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cathedral

Christian church, which is seat of a bishop

Also known as cathedrals · Cathedral Church

Instance of: type of building
Subclass of: church building

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

A cathedral is a church that contains the cathedra of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually specific to those Christian denominations with an episcopal hierarchy, such as the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and some Lutheran churches. Church buildings embodying the functions of a cathedral first appeared in Italy, Gaul, Spain, and North Africa in the 4th century, but cathedrals did not become universal within the Western Catholic Church until the 12th century, by which time they had developed architectural forms, institutional structures, and legal identities distinct from parish churches, monastic churches, and episcopal residences. The cathedral is more important in the hierarchy than the church because it is from the cathedral that the bishop governs the area under their administrative authority.

Overview

All data

69 statements · 17% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

On other databases

52 identifiers linking cathedral across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

17%

externally sourced

Source last edited October 11, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). cathedral (Q2977). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/cathedral-Q2977