Orthodox bishops in 1859


I ran across this the other day — in 1859, there were 278 Orthodox bishops in the world:

Church Bishops
Constantinople (including Romania, Bulgaria, and part of Serbia) 136
Russia (including Georgia) 65
Greece 24
Antioch 17
Jerusalem 14
Austria (now Serbia, mostly) 11
Alexandria 5
Cyprus 4
Mount Sinai 1
Montenegro 1
TOTAL 278

Source: J.M. Neale, trans., Voices from the East: Documents on the Present State and Working of the Oriental Church (London: Joseph Masters, 1859). Google Books has the whole thing available for free. If you go there and find those numbers, they’ll look a bit different, because I added in the four patriarchs at the time (Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem).

5 Replies to “Orthodox bishops in 1859”

  1. Looking at the numbers of Alexandria, I’m wondering if they are counting vacant sees. When Pope Photios, for instance, half a century asserted the independence of the Church against the Phanar, he solved the problem of not having enough bishops, i.e. <3, to consecrate successors-and therefore depend on the Phanar to supply them-by filling sees, and then forbidding the Phanar's representative from setting foot in Egypt (then independent from the Porte in all but name, and a British Protectorate).

    1. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is an autonomous church under the Moscow Patriarchate. It received autonomy in the early 1990s.

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