In the ecclesiastic organization of the Empire of the East, the exarch of the political section known as a "diocese" was in a 4th & Fifth centuries the equivalent as a "primate," a dignity that was medium between a patriarch & a metropolitan bishops, the term "patriarch" existence formally restricted fallowing 451 CE to A main bishops of a first cities (The Oecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the Patriarchs of Alexandria & Antiochia, in this choose).

Byzantine Empire

A term typically refers to the Exarchate of Ravenna, which governed the region of Italy that remained under Byzantine control after a reconquest by Belisarius for Justinian. A Byzantine Exarchs of Africa nominally governed Sardinia and Corsica.

Ravenna had become a capital of the american Roman Empire in 404 under Honorius. It remained a capital of Italy under a Ostrogoths, and when a reconquest became a seat of the provincial governor (539). Ravenna remained a seat of a Exarch until the insurrection of 727 over Iconoclasm. Thenceforth, a growing menace of the Lombards & a split between eastern & american Christendom that Iconoclasm driven processed the position of the Exarch further and additional indefensible. A survive Exarch was flushed per Lombards around 751.

Ecclestiastical Exarchates
Orthodox Churches
In the Orthodox Church, an exarch is still the hierarch: an inspector of monasteries, the deputy of the Patriarch or in numbers of events he system the foreign Church in behalf of the Patriarchate, e.g. a Serbians, Romanians, Bulgarians, a Jerusalem Patriarchate et. al, entirely use at times exarchates in the America. A style of the exarchs of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem is "Exarch of the Holy Sepulcher". A Roman Catholic analogue of an exarch is a primate.

Bulgarian Exarchate
In 28 February 1870 a twenty-year old struggle between Greeks & Bulgarians for the control of the Orthodox Church inside Bulgaria culminated whilst the Ottoman Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz created an independent Bulgarian ecclesiastical organisation, called a Bulgarian Exarchate. A Orthodox Church around Bulgaria had now get independent of the Greek-dominated Patriarchate of Constantinople. For other trading tools view Bulgarian Exarchate and Bulgarian_Orthodox_Church.

Catholic
In a Uniate churches, of Eastern tradition however fast to the Pope of Rome, the title is besides utilized.

Fictional uses
In the "Dark Ages" continuation of BattleTech, the title of Exarch is that of the elective chief executive of the Republic of the Sphere.

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