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== History == {{See also|Bishop#Christian bishops and civil government|l1=Bishops and civil government}} [[File:Roman Empire with dioceses in 400 AD.png|thumb|right|upright=1.25|Dioceses of the Roman Empire, AD 400]] In the later organization of the [[Roman Empire]], the increasingly subdivided [[Roman province|provinces]] were administratively associated in a larger unit, the [[Roman diocese|diocese]] ([[Latin]] ''dioecesis'', from the [[Greek language|Greek]] term διοίκησις, meaning "administration").<ref>{{Cite book|last=Doyle|first=Dennis M.|title=What is Christianity?|publisher=Paulist Press|year=2016|isbn=9781587686207}}</ref> [[Christianity]] was given legal status in 313 with the [[Edict of Milan]]. Churches began to organize themselves into [[Roman diocese|dioceses]] based on the [[Roman diocese|civil dioceses]], not on the larger regional imperial districts.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bright|first=William|title=A History of the Church, from the Edict of Milan, A.D. 313, to the Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451|publisher=J.H. and Jas. Parker|year=1860|pages=4}}</ref> These dioceses were often smaller than the [[Roman province|provinces]]. Christianity was declared the Empire's [[State church of the Roman Empire|official religion]] by [[Theodosius I]] in 380. [[Constantine the Great|Constantine I]] in 318 gave litigants the right to have court cases transferred from the civil courts to the bishops.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bateman|first=C.G.|date=January 17, 2018|title=The Supreme 'Courts' of the Roman Empire: Constantine's Judicial Role for the Bishops|journal=SSRN|doi=10.2139/ssrn.2938800|ssrn=2938800}}</ref> This situation must have hardly survived [[Julian (emperor)|Julian]], 361–363. Episcopal courts are not heard of again in the East until 398 and in the West in 408. The quality of these courts was low, and not above suspicion as the Bishop of [[Alexandria Troas]] found that clergy were making a corrupt profit. Nonetheless, these courts were popular as people could get quick justice without being charged fees.<ref>A. H. M. Jones, Later Roman Empire, 1964, p. 480–481 {{ISBN|0-8018-3285-3}}</ref> Bishops had no part in the civil administration until the town councils, in decline, lost much authority to a group of 'notables' made up of the richest councilors, powerful and rich persons legally exempted from serving on the councils, retired military, and bishops post-AD 450. As the [[Western Roman Empire|Western Empire]] collapsed in the 5th century, bishops in Western Europe assumed a larger part of the role of the former Roman governors. A similar, though less pronounced, development occurred in the East, where the Roman administrative apparatus was largely retained by the [[Byzantine Empire]]. In modern times, many dioceses, though later subdivided, have preserved the boundaries of a long-vanished Roman administrative division. For Gaul, Bruce Eagles has observed that "it has long been an academic commonplace in France that the medieval dioceses, and their constituent ''[[Pagus|pagi]]'', were the direct territorial successors of the Roman ''[[Civitas|civitates]]''."<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|first=Bruce|last=Eagles|title=Britons and Saxons on the Eastern Boundary of the Civitas Durotrigum| encyclopedia=Britannia|volume=35|year=2004|page= 234}}, noting for instance {{cite book|first=E.M.|last= Wightman|title=Gallia Belgica|location=London|year= 1985|page=26}}</ref> Modern usage of 'diocese' tends to refer to the sphere of a bishop's jurisdiction. This became commonplace during the self-conscious "classicizing" structural evolution of the [[Carolingian Empire]] in the 9th century, but this usage had itself been evolving from the much earlier ''parochia'' ("[[parish]]"; Late Latin derived from the Greek παροικία ''paroikia''), dating from the increasingly formalized Christian authority structure in the 4th century.<ref>{{cite EB1911 |wstitle=Diocese |volume=8 |page=279 }}</ref>
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