George the Hagiorite into a vibrant center of Georgian Orthodox culture. At some point between 1052 and 1057, George left his fellow monk George of Oltisi in charge of the Iviron monastery, and set off to Antioch to appear before the Patriarch to defend his brethren, accused by a group of the Greek clerics of heresy. The dispute quickly evolved around the canonical legality of the autocephaly of the Georgian Orthodox church, which had originally operated within the framework of the see of Antioch, but had been becoming increasingly independent since the 6th century. In defense of the Georgian autocephaly, George was referring
Hierarchy of the Catholic Church serves by default as the ecclesiastical court of appeal for suffragans (court of second instance), and the metropolitan has the option of judging those appeals personally. Eastern metropolitans in patriarchal or major archiepiscopal churches have a level of authority similar to that of Latin metropolitans, subject to the specific laws and customs of their "sui iuris" church. Eastern metropolitans who head a metropolitan "sui iuris" church have much greater authority within their church, although it is less than that of a major archbishop or patriarch. All metropolitans have the title of Archbishop, and the metropolitan see is usually referred to