Information about History Of The Eastern Orthodox Church
Eastern Orthodox Churches trace their roots back to the Apostles and Jesus Christ. Eastern Orthodoxy reached its golden age during the high point of the Byzantine Empire and then continued to flourish in Russia after the fall of Constantinople. Numerous autocephalous churches were established in Eastern Europe and Slavic areas.
Four stages of development can be distinguished in the history of the Eastern Orthodox Churches. The first three centuries, through the age of Constantine the Great constitute the apostolic and ancient period. The medieval period comprises almost ten centuries from the death of Constantine to the fall of Constantinople. The age of captivity (under Islam) starts, roughly, for the Greek and Balkin communities in the fifteenth century with the fall of Constantinople and ends about the year 1830 which marks Greek and Balkin independence from the Ottoman Empire. The last stage is the modern period.
The Orthodox churches with the largest number of adherents in modern times are the Russian and the Romanian Orthodox churches. The most ancient of the Orthodox churches of today are the Churches of Constantinople, Alexandria (which includes all of Africa), Georgia, Antioch, and Jerusalem.[1][2] [3]
Christianity first spread in the predominantly Greek-speaking eastern half of the Roman Empire. Paul and the Apostles traveled extensively throughout the Empire, establishing communities in major cities and regions, with the first communities appearing in Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and then the two political centres of Rome and Greece and what became Byzantium. Orthodoxy believes in the Apostolic Succession that was established by the Apostles in the New Testament; this played a key role in the communities' view of itself as the preserver of the original Christian tradition. Historically the word church did not mean building or housing structure (which would actually be the word Basilica) but meant community or gathering of like peoples (see Ecclesia).
The original church community of the East before the schisms, is the Greek communities founded by St Paul and later Byzantine churches or communities, the Coptic (or Egyptian) churches founded by St Mark (including the Ethiopian of Africa or Abyssinia), the Syrian (or Assyrian) and Antiochian churches founded by St Peter, Armenian, Georgian and Russian founded by St Andrew. By tradition St Jude and St Bartholomew as well as the churches of Israel founded by St James.[4] The church of Rome by tradition was founded by both St Peter and St Paul.
Systematic persecution of the early Christian church caused it to be an underground movement. The first above-ground churches were built in Armenia (see Echmiadzin). Armenia was the first country to legalize Christianity around 301 AD and also embrace it as the state religion. Of the underground churches that existed before legalization, some are recorded to have existed as the catacombs in Europe, Rome, Kerch and also in the underground cities of Anatolia and (see Cave monastery). Today the gates which Paul escaped through (named Bab Kisan), mentioned in Corthinians has been converted to a church in Paul's memory. This is a structure still standing that dates to the time of the Apostles.
The earliest forms of Christianity were Greek as contemporary ecclesiastical historian Henry Hart Milman writes: "For some considerable (it cannot but be an undefinable) part of three first centuries, the Church of Rome, and most, if not all the Churches of the West, were, if we may so speak, Greek religious colonies. Their language was Greek, their organization Greek, their writers Greek, their scriptures Greek; and many vestiges and traditions show that their ritual, their Liturgy, was Greek."[6]
The early Christians had no way to have a copy of the works that later became the canon and other church works accepted but not canonized (see Church Fathers and Patristics). Much of the original church liturgical services functioned as a means of learning these works. Orthodox Church services today continue to serve this educational function. The issue of collecting the various works of the eastern churches and compiling them into a canon, each being confirmed as authentic text was a long protracted process. Much of this process was motivated by a need to address various heresies. In many instances, heretical groups had themselves begun compiling and disseminating text that they used to validate their positions, positions that were not consistent with the text, history and traditions of the Orthodox faith.
Much of the official organizing of the ecclesiastical structure, clarifying true from false teachings was done by the bishops of the church. Their works are referred to as Patristics. This tradition of clarification can be seen as established in the saints of the Orthodox church referred to as the Apostolic Fathers, bishops themselves established by Apostolic succession. This also continued into the age when the practice of the religion of Christianity became legal (see the Ecumenical Councils).
Systematic Roman persecution of Christians stopped for a time in 313 when Emperor Constantine the Great proclaimed the Edict of Milan. Systematic persecutions under Roman Paganism did however resurface later, though temporarly, under Emperor Julian the Apostate. From that time forward, the Byzantine Emperor exerted various degrees of influence over the church (see Caesaropapism). This included the calling of the Ecumenical Councils to resolve disputes and establish church dogma on which the entire church would agree. Thus defining what it means to be a Christian in a universal or broad sense of the word the Greek word for universal being katholikós or catholic.
Sometimes Patriarchs (often of Constantinople) were deposed by the emperor; at one point emperors sided with the iconoclasts in the eighth and ninth centuries.
In the 530s the second Church of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) was built in Constantinople under emperor Justinian I. The first church was destroyed during the Nika riots. The second Hagia Sophia would become the center of the ecclesiastical community for the rulers of the Eastern Empire of Roman or Byzantium.
Several doctrinal disputes from the 4th century onwards led to the calling of ecumenical councils. These ecumenical councils with their doctrinal formulations are pivotal in the history of Christianity in general and to the history of the Eastern Orthodox Church in particular. Specifically, these assemblies were responsible for the formulation of Christian doctrine. As such, they constitute a permanent standard for an Orthodox understanding of the Trinity, the persons of Christ, the incarnation.[10] The tradition of councils within the church started with the council of Jerusalem but this council was not an ecumenical council by tradition possibly because it was not convened in order to arrive at a catholic or universal understanding of what Christianity is. Instead it was convened to address the Abrahamic tradition of circumcision and its relation to converted Gentiles (Acts 15). Although its decisions are accepted by all Christians[11] and later definions of an ecumenical council appear to conform to this sole biblical Council, no Christian church includes it in their number.
