the capital or principal city of a country or province.

The term metropolis is also applied to archiepiscopal churches, and sometimes to the principal or mother-church of a city. The Roman empire having been divided into 13 dioceses and 120 provinces, each diocese and each province had its metropolis, or capital city, where the proconsul had his residence. To this civil division, the ecclesiastical was afterwards adapted, and the bishop of the capital city had the direction of affairs, and the preeminence over all the bishops of the province. His residence in the metropolis gave him the title of metropolitan. This erection of metropolitans is referred to the end of the third century, and was confirmed by the council of Nice. A metropolitan has the privilege of ordaining his suffragans; and appeals from sentences passed by the suffragans are preferred to the metropolitan.