those ordinations done by bishops of the Eastern churches, so long as those receiving the ordination conform to other canonical requirements ( for example, is an adult male ) and an orthodox rite of episcopal ordination, expressing the proper functions and sacramental status of a bishop, is used ; this has given rise to the phenomenon of episcopi vagantes ( for example, clergy of the Independent Catholic groups which claim apostolic succession, though this claim is rejected by both Orthodoxy and Catholicism ).

In the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America ( ELCA ) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada ( ELCIC ), the largest Lutheran Church bodies in the United States and Canada respectively and roughly based on the Nordic Lutheran state churches ( similar to that of the Church of England ), bishops are elected by Synod Assemblies, consisting of both lay members and clergy, for a term of 6 years, which can be renewed, depending upon the local synod's " constitution " ( which is mirrored on either the ELCA or ELCIC's national constitution ).

It should also be noted that the second largest of the three predecessor bodies of the ELCA, the American Lutheran Church, was a congregationalist body, with national and synod presidents before they were re-titled as bishops ( borrowing from the Lutheran churches in Germany ) in the 1980s.

In all the talk of feudal rights, the knights and bishops must never forget the woolworkers, nor was it easy to do so, for all along the road to Italy they passed the Florentine pack trains going home with their loads of raw wool from England and rough Flemish cloth, the former to be spun and woven by the Arte Della Lana and the latter to be refined and dyed by the Arte Della Calimala with the pigment recently discovered in Asia Minor by one of their members, Bernardo Rucellai, the secret of which they jealously kept for themselves.

At about the same time, in the colonies which remained linked to the crown, the Church of England began to appoint colonial bishops.

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.

Of the roughly three hundred bishops in attendance at the Council of Nicea, only two bishops did not sign the Nicene Creed, which condemned Arianism.

By 325, the controversy had become significant enough that the Emperor Constantine called an assembly of bishops, the First Council of Nicaea, which condemned Arius ' doctrine and formulated the original Nicene Creed of 325.

In 381, at the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople, a group of mainly Eastern bishops assembled and accepted the Nicene Creed of 381, which was supplemented in regard to the Holy Spirit, as well as some other changes: see Comparison between Creed of 325 and Creed of 381.

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 ).

There were a few reasons for this, one of which was political, as the kings of England preferred to appoint bishops from the south to the northern bishoprics, hoping to counter the northern tendency towards separatism.

But in this Council, and later, in that of Florence, Ambrose, by his efforts and charity toward some poor Greek bishops, greatly helped to bring about a union of the two Churches, the decree for which, 6 July 1439, he was called on to draw up.

Apostolic succession is the method whereby the ministry of the Christian Church is held to be derived from the apostles by a continuous succession, which has usually been associated with a claim that the succession is through a series of bishops.

Under the particular historical circumstances of the growing Church in the early centuries, the succession of bishops became one of the ways, together with the transmission of the Gospel and the life of the community, in which the apostolic tradition of the Church was expressed.

A purely historical or mechanical succession of ministers, bishops or pastors would not mean ipso facto true apostolic succession in the church, Reformed tradition, following authentic Catholic tradition, distinguishes four realities which make up the true apostolic succession, symbolized, but not absolutely guaranteed, by ministerial succession.

Two conciliar letters were prepared, one to the clergy and faithful of Alexandria, the other to the bishops of Egypt and Libya, in which the will of the Council was made known.

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.

Apart from the ordination, which is always done by other bishops, there are different methods as to the actual selection of a candidate for ordination as bishop.