Legitimate line of Patriarchs

[Nine_Two]

Look with the Melkites, the Chalcedonian church of Antioch was orthodox and had a schism as we know. It formed two lines that exist today, one catholic and the other orthodox. However the Melkites carry legitimate succession in the Chalcedonian Church of antioch as it was Patriarch Cyril Tannas who was elected ny the Antiochan synod and together with a huge number of the synod and faithful, opted to commune with Rome. The modern Antiochan Orthodox Church gains its line of succession from Sylvester who was elected by Constantinople as a rival to the already elected and legitimate patriarch Cyril.

It wasn’t quite that simple. The election of Cyril was fraught with irregularities. He wasn’t elected by the Holy Synod itself, he was elected by a faction within it. He went over to Rome when his legitimacy was appealed to Constantinople and found lacking - at which point Patriarch Sylvester was elected.

The Melkite Church grew in large part because Patriarch Sylvester turned out to be rather heavy handed and was unpopular.

 

[SyroMalankara]

In addition to irregularities and sometimes Ottomans being unwilling to accept (or even bribed by rival claimants or a faction not to accept the vote of the Synod), there were Synods and Patriarchs/Catholicoi who would go in and out of Communion with Rome for various reasons - see the Church of the East, for example, with rival hereditary claimants from 3 lines and 2 relatives in at least one line.

 

[Peter_J]

Hi all and nice thread ; I just read it for the first time.

As you have perhaps all noticed at some point or other that there’s a widespread trend (dare I say an epidemic?) of a one-size-fits-all approach to talking about Greek and Oriental Catholic Churches, e.g. speaking as though they are all GCs. So I find it gratifying that this conversation as very much avoided that.

That’s about all I wanted to say about it.

 

[Peter_J]

It wasn’t quite that simple. The election of Cyril was fraught with irregularities…

I think that’s one of the big reasons that moderns Melkites are so willing to consider the possibility of the AOC patriarch’s legitimacy.