Seven ecumenical councils were held between 325 (the First Council of Nicaea) and 787 (the Second Council of Nicaea), which the Orthodox recognize as the definitive interpretation of Christian dogma.
The Eastern Orthodox Church does not recognize as dogma any ecumenical councils other than these seven.[12] Orthodox thinking differs on whether the Fourth and Fifth Councils of Constantinople were properly Ecumenical Councils, but the majority view is that they were merely influential rather than dogmatic and therefore not binding.
The first ecumenical council was convened to address the teachings of Arius, an Egyptian presbyter from Alexandra who taught that Jesus Christ was divine and was sent to earth for the salvation of mankind but that Jesus Christ was not equal to the Father (infinite, primordial origin) and to the Holy Spirit (giver of life). Under Arianism, Christ was instead not consubstantial with God the Father. [13] Since both the Father and the Son under Arius where made of "like" essence (see homoiousia) but not of the same essence (see homoousia).[14] Ousia or essence, in Eastern Christianity, is the aspect of God that is completely incomprehensible to mankind and human perception. It is all that subsists by itself and which has not its being in another.[15] God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit all being uncreated.[16]
According to the teaching of Arius, the preexistent Logos and thus the incarnate Jesus Christ was a created being, of a distinct, though similar, essence or substance to the Creator; his opponents argued that this would make Jesus less than God, and that this was heretical.[17] Much of the distinction between the differing factions was over the phrasing that Christ expressed in the New Testament to express submission to God the Father.[18] The theological term for this submission is kenosis.[19] This Ecumenical council declared that Jesus Christ was a distinct being of God in existence or reality (hypostasis), which the Latin fathers translated as persona. Jesus was God in essence or nature (ousia), the Latin fathers translated as substantia.
It should be noted that when Emperor Constantine I was baptised, the baptism was performed by an Arian bishop and relative, Eusebius of Nicomedia. Also the charges of Christian corruption by Constantine (see the Constantinian shift) ignore the fact that Constantine deposed Athanasius of Alexandria and later restored Arius, who had been branded a heresiarch by the Nicene Council. [20][21][22][23][24].
Constantine I was succeeded by two Arian Emperors Constantius II and Valens and a Pagan Emperor in Julian the Apostate. Even after Constantine I, Orthodox Christians remained persecuted but to a much lesser degree than when Christianity was an illegal community (see Persecution of early Christians by the Romans and Basil of Ancyra). It was not until Emperor Gratian that a Orthodox Emperor was again put on the throne (Jovian was only Emperor for 6 months). Emperor Gratian established the Spaniard Theodosius as his co-emperor in Byzantium. It was not until the co-reigns of Gratian and Theodosius that Arianism was effectively wiped out among the ruling class and elite of the Eastern Empire. Theodosius' wife St Flacilla was instrumental in his campaign to end Arianism.
However, much of southeastern Europe and central Europe, including many of the Goths and Vandals respectively, had embraced Arianism, which led to Arianism being a religious factor in various wars in the Roman Empire.[25] The Goths and Vandals later conquered the Western Roman Empire, including Italy, parts of Gaul, Hispania, and parts of North Africa. In the west, organized Arianism coexisted with Catholicism until the Byzantine reconquest in North Africa, the Council of Toledo in Hispania, and the 7th Century in Italy.
Nestorian churches are Eastern Christian churches that keep the faith of only the first two ecumenical councils, i.e., the First Council of Nicaea and the First Council of Constantinople. "Nestorian" is an outsider's term for a tradition that predated the influence of Nestorius. Thus, "Assyrian Church of the East" is a more neutral term.
The Nestorian Schism was the first major schism of the Eastern Churches and was addressed with the Third Ecumenical Council held in Ephesus in 431. This council established the tradition of Mary the mother of Jesus being referred to as Theotokos. Nestorianism taught that is was proper to call Mary the Christotokos because as Nestorian had taught Mary only gave birth to Jesus Christ the person not Jesus Christ as God. Cyril of Alexandria charged that this teaching of Nestorius implied that there had been in fact two Jesus Christs; one Christ was a man born of the virgin Mary and the other was divine and not born but also Jesus Christ.
Cyril of Alexandria regarded the embodiment of God in the person of Jesus Christ to be so mystically powerful that it spread out from the body of the God-man into the rest of the race, to reconstitute human nature into a graced and deified condition of the saints (Jesus Christ as the new Adam), one that promised immortality and transfiguration to believers (see theosis). Nestorius, on the other hand, saw the incarnation as primarily a moral and ethical example to the faithful, to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Cyril repeatedly stressed the simple idea that it was God who walked the streets of Nazareth (hence Mary was Theotokos or Mother of God), and God who had appeared in a transfigured humanity (see the theophany). Nestorius spoke of the distinct 'Jesus the Man' and 'the divine Logos' in ways that Cyril thought were too dichotomous, widening the ontological gap between man and God in a way that would annihilate the person (hypostasis) of Christ a position termed dyophysite.[26]
Ecumenism between the Assyrian church and the Roman Catholic church is an on-going process. Most recently, on November 11, 1994, an historic meeting of Mar Dinkha IV and Roman Catholic Pope John Paul II took place in the Vatican and a Common Christological Declaration was signed. One side effect of this meeting was that the Assyrian Church's relationship to the Chaldean Catholic Church was improved.
