Taktika

TAKTIKA. - The expression, deriving from the word taxis (= ordo), was applied to the lists of civil and ecclesiastical dignities (Notitiae dignitatum), among which the list written at the end of the 4th century is famous: Notitia dignitatum omnium tam civilium quam militarium, with its two parts (Oriens-Occidens) in Seeck's edition (Berlin 1876). Today, however, the term is used rather for lists of Byzantine ecclesiastical geography, of which several exist from different centuries.

Very famous are the T. of Leo VI (end of the 9th century), the Nea T. of Constantine Porphyrogenitus (10th century), the Ecthesis of Andronicus Palaiologos (14th century); but other lists also exist: that of Epiphanius (4th century), of George of Cyprus (7th century), of Nilus Doxopatres (12th century). The schema of the Byzantine lists ordinarily has four parts: 1) patriarchs; 2) metropolitans; 3) archbishops (autocephalous); 4) bishops; these parts do not contain the names of the prelates, but only their sees. Very important for completing and authenticating those lists are the subscriptions of the synodals in the ecumenical councils. Also the liturgical sources (diptyca, synodika), the diplomatic sources (imperial and ecclesiastical), the literary sources and the epigraphic ones are not to be neglected for establishing exact lists. The Assumptionist Fathers have begun the edition of a Corpus notitiarum episcopatum to carry out a project of the late Gerland.

Giorgio Hofmann