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In ancient Greece, the term oecumene (British English) or ecumene (American English; ) denoted the known, inhabited, or habitable world. In Greek antiquity, it referred to the portions of the world known to Hellenic geographers, subdivided into three continents: Africa, Europe, and Asia. Under the Roman Empire, it came to refer to civilization itself, as well as the secular and religious imperial administration.
In present usage, it is most often used in the context of "Ecumenism" and describes the Christian Church as a unified whole, or the unified modern world civilization. It is also used in cartography to describe a type of world map ( mappa mundi) used in late antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Ptolemy (83–161) calculated the Earth's surface in his Geography and described the inhabited portion as spanning 180 degrees of longitude, from the Fortunate Isles in the west to Serica (northern China) in the east and about 80 degrees of latitude, from Thule in the north to anti-Meroë and Macrobia below the equator. At its widest possible extent, the ancient ecumene thus stretched from northern Europe to equatorial Africa, and from the Atlantic Ocean to western China.
During the Middle Ages, this picture of the world was widened to accommodate Scandinavia, the North Atlantic, East Asia, and eventually sub-equatorial Africa. Ptolemy and other ancient geographers were well aware that they had a limited view of the ecumene, and that their knowledge extended to only a quarter of the globe.
These geographers acknowledged the existence of Terra incognita, 'unknown lands', within Africa, Europe and Asia. A belief in global symmetry led many Greco-Roman geographers to posit other continents elsewhere on the globe, which existed in balance with the ecumene: Perioeci ( 'beside the ecumene'), Antoeci ('opposite the ecumene') and the Antipodes ('opposite the feet').
The word was adopted within Christianity after Constantine the Great's assembly of a synod of from all over the world at the First Council of Nicaea in 325.
By that time, the Greek term had come to refer more specifically to the civilized world and then simply the Roman Empire. This usage continued after the Diocletian Reforms and the Byzantine emperors used it to refer to their imperial administration. Constantinople was the "Ecumenical City" and, after 586, the Patriarch of Constantinople was known as the "Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople".
Pope Gregory I objected to the adoption of this style by John IV of Constantinople, as it implied a universal jurisdiction he believed illegal to anyone. His Fifth Epistle berates John for having "attempted to seize upon a new name, whereby the hearts of all your brethren might have come to take offence", despite the title having been granted at the emperor Maurice's behest.
The name continues to be borne by the Greek Orthodox patriarchs, although with the more restricted sense that they are the bishops of the former imperial capital.
Peter Sloterdijk uses the terms "First Ecumene" and "Second Ecumene" in his book In the World Interior of Capital (2014, original German: Im Weltinnenraum des Kapitals, 2005). (2013). 9780745647692, Polity Press. ISBN 9780745647692 Sloterdijk takes these terms directly from the work of Eric Voegelin, specifically from Order and History vol. 4, The Ecumenic Age (1974), (2025). 9780826213013, Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 9780826213013 which he quotes.
Science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin derived the term Ekumen in her Hainish Cycle from this term.
The term "ecumene" can differ depending on the viewpoint from which it is perceived: for example, the Ancient Babylonians and the Ancient Greeks would each have known a different area of the world (though their worlds may have overlapped).
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