Properly, a hierarchy (from the Greek hieros, sacred, and arche, government), is a sacred government, sometimes the church, sometimes the rule which the ecclesiastical governing body exercised as at once priests and civil magistrates. In the former sense the hierarchy arose with the establishment of the Christian church as an independent society. In the middle ages the papal hierarchy gathered great strength, and the pope became a spiritual monarch, ruling western Christendom with power but feebly limited by princes and councils, A reactionary movement began in the 14th century, and the general tendency of subsequent events has always been to make the civil and hierarchical power more and more independent of each other. The term hierarchy as used to denote tlie governing and ministering body in the church, according to its several gradations, can strictly be applied only to those churches which are ruled by bishops, such as the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church, which also holds the theory of a hierarchical gradation of rank and authority. Both these churches comprise the three orders of bishops, priests, and deacons.
In popular parlance, a hierarchy is a body of people, animals, or things ranked in grades, orders, or classes one above the other, this ranking usually being with respect to authority or dominance, thus in a tribe or pack of animals with a hierarchy, the pack leader is in charge, with other dominant individuals wielding authority over lesser or younger individuals. Research Hierarchy
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Research Hierarchy
