Suffragan bishop

A suffragan bishop is a bishop consecrated to assist a diocesan bishop in the government of his diocese, taking his title from a town within or associated with that diocese, but exercising a delegated ministry rather than ruling a diocese — a "see" — of his own. In the Church of England the office derives its legal existence from the Suffragan Bishops Act 1534, and suffragan bishops stand in the Apostolic Succession of bishops in exactly the same way as diocesan bishops do.

The background and the Act of 1534

Before the English Reformation, English diocesan bishops were commonly assisted by bishops who had been consecrated to defunct sees in territories under Muslim rule, known as sees in partibus infidelium. The breach with Rome made that supply of assistants impossible, and Parliament responded with the Suffragan Bishops Act 1534 (26 Hen. 8 c. 14). The Act named twenty-six towns — among them Thetford, Ipswich, Colchester, Dover, Nottingham, Bedford, Leicester, Gloucester, Bristol, and Cambridge — which were "to be taken and accepted for Sees of Bishops Suffragans" in the realm. It provided that an archbishop or bishop who wished for a suffragan would name two "honest and discreet spiritual persons" for his diocese and present their names to the Crown, which would choose one of the two and give him the title of bishop of one of the named sees. In this sense the Act's number "two" concerns the two names presented to the sovereign, not two suffragans serving in a single diocese; the normal pattern envisaged by the Act is one suffragan assisting a given diocesan bishop.

The first bishops consecrated under the Act were Thomas Manning, bishop of Ipswich, and John Salisbury, bishop of Thetford, both consecrated on 19 March 1536. Suffragans were appointed with some regularity through the Tudor period, but the stream then dried up: the last Tudor suffragan in post, John Sterne, bishop of Colchester, died in 1607/8, and no more suffragan bishops were appointed for over two hundred and fifty years.

Revival

The dormant Act was revived in 1870, when growing dioceses again needed assistance that new dioceses alone could not supply. Henry Mackenzie was consecrated bishop of Nottingham on 2 February 1870, as suffragan to the bishop of Lincoln; a few weeks later Edward Parry was consecrated bishop of Dover on 25 March 1870 as suffragan in the diocese of Canterbury, assisting the Archbishop of Canterbury. At that date suffragan titles were still confined to the twenty-six towns named in the Act of 1534; the Suffragans Nomination Act 1888 removed that restriction by allowing new suffragan sees to be added to the list. The appointment of suffragan bishops soon became common and has remained so ever since.

Modern practice

In modern Church of England practice, suffragan bishops are appointed by the Crown under the framework of the 1534 Act, on the initiative of the diocesan bishop, whose involvement in the nomination remains central. The old statutory requirement that two names be presented to the Crown, of whom the sovereign chose one, survived for centuries by convention — the first-named candidate was invariably appointed — until legislation in the twenty-first century simplified the process to the presentation of a single name.

In the largest dioceses, suffragans may be given formal responsibility for a defined geographical area within the diocese, in which case they are often known as area bishops; under such area schemes, episcopal ministry is shared between the diocesan bishop and his suffragans while the diocese itself remains one. Elsewhere a suffragan may hold a particular portfolio across the whole diocese, or serve as the bishop's deputy in specific areas such as ordination, education, or mission. Throughout the wider Anglican Communion, the term suffragan bishop is used for assisting bishops in a similar sense, though the legal arrangements for their appointment vary from province to province.

References

• Suffragan Bishops Act 1534 (26 Hen. 8 c. 14).
• Gerald Bray (ed.), Documents of the English Reformation, James Clarke, 1994.
• Henry Gee and W. J. Hardy (eds.), Documents Illustrative of English Church History, Macmillan, 1896.