Titular Bishops

Titular Bishops are bishops with no stated charge, but who are bishops inpartibus infidelium. The custom arose in the 12th and 13th centuries in the assigning of bishops to those parts which, though once Christianized, had at length fallen under Saracen dominion. The Church of Rome adopts the same custom, and has bishops of Tarsus, Ephesus, Aleppo, etc. This. Church has 229 titulars. The primitive Church made it a law that no one should be ordained at large, but should have a specific charge. "This rule concerned bishops as well as the inferior clergy; for the nullatenenses of later ages, as Panormita calls titular and utopian bishops, were rarely known in the primitive Church."