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The Archemidrite of the Melkite Church I attend has recently been elevated to Exarch. The dictionary offers very confusing definitions of the term Exarch. Please explain his function in the Byzantine Church.

Ron,

Confusingly, this title has different meanings between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Among the Orthodox an Exarch is an Archbishop or Metropolitan that serves as a Patriarch's vicar (for lack of a better word) for a certain area, meaning he has limited authority over other metropolitans. The Greek Orthodox Archbishop of New York is the Ecumenical Patriarch's Exarch for America. The Metropolitan of Minsk is the Moscow Patriarch's vicar for Belarus.

In the Eastern Catholic Churches an exarch is a hierarch who oversees an exarchy (a pre-eparchy, eqivalent to a vicariate apostolic in the Latin Church) in the name of the one who erects the exarchy, which can be the Pope, the Patriarch, or the Major Archbishop. He may be a bishop but is not required to be.

Additionally it also can be an honorific title. The Melkites and Antiochians seem to be the only ones who do so and it seems reserved for those with higher positions in the Eparchial or Patriarchal Curia.

In Christ,
Subdeacon Lance

The name (ex archon) also implies that the Exarch is ruling outside of the traditional territory over which he or his own hierarch has authority.

When the Patriarch of Constantinople sent then-Metropolitan Anastasios to Albania following the fall of Communism there in 1991, he sent him as a Patriarchal "Exarch" in that the Patriarch did not have normal authority over the Church of Albania since its reception of autocephaly from the same Patriarchate in 1937. But because there were no living Orthodox Bishops and no Synod/Council in Albania in 1991, the Patriarch had to do something, but was careful and initially called him an "Exarch." In 1992, the Holy Synod was elected and Metropolitan Anastasios became its head as Archbishop of Tirana & Durres, no longer using the term Exarch. There were other related problems, but the situation was regularized by 1998.

[Actually, the Archbishop of Tiran-Durres has traditionally has had the secondary title of "Exarch to Illyria." After the German annexation of Kosova to Albania during WWII and again after the NATO expiulsion of Serbian forces in 1999, the Exarch to Illyria, in consultation with the venerable Serbian monasteries in Kosova, has exercised some authority there as Exarch outside of his traditional territory.]

In Christ,
Andrew