The Ecclesiarchy is the great state church of the Imperium, the institution that has raised the Emperor of Mankind from saviour and statesman into an object of worship for untold trillions. Though the Emperor Himself once forbade such veneration, in the long millennia since His interment upon the Golden Throne the faith has grown into the single most powerful unifying force in human space, its cathedrals rising on every compliant world and its litanies echoing from the void-stations to the deepest hive.
At the heart of the Ecclesiarchy stands the Imperial Creed, the sprawling body of dogma that proclaims the God-Emperor the one true deity and casts all other belief as heresy. Its preachers, the frateris multitude of confessors, missionaries, and priests, carry this gospel to the furthest edges of the Imperium, kindling in the masses a devotion so fierce it can raise crusades or ignite pogroms. Faith is the church's tithe, and it is gathered with the same relentlessness as any tax of grain or ore.
The church wields power beyond mere sermon. Its cardinals govern vast dioceses of worlds, its shrine-planets draw pilgrims by the billion, and its zeal has repeatedly reshaped the course of Imperial history, not always for the better. The Age of Apostasy, when a tyrant-cardinal seized the reins of the faith, remains a grim warning of what unchecked religion can unleash.
Forbidden by ancient law from keeping men under arms, the Ecclesiarchy channels its martial devotion instead through the Adepta Sororitas, the Sisters of Battle whose flamers and faith cleanse the impure. The origins and doctrine of this colossal faith are explored in the account of the Ecclesiarchy, and its role among the Imperium's institutions is summarised in the glossary of the Ecclesiarchy.
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