In September 2006, Mar Dinkha IV paid a historic visit to Northern Iraq to give oversight to the churches there and to encourage the governor of the Kurdish region to open a Christian school as well as a library in Arbil.
Eastern Orthodoxy strives to keep the faith of the seven Ecumenical Councils. In contrast, the term "Oriental Orthodoxy" refers to the churches of Eastern Christian traditions that keep the faith of only the first three ecumenical councils — the First Council of Nicaea, the First Council of Constantinople and the Council of Ephesus — and rejected the dogmatic definitions of the Council of Chalcedon. Those who disagreed with the Council of Chalcedon are sometimes called "Oriental Orthodox" to distinguish them from the Eastern Orthodox, who accepted the Council of Chalcedon. Oriental Orthodox are also sometimes referred to as "monophysites", "non-Chalcedonians", or "anti-Chalcedonians", although today the Oriental Orthodox Church denies that it is monophysite and prefers the term "miaphysite", to denote the "joined" nature of Jesus. The council of Chalcedonia was held to clarify that the opposite of Nestorian's heresy was not established. Nestorianism did not necessarily oppose the divinity of Christ, it did assert that the divinity of Christ was separate from the person born of Mary. In the case of the council of Chalcedon Jesus Christ's existence (one hypostasis) was established to have both a human and a divine will. The difference however was that the Eastern Orthodox insisted that Christ be expressed as having both human and divine natures (physis) that are separate in his single person, from one another and did not mix are not confused and are in one existence or reality (hypostasis) called the hypostatic union. The dogma chosen by the Oriental Orthodox was interpreted to express that Jesus Christ had two natures (both human and divine) that were mixed into a one single nature (physis). Leading to an argument that the human will of Christ was not of freewill.[27]
The Church in Egypt or the Coptic church and the (Patriarchate of Alexandria) split into two groups following the Council of Chalcedon (451). Eventually this led to each group (Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox) having its own Patriarch (Pope) established in Alexandria. Those that remained in communion with the other patriarchs (those who accepted the Council of Chalcedon) were called "Melkites" (the king's men, because Constantinople was the city of the emperors) [not to be confused with the Melkite Catholics of Antioch], and are today known as the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria, currently led by Patriarch Theodore II. Those who disagreed with the findings of the Council of Chalcedon are today known as the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. This included the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Armenian Orthodox church. There was a similar split in Syria (Patriarchate of Antioch) into the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch and the Syriac Orthodox Church.
Both the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches formally believe themselves to be the continuation of the true church and the other to have fallen into schism, although in the past 20 years much work had been done toward ecumenism or reconciliation between the Oriental and Eastern Orthodox churches.[28]
Resolved under the Seventh Ecumenical Council, Iconoclasm was a movement within the Eastern Christian Byzantine church to establish that the Christian culture of portraits (see icon) of the family of Christ and subsequent Christians and biblical scenes were not of a Christian origin and therefore heretical[29]. There were two periods of Iconoclasm 730-787 and 813-843. This movement itself was later defined as heretical under the Seventh Ecumenical council. The group destroyed much of the Christian churches' art history, which is needed in addressing the traditional interruptions of the Christian faith and the artistic works that in the early church were devoted to Jesus Christ or God. Many Glorious works were destroyed during this period.[30] Two prototypes of icons would be the Christ Pantocrator and the Icon of the Hodegetria. In the West the tradition of icons have been seen as the veneration of "graven images" or against "no graven images" as noted in Exodus 20:4. From the Orthodox point of view graven then would be engraved or carved. Thus this restriction would include many of the ornaments that Moses was commanded to create in the passages right after the commandment was given i.e. the carving of cherubim Exodus 26:1. The commandment as understood by such out of context interpretation would mean "no carved images". This would include the cross and other holy artifacts. The commandment in the East is understand that the people of God are not to create idols and then worship them. It is "right worship" to worship which is of God, which is Holy and that alone.[31]
Under church tradition the practice of Hesychasm has it beginnings in the bible, Matthew 6:6 and the Philokalia.
About the year 1337 Hesychasm attracted the attention of a learned member of the Orthodox Church, Barlaam, a Calabrian monk who at that time held the office of abbot in the Monastery of St Saviour's in Constantinople and who visited Mount Athos. There, Barlaam encountered Hesychasts and heard descriptions of their practices, also reading the writings of the teacher in Hesychasm of St Gregory Palamas, himself an Athonite monk. Hesychasm is a form of constant purposeful prayer or experiential prayer, explicitly referred to as contemplation. It is to focus ones mind on God and pray to God uncessingly.
Trained in Western Scholastic theology, Barlaam was scandalized by Hesychasm and began to campaign against it. As a teacher of theology in the Western Scholastic mode, Barlaam propounded a more intellectual and propositional approach to the knowledge of God than the Hesychasts taught. In particular, Barlaam took exception to, as heretical and blasphemous, the doctrine entertained by the Hesychasts as to the nature of the uncreated light, the experience of which was said to be the goal of Hesychast practice. It was maintained by the Hesychasts to be of divine origin and to be identical to that light which had been manifested to Jesus' disciples on Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration. Barlaam held this concept to be polytheistic, inasmuch as it postulated two eternal substances, a visible and an invisible God.
On the Hesychast side, the controversy was taken up by Antonite St Gregory Palamas, afterwards Archbishop of Thessalonica, who was asked by his fellow monks on Mt Athos to defend Hesychasm from the Barlaam's attacks. St Gregory was well-educated in Greek philosophy and thus able to defend Hesychasm using Western precepts. In the 1340s, he defended Hesychasm at three different synods in Constantinople, and also wrote a number of works in its defense.
