Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Exarch
/ˈɛksɑːrk/noun
A governor of a distant Byzantine province, or in the Orthodox churches a bishop ranking above a metropolitan or a patriarch's deputy.
The Greek roots
ἔξαρχος
éxarkhos
leader, one who begins
Literally: “one who leads out front”
Follow a root:ἔξαρχος1 word
The story of the word
In Athens the ἔξαρχος was the man who struck up the song and the chorus followed him. Byzantium borrowed the word for something heavier: the exarchs of Ravenna and Carthage held military and civil power together, an emergency arrangement for territories too far from Constantinople to govern by committee. The church kept the title after the provinces were lost, which is why it survives today only in ecclesiastical use.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
monarchanarchypatriarchhierarchy
In a sentence
The exarch at Ravenna answered to the emperor and to almost no one else.