Concurrent with these changes arose the custom, first derived from the Greeks, of holding provincial councils. The bishops living in a single province met in council to confer upon mattes of common interest to their churches. At first the attending bishops looked upon themselves as merely the representatives of their respective churches, without further jurisdiction than to discuss and come to agreement on matters of common concern. But gradually they usurped the power to order by decree where at first they were wont to advise or entreat. Nor was it long ere the decrees of these provincial councils were forced upon the respective churches as laws to be implicitly obeyed. There was some resistance to this from the lower clergy, but it was quickly overcome by the activity and ambition of the bishops, who were only too glad to escape the restraints imposed upon their movements by the doctrine of common consent. It is said also that as many changes occurred among the lower order of the clergy as among the bishops. The elders and deacons aping the conduct of their file leaders became too proud to attend to the humble duties of their offices, and hence a number of other officers were added to the church--subdeacons, acolythi, ostiarii, lectors, exorcists and copiatae [13]--while the elders and deacons spent much of their time in indolence and pleasure. If the ambition of rival bishops distracted the church in the second and third centuries, much more did ambitious prelates--patriarchs and metropolitans--of the fourth and fifth centuries disturb its tranquility. They contended about the limits of their respective jurisdiction with all the bitterness of temporal kings seeking an enlargement of their dominions. They made conquests and reprisals upon each other in much the same spirit, and at times were not above resorting to violence to attain their ends. It soon happened that the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem sank below their fellow patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople in wealth and dignity. The prelates of these latter cities fiercely contended for the title of universal bishop; and in that contest the bishop of Constantinople was not always unsuccessful.