In 1341 the dispute came before a synod held at Constantinople and was presided over by the Emperor Andronicus; the synod, taking into account the regard in which the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius were held, condemned Barlaam, who recanted and returned to Calabria, afterwards becoming a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church. Three other synods on the subject were held, at the second of which the followers of Barlaam gained a brief victory. But in 1351 at a synod under the presidency of the Emperor John VI Cantacuzenus, Hesychast doctrine was established as the doctrine of the Orthodox Church.
One of Barlaam's friends, Gregory Akindynos, who originally was also a friend of Gregory's, later took up the controversy. But in 1351 at a synod under the presidency of the Emperor John VI Cantacuzenus, Hesychast doctrine was established as the doctrine of the Greek Orthodox Church. Another opponent of Palamism was Manuel Kalekas who sought to reconcile the Eastern and Western Churches. Following the decision of 1351, there was strong repression against anti-Palamist thinkers. Kalekas reports on this repression as late as 1397, and for theologians in disagreement with Palamas, there was ultimately no choice but to emigrate and convert to Catholicism, a path taken by Kalekas as well as Demetrios Kydones and Ioannes Kypariossiotes. This exodus of highly educated Greek scholars, later re-inforced by refugees following the Fall of Constantinople of 1453, had a significant influence on the first generation (that of Petrarca and Boccaccio) of the incipient Italian Renaissance.
Up to this day, the Roman Catholic Church has never fully accepted Hesychasm, especially the distinction between the energies or operations of God and the essence of God, and the notion that those energies or operations of God are uncreated [32]. In Roman Catholic theology as it has developed since the Scholastic period, the essence of God can be known, but only in the next life; the grace of God is always created; and the essence of God is pure act, so that there can be no distinction between the energies or operations and the essence of God (see, e.g., the Summa Theologiae of St Thomas Aquinas). [33].
Contemporary historians Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos and Nicephorus Gregoras deal very copiously with this subject, taking the Hesychast and Barlaamite sides respectively. The Orthodox perspective is one that states that there is scientific knowledge based on demonstration and spiritual knowledge based on demonstration. That the two understandings must remain separate in order to have a proper understanding of both in order to reject dualism. The Eastern appoach to understand God and spiritual matters as one that should not be approached with a Scholastic or dialectical method.[34]
Modern Ecumenism under such organizations as the World Council of Churches or WCC is seen as a movement that at its core, has the reversal of the Early church councils as its intention. Rather than seeking God as truth and submitting to God as truth the modern movement appears to place unity as the highest priority, at the expense of truth. [35][36][37]
The events leading to schism were not exclusively theological in nature. Cultural, political, and linguistic differences were often mixed with the theological. Any narrative of the schism which emphasizes one at the expense of the other will be fragmentary. Unlike the Copts or Armenians who broke from the Church in the fifth century and established ethnic churches at the cost of their universality and catholicity, the eastern and western parts of the Church remained loyal to the faith and authority of the seven ecumenical councils. They were united, by virtue of their common faith and tradition, in one Church.
Nonetheless, the transfer of the Roman capital to Constantinople inevitably brought mistrust, rivalry, and even jealousy to the relations of the two great sees, Rome and Constantinople. It was easy for Rome to be jealous of Constantinople at a time when it was rapidly losing its political prominence. In fact, Rome refused to recognize the conciliar legislation which promoted Constantinople to second rank. But the estrangement was also helped along by the German invasions in the West, which effectively weakened contacts. The rise of Islam with its conquest of most of the Mediterranean coastline (not to mention the arrival of the pagan Slavs in the Balkans at the same time) further intensified this separation by driving a physical wedge between the two worlds. The once homogeneous unified world of the Mediterranean was fast vanishing. Communication between the Greek East and the Latin West by the 600s had become dangerous and practically ceased.[38]
Two basic problems -- the primacy of the bishop of Rome and the procession of the Holy Spirit -- were involved. These doctrinal novelties were first openly discussed in Photius's patriarchate.
By the fifth century, Christendom was divided into a pentarchy of five sees with Rome holding the primacy. This was determined by canonical decision and did not entail hegemony of any one local church or patriarchate over the others. However, Rome began to interpret her primacy in terms of sovereignty, as a God-given right involving universal jurisdiction in the Church. The collegial and conciliar nature of the Church, in effect, was gradually abandoned in favor of a supremacy of unlimited papal power over the entire Church. These ideas were finally given systematic expression in the West during the Gregorian Reform movement of the eleventh century. The Eastern churches viewed Rome’s understanding of the nature of episcopal power as being in direct opposition to the Church's essentially conciliar structure and thus saw the two ecclesiologies as mutually antithetical.
