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Latin Patriarchate of Alexandria

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The Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, which was the Roman seat of the Latin Patriarch of Alexandria

The Latin Patriarchate of Alexandria was a nominal Patriarchate of the Latin church on the see of Alexandria in Egypt, which remained out of Catholic control.

History

Alexandria, the Ancient great port of Egypt and a first-rank Mediterranean metropolis in the Hellenistic world, was a major early Christian diocese since 30 AD, held by Saint Mark the Evangelist, and a Patriarchate since 451, besides Rome, Antioch and later Constantoniple. As the country became Coptic, Byzantine, it was on the Orthodox side since the Great Eastern Schism of 1054 and under Arab Muslim rule anyhow, Crusaders failed to conquer it, despite a short promising episode in Damiette.

The Latin Catholic church hoped in 1215 during the pontificate of Pope Innocent III to establish an abortive Crusader patriarchate there, like the Latin Patriarchs rivaling/replacing the other Eastern Sees Antioch and Constantinople, and the newly created Jerusalem, but accepted in 1219 it could and always would be purely titular, as Alexandria was never controlled by western Christians.

His patriarchal cathedral seat was thus not in Muslim Egypt but in Rome, the papal Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, but many incumbents held residential (arch)episcopal posts of various ranks in Latin countries, and even (earlier and/or later) other Titular Latin patriarchates (Jerusalem, Constantinopel).

The titular see would have its share of disputed nominations during the papal 'Babylonian exile' in Avignon.

The titular patriarchate was abolished in 1964, after Eastern Catholic churches had established in Alexandria residential counterparts: a Coptic and a Melkite Patriarchate as well as an Armenian diocese.

Latin Patriarchs of Alexandria

References

  1. ^ The Diocese of Grenoble in the Fourteenth Century, C. R. Cheney, Speculum, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Apr., 1935), 165.
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