HIERARCHY (from Gk. hieros, "sacred," and archia, " rule "): The rule of sacred things; then a body of rulers organized for such rule. The Ro man Church probably presents the most perfect example of a hierarchy organized monarchically, the whole power centering in the pope, and most minutely graded, both with respect to orders bishops, priests, deacons (the ordines juris divini), and subdeacons, acolytes, exorcists, lectors, door keepers, etc. (the ordines juris ecclesiastici), and with respect to jurisdiction-archbishops, metro politans, exarchs, patriarchs, deans, vicars, cardi nals, legates, etc. In the Greek Church the hier archical organization is oligarchical: above the several patriarchs there is no pope. In the Evan gelical Churches, where the State rules the Church, more or less of the hierarchical apparatus may be retained, as in the Church of England and the Prus sian Church; while, when the Church is established on the principle of universal priesthood, and the con gregation rules itself, as in the American churches and many free churches in Europe, all hierarchy disappears. See Church; Clergy; Jurisdiction, Ecclesiastical; Orders, Holy.

HIEROCLES: A persecutor and literary oppo nent of the early Christians; d. not before 306. He is probably the Sossianus Hierocles of an inscription from Palmyra between Mar. 1, 293, and May 1; 305, the governor of the province to which Palmyra then belonged. The responsibility for the out break of the persecution of Diocletian is placed chiefly upon him by Lactantius (De morte persecu torum, xvi. 4; De divinis institutionibus, V., ii. 12). As governor of Bithynia, he was at Nicomedia, the very center of the persecution and the place where it first broke out, when the church there was des troyed on Feb. 23, 303, and the edict against the Christians promulgated the next day. He was suc ceeded in the governorship of Bithynia by Priscil lianus, and became prefect of all Egypt. Here also he persecuted the Christians, even confining Chris tian women and virgins dedicated to the ascetic life in houses of debauchery. The Christian tFde sius went to Alexandria, accused him to his face of overstepping the provisions of the law, and struck him, but was tortured and thrown into the sea. Hierocles was one of the two literary antagonists of the Christians whom Laetantius describes (De institutionibus, V., ii. 2) as coming forward in the spring of 303. In the few extant fragments of his work he appears as the upholder of a philosophic monotheism, which, however, did not exclude a polytheistic cult. Its line of attack is dependent mainly upon Porphyry, especially in the attempt to point out inconsistencies in the Scriptures. He carries out in greater detail Porphyry's suggestion of a comparison between Christ and Apollonius of Tyana, in favor of the latter. With Hierocles the Neoplatonic criticism, which had before been merely theoretical, became practical and gained an influence on the government.

(K. J. Neumann.)

Bibliography: The tract of Eusebius, Contra Hierodem, ad. Gaisford, was published Oxford, 1852. 1Y. Cave,

Scriptorum eccleaiasticorum hist. literaria, i. 131, ii. 90, London, 1688; C. Fleury, Hist. ecdkaiaatique, Il., viii. 30, 36 vols., Paris, 1704-38; Tillemont, Mémoires, xiii. 333; A. J. Mason, The Persecution of Diocletian, pp. 58-108, Cambridge, 1876; Neander, Christian Church, i. 173-174; DCB, iii. 26-27; KL, v. 2012-13.