1.Dominion or authority in sacred things.
2.A body of officials disposed organically in ranks and orders each subordinate to the one above it; a body of ecclesiastical rulers.
3.A form of government administered in the church by patriarchs, metropolitans, archbishops, bishops, and, in an inferior degree, by priests.
4.A rank or order of holy beings. "Standards and gonfalons... for distinction serve Of hierarchies, of orders, and degrees."
5.(Math., Logic, Computers) Any group of objects ranked so that every one but the topmost is subordinate to a specified one above it; also, the entire set of ordering relations between such objects. The ordering relation between each object and the one above is called a hierarchical relation. Note: Classification schemes, as in biology, usually form hierarchies.
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