This fundamental difference in ecclesiology would cause all attempts to heal the schism and bridge the divisions to fail. Characteristically, Rome insisted on basing her monarchical claims to "true and proper jurisdiction" (as the Vatican Council of 1870 put it) on St. Peter. This "Roman" exegesis of Mathew 16:18, however, was unknown to the patriarchs of Eastern Orthodoxy. For them, specifically, St. Peter's primacy could never be the exclusive prerogative of any one bishop. All bishops must, like St. Peter, confess Jesus as the Christ and, as such, all are St. Peter's successors. The churches of the East gave the Roman See, primacy but not supremacy. The Pope being the first among equals, but not infallible and not with absolute authority.[39]
The other major irritant to Eastern Orthodoxy was the Western interpretation of the procession of the Holy Spirit. Like the primacy, this too developed gradually and entered the Creed in the West almost unnoticed. This theologically complex issue involved the addition by the West of the Latin phrase filioque ("and from the Son") to the Creed. The original Creed sanctioned by the councils and still used today by the Orthodox Church did not contain this phrase; the text simply states "the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father." Theologically, the Latin interpolation was unacceptable to Eastern Orthodoxy since it implied that the Spirit now had two sources of origin and procession, the Father and the Son, rather than the Father alone.[40] In short, the balance between the three persons of the Trinity was altered and the understanding of the Trinity and God confused.[41] The result, the Orthodox Church believed, then and now, was theologically indefensible. But in addition to the dogmatic issue raised by the filioque, the Byzantines argued that the phrase had been added unilaterally and, therefore, illegitimately, since the East had never been consulted.[42] [43]
In the final analysis, only another ecumenical council could introduce such an alteration. Indeed the councils, which drew up the original Creed, had expressly forbidden any subtraction or addition to the text.
In the 9th-century-AD, a controversy arose between Eastern (Byzantine, later Orthodox) and Western (Latin, Roman Catholic) Christianity that was precipitated by the opposition of the Roman Pope John VII to the appointment by the Byzantine emperor Michael III of Photius I to the position of patriarch of Constantinople. Photios was refused an apologize by the pope for previous points of dispute between the East and West. Photius refused to accept the supremacy of the pope in Eastern matters or accept the filioque clause. Which the Latin delegation at his council of his consecration, pressed him to accept in order to secure their support.
The controversy also involved Eastern and Western ecclesiastical jurisdictional rights in the Bulgarian church, as well as a doctrinal dispute over the Filioque (“and from the Son”) clause. That had been added to the Nicene Creed by the Latin church, which was later the theological breaking point in the ultimate Great East-West Schism in the eleventh century.
Photius did provide concession on the issue of jurisdictional rights concerning Bulgaria and the papal legates made do with his return of Bulgaria to Rome. This concession, however, was purely nominal, as Bulgaria's return to the Byzantine rite in 870 had already secured for it an autocephalous church. Without the consent of Boris I of Bulgaria, the papacy was unable to enforce any its claims.
The Slavs were among the last of the European peoples to become Christianized. Adoption of Christianity was a long and a complex process, but, at the same time, an unavoidable one. The neighboring lands had become Christian centuries before and the paganism of the Slav nations stood out in sharp contrast against this Christianized milieu. It was only a matter of time and circumstance before the Slavs would also become Christian. Part of the question revolved around language. The Roman churches held their liturgy in Latin whereas the Greek churches held their liturgy in Greek. The Slavs resisted adopting Christianity in a language foreign to them.
In the ninth and tenth centuries, Christianity made great inroads into Eastern Europe mainly in Bulgaria, including Kievan Rus'. The evangelization, or Christianization, of the Slavs was initiated by one of Byzantium's most learned churchmen - the Patriarch Photius. Photius has been called the "Godfather of all Slavs". For a period of time, there was a real possibility that all the newly baptised South Slav nations: Serbs, Bulgars, Croats would be placed under Roman, i.e. Papal, spiritual jurisdiction. In the end, only the Croats wound up in the Roman Catholic Church.
In Great Moravia, Constantine and Methodius encountered Frankish missionaries from Germany, representing the western or Latin branch of the Church, and more particularly representing the Holy Roman Empire as founded by Charlemagne, and committed to linguistic, and cultural uniformity. They insisted on the use of the Latin liturgy, and they regarded Moravia and the Slavic peoples as part of their rightful mission field.
When friction developed, the brothers, unwilling to be a cause of dissension among Christians, traveled to Rome to see the Pope, seeking an agreement that would avoid quarreling between missionaries in the field. Constantine entered a monastery in Rome, taking the name Cyril, by which he is now remembered. However, he died only a few weeks thereafter.
Pope Adrian II gave Methodius the title of Archbishop of Sirmium in Bulgaria (now Sremska Mitrovica in Serbia) and sent him back in 869, with jurisdiction over all of Moravia and Pannonia, and authorization to use the Slavonic Liturgy. Soon, however, Prince Ratislav, who had originally invited the brothers to Moravia, died, and his successor did not support Methodius. In 870 the Frankish king Louis and his bishops deposed Methodius at a synod at Ratisbon, and imprisoned him for a little over two years. Pope John VIII secured his release, but instructed him to stop using the Slavonic Liturgy.
In 878, Methodius was summoned to Rome on charges of heresy and using Slavonic. This time Pope John was convinced by the arguments that Methodius made in his defense and sent him back cleared of all charges, and with permission to use Slavonic. The Carolingian bishop who succeeded him, Wiching, suppressed the Slavonic Liturgy and forced the followers of Methodius into exile. Many found refuge with King Boris of Bulgaria (852-889), under whom they reorganized a Slavic-speaking Church. Meanwhile, Pope John's successors adopted a Latin-only policy which lasted for centuries.
Bulgaria was officially recognized as a patriarchate by Constantinople in 945, Serbia in 1346, and Russia in 1589. All these nations, however, had been converted long before these dates.
The traditional event associated with the conversion of Russia is the baptism of Vladimir of Kiev in 989, on which occasion he was also married to the Byzantine princess Anna, the sister of the Byzantine Emperor Basil II. However, the presents of Christianity in these areas is documented to have predated this event.
The final breach between East and West is often considered to have arisen after the capture and sacking of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Crusades against Christians in the East by Roman Catholic crusaders was not exclusive to this crusade nor the Mediterranean. The sacking of Constantinople and the Church of Holy Wisdom and establishment of the Latin Empire in Constantinople and also throughout West Asia Minor and Greece (see the Kingdom of Thessalonica, Kingdom of Cyprus) are considered definitive though. This is in light of perceived Roman Catholic atrocities not exclusive to the capital city of Constantinople in 1204. The establishment of the Latin Empire in 1204 was intended to supplant the Orthodox Byzantine Empire. Symbolized by many Orthodox churches being converted into Roman Catholic properties and churches like Hagia Sophia and Church of the Pantokrator (Constantinople). It is viewed with some rancor to the present day. Some of the European Christian community activily endorsed the attacking of Eastern Christians.[45]
The Teutonic Order's attempts to conquer Orthodox Russia (particularly the Republics of Pskov and Novgorod), an enterprise endorsed by Pope Gregory IX,[46] can also be considered as a part of the Northern Crusades. One of the major blows for the idea of the conquest of Russia was the Battle of the Ice in 1242. With or without the Pope's blessing, Sweden also undertook several crusades against Orthodox Novgorod. Many in the East saw the actions of the West in the Mediterranean as a prime determining factor in the weakening of Byzantium which led to the Empire's eventual conquest and fall to Islam.[47] Another though minor point of contention (primarily with the Serbs) is the looting of the Serbian country side during the People's Crusade and also the establishment of the Empire of Trebizond in Ukraine by the Fourth Crusade. Some Eastern Orthodox see a continuation of Roman Catholic hostility in the establishment of the Uniate or Eastern Catholic churches (see the sainting of Bissarion in 1950). [48]
In 2004, Pope John Paul II extended a formal apology for the sacking of Constantinople in 1204; the apology was formally accepted by Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. Many things that were stolen during this time: holy relics, riches, and many other items, are still held in various Western European cities, particularly Venice.
Following the death of Muhammad in 632, there was a vigorous push by the Arab Muslims to conquer Arab tribes of the East such as the mostly Christian Ghassanids. The Byzantine-Muslim Wars were a series of wars between the Arab Muslims Caliphates and the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire. These started during the initial Muslim conquests under the Rashidun and Umayyad caliphs and continued in the form of an enduring border tussle until the beginning of the Crusades. As a result the Byzantines saw an extensive loss of territory.
The initial conflict lasted from 629-717, ending with the Second Arab Siege of Constantinople that halted the rapid expansion of the Arab Muslim Empire or Umayyad dynasty into Asia Minor. Conflicts with the Caliphate however continued between the 800s and 1169. The Muslim victories resulted in the Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus request for military aid from Pope Urban II at the Council of Piacenza in 1095; one of the events often attributed as precursors to the First Crusade.
In 1453AD, the city of Constantinople the last stronghold of the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Empire.
By this time Egypt had been under Muslim control for some seven centuries. Jerusalem had been conquered by the Umayyad Muslims in 638, won back by Rome in 1099 under the First Crusade and then finally reconquered by the Ottoman Muslims in 1517.
Orthodoxy however was very strong in Russia which had recently acquired an autocephalous status; and thus Moscow called itself the Third Rome, as the cultural heir of Constantinople.
Under Ottoman rule, the Greek Orthodox Church acquired power as an autonomous millet. The ecumenical patriarch was the religious and administrative ruler of the entire "Greek Orthodox nation" (Ottoman administrative unit), which encompassed all the Eastern Orthodox subjects of the Empire.
The Ottoman Empire was marked by periods of limited tolerance and periods of often bloody repression of non-Muslims. One of the worst such episodes occurred under Yavuz Sultan Selim I.[49][50] These event include the atrocities against the Serbs in AD 1804-1878 the Greeks in AD 1814-1832 .[51] and the Bulgarian AD 1876-1877[52] to selectively name but a few instances (also see Phanariote). As well as many individual Christians being made martyrs for stating their faith or speaking negatively against Islam.[53] [54] The Janissary army corps consisted of young men who were brought to Istanbul as child-slaves (and were often from Christian households) who were converted, trained and later employed by the Sultan (the devshirme system).
The new Ottoman government that arose from the ashes of Byzantine civilization was neither primitive nor barbaric. Islam not only recognized Jesus as a great prophet, but tolerated Christians as another People of the Book. As such, the Church was not extinguished nor was its canonical and hierarchical organization completely destroyed. Its administration continued to function though in lesser degree, no longer being the state religion. One of the first things that Mehmet the Conqueror did was to allow the Church to elect a new patriarch, Gennadius Scholarius. The Hagia Sophia and the Parthenon, which had been Christian churches for nearly a millennium were, admittedly, converted into mosques, yet countless other churches, both in Constantinople and elsewhere, remained in Christian hands. They were endowed with civil as well as ecclesiastical power over all Christians in Ottoman territories. Because Islamic law makes no distinction between nationality and religion, all Christians, regardless of their language or nationality, were considered a single millet, or nation. The patriarch, as the highest ranking hierarch, was thus invested with civil and religious authority and made ethnarch, head of the entire Christian Orthodox population. Practically, this meant that all Orthodox Churches within Ottoman territory were under the control of Constantinople. Thus, the authority and jurisdictional frontiers of the patriarch were enormously enlarged.
However, these rights and privileges (see Dhimmitude), including freedom of worship and religious organization, were often established in principle but seldom corresponded to reality. The legal privileges of the patriarch and the Church depended, in fact, on the whim and mercy of the Sultan and the Sublime Porte, while all Christians were viewed as little more than second-class citizens. Moreover, Turkish corruption and brutality were not a myth. That it was the "infidel" Christian who experienced this more than anyone else is not in doubt. Nor were pogroms of Christians in these centuries unknown (see Greco-Turkish relations and Massacres during the Greek Revolution).[55] [56]Devastating, too, for the Church was the fact that it could not bear witness to Christ. Missionary work among Muslims was dangerous and indeed impossible, whereas conversion to Islam was entirely legal and permissible. Converts to Islam who returned to Orthodoxy were put to death as apostates. No new churches could be built and even the ringing of church bells was prohibited. Education of the clergy and the Christian population either ceased altogether or was reduced to the most rudimentary elements.
Devshirmeh was the system of the collection of young boys from conquered Christian lands by the Ottoman sultans as a form of regular taxation in order to build a loyal slave army (formerly largely composed of war captives) and the class of (military) administrators called the "Janissaries", or other servants such as tellak in hamams. The word devşirme means "collecting, gathering" in Ottoman Turkish. Boys delivered to the Ottomans in this way were called ghilmán or acemi oglanlar ("novice boys").
When World War I broke out, the Ottoman Empire was ruled by the "Young Turks" that allied the empire with Germany. In 20th century, the number of Orthodox Christians, and of Christians in general, in the Anatolian peninsula has sharply declined amidst complaints of Turkish governmental repression of various Eastern and Oriental Orthodox groups.[57][58]
In the first two decades of the 20th century, there were massacres of Orthodox Greeks, Slavs, and Armenians in the Ottoman empire, culminating in the Armenian Genocide,[59][60] the exodus of Pontian Greeks resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands Pontic Greeks,[61][62][63] and the near destruction of the ancient Assyrian community in Anatolia or Asia Minor.[64][65]
During the Lausanne Conference in 1923, the Turkish and Greek sides after some discussions accepted the proposal of a population exchange. Muslims in Greece (save the ones in Eastern Thrace) were expelled to Turkey, and Greek Orthodox people in Turkey (save the ones in Istanbul) were expelled to Greece.
In September 1955, a pogrom was directed primarily at Istanbul's 100,000-strong Greek minority.[66][67] In 1971, the Halki seminary in Istanbul was closed along with other private higher education institutions in Turkey.[68]
The modern Turkish state requires the Patriarch of Constantinople to be a Turkish citizen but allows the Synod of Constantinople to elect him.
Eastern Catholic Churches make up 2% of the membership of the Catholic Church, and less than 10% of all Eastern Christians. Most Eastern Catholic Churches have counterparts in other Eastern Churches, whether Assyrian or Oriental Orthodox, from whom they are separated by a number of theological differences, or the Eastern Orthodox Churches, from whom they are separated primarily by differences in understanding of the role of the Bishop of Rome within the College of Bishops.
The Eastern Catholic Churches were located historically in Eastern Europe, the Asian Middle East, Northern Africa and India, but are now, because of migration, found also in Western Europe, the Americas and Oceania.
The Uniate movement within the Eastern Bloc of the Roman Catholic church was started in 1698 by Habsburg emperor Leopold I in his bid to assimilate the Eastern Orthodox in his territories (including Romania). The movement asked the Eastern Orthodox patriarchs to accept Papal supremacy, the unleavened Eucharist bread, the existence of purgatory and the filioque doctrine. Leopold I offered in return that the various Eastern Orthodox churches who complied would receive equal privileges with the Hapsburg Catholics, along with an exemption for the clergy from labor services and other financial duties[69].
The Eastern Catholic churches consider themselves to have reconciled the East and West Schism by keeping their prayers and rituals similar to those of Eastern Orthodoxy, while also accepting the primacy of the Bishop of Rome.
Some Eastern Orthodox charge that joining in this unity comes at the expense of ignoring critical doctrinal differences and past atrocities. From the perspective of many Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Catholicism is a ploy by Roman Catholicism to undermine and ultimately destroy their church by undermining its legitimacy and absorbing it into the Roman Catholic church. It is feared that this ploy would diminish the power to the original eastern Patriarchs of the church and would require the acceptance of rejected doctrines and Scholasticism over faith. [71][72]
In the 20th century, there have been conflicts which involved forced conversions both by the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox. In Croatia, the Ustaše forced the conversion of Eastern Orthodox to Roman Catholicism. Other forced conversions included the Roman Catholics inside the USSR and Eastern Bloc after the October Revolution.[73].
At the same time, the Commission stated:
The church was involved in the various campaigns of russification [74], and, as a consequence of that involvement, it was accused of participating in anti-Jewish pogroms.[75] [76] In the case of anti-semitism and the anti-Jewish pogroms, no evidence is given of the direct participation of the church, it is important to remember that many Russian Orthodox clerics, including senior hierarchs, openly defended persecuted Jews, at least from the second half of the nineteenth century.[77] Also, the Church has no official position on Judaism as such.[77] [78] [79] In modern times, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn has been accused of antisemitism for his book Two Hundred Years Together where he alleges Jewish participation in the political repression of the Soviet regime.[80][81] The Church was allowed to impose taxes on the peasants.
The Church, like the Tsarist state was seen as an enemy of the people by the Bolsheviks and other Russian revolutionaries.
The Russian Orthodox Church collaborated with the White Army in the Russian Civil War (see White movement) after the October Revolution. This may have further strengthened the Bolshevik animus against the church. According to Lenin, a communist regime cannot remain neutral on the question of religion but must show itself to be merciless towards it. There was no place for the church in Lenin's classless society.
Before and after the October Revolution of November 7, 1917 (October 25 Old Calendar) there was a movement within the Soviet Union to unite all of the people of the world under Communist rule (see Communist International). This included the Eastern European bloc countries as well as the Balkan States. Since some of these Slavic states tied their ethnic heritage to their ethnic churches, both the peoples and their church where targeted by the Soviet and its form of State atheism.[82] [83] The Soviets' official religious stance was one of "religious freedom or tolerance", though the state established atheism as the only scientific truth (see also the Soviet or committee of the All-Union Society for the Dissemination of Scientific and Political Knowledge or Znanie which was until 1947 called the The League of the Militant Godless and various Intelligentsia groups). [84][85][86] Criticism of atheism was strictly forbidden and sometimes lead to imprisonment.[87]
The Soviet Union was the first state to have as an ideological objective the elimination of religion. Toward that end, the Communist regime confiscated church property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in the schools. Actions toward particular religions, however, were determined by State interests, and most organized religions were never outlawed. Some actions against Orthodox priests and believers along with execution included torture being sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals.[88][89] The result of this militant atheism was to transform the Church into a persecuted and martyred Church. In the first five years after the Bolshevik revolution, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed.[90]
The main target of the anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and 1930s was the Russian Orthodox Church, which had the largest number of faithful. Nearly all of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labor camps. Theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited. In the period between 1927 and 1940, the number of Orthodox Churches in the Russian Republic fell from 29,584 to less than 500. Between 1917 and 1940, 130,000 Orthodox priests were arrested.
The widespread persecution and internecine disputes within the church hierarchy lead to the seat of Patriarch of Moscow being vacant from 1925-1943.
After Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support for the war effort. By 1957 about 22,000 Russian Orthodox churches had become active. But in 1959 Nikita Khrushchev initiated his own campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church and forced the closure of about 12,000 churches. By 1985 fewer than 7,000 churches remained active. . Members of turch hierarchy were jailed or forced out, their places taken by docile clergy, many of whom had ties with the KGB.
In the Soviet Union, in addition to the methodical closing and destruction of churches, the charitable and social work formerly done by ecclesiastical authorities was taken over by the state. As with all private property, Church owned property was confiscated into public use. The few places of worship left to the Church were legally viewed as state property which the government permitted the church to use. After the advent of state funded universal education, the Church was not permitted to carry on educational, instructional activity for children. For adults, only training for church-related occupations was allowed. Outside of sermons during the celebration of the divine liturgy it could not instruct or evangelise to the faithful or its youth. Catechism classes, religious schools, study groups, Sunday schools and religious publications were all illegal and or banned. This persecution continued, even after the death of Stalin until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. This caused many religious tracts to be circulated as illegal literature or samizdat.[93] Since the fall of the Soviet Union there have been many New-martyrs added as saints from the yoke of atheism.
The Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem and the ecclesiastics of the Orthodox church are based in the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulchre constructed in 335 AD. The church is known there for the annual Pascha miracle of the Holy Fire (though not without its controversy) on Holy Saturday. During the years that Jerusalem was under Muslim rule, positions in the clerical hierarchy were decided by Islamic officials. In modern times positions are now chosen by the Jewish government.
The community and seat of the patriarchate according to Orthodox tradition was founded by St Peter and the given to St Ignatius), in what is now Turkey. However, in the 15th century, it was moved to the "Street called Straight" in Damascus, modern-day Syria, in response to the Ottoman invasion of Antioch. Its traditional territory includes Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and parts of Turkey.
Its North American branch is autonomous, although the Holy Synod of Antioch still appoints its head bishop, chosen from a list of three candidates nominated in the North American archdiocese. Its Australasia and Oceania branch is the largest in terms of area.
Disputes over the Christology of the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon—the Monophysite controversy—in 451 led to a schism within the Church of Antioch, which at that same council was elevated to the status of a patriarchate. The larger group at the time repudiated the council and became the Syriac Orthodox Church (also called the "Jacobites" for Jacob Baradeus, an early bishop of the group who did extensive missionary work in the region). They currently constitute part of the Oriental Orthodox communion and maintain a Christology somewhat different in language from that of Chalcedon.
The remainder of the Church of Antioch, primarily local Greeks or Hellenized sections of the indigenous population, remained in communion with Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. This is the current Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East which is considered by the other bishops of the Orthodox Church to be the sole legimate heir to the see of Antioch.
The schism of the Council at Chalcedon greatly weakened the Antiochian church, and in 637 when Antioch fell to the Muslim Arabs, the "Greek" church was perceived by the invaders as allied to the Romano-Byzantine enemies of the Arabs. During the subsequent period, Antiochian Orthodox Christians underwent a lengthy period of persecution, and there were multiple periods of either vacancy or non-residence on the Antiochian patriarchal throne during the 7th and 8th centuries. In 969, the Roman Empire regained control of Antioch, and the church there prospered again until 1085, when the Seljuk Turks took the city. During this period of more than a hundred years, the traditional West Syrian liturgy of the church was gradually replaced by that of the tradition of the Great Church, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. This process was completed sometime in the 12th century.
Crusader and Muslim conquests
In 1098, Crusaders took the city and set up a Latin Patriarchate of Antioch to adorn its Latin Kingdom of Syria, while a Greek patriarchate continued in exile in Constantinople. After nearly two centuries of Crusader rule, the Egyptian Mamelukes seized Antioch in 1268, and the Orthodox patriarch, Theodosius IