hierarchate

From hierarch +‎ -ate (forms nouns denoting rank or office, an associated body of people).

hierarchate (plural hierarchates)

1. Synonym of hierarchy.
   • 1932, William Faulkner, chapter 20, in Light in August, [New York, N.Y.]: Harrison Smith & Robert Haas, →OCLC; republished London: Chatto & Windus, 1933, →OCLC, page 456:

     At first, when the demagoguery, the abasement, the small lying had its reverberation in other small lies and ultimate threats in the form of requests and suggestions among the hierarchate of the Church and he received the call to Jefferson, he forgot how he had got it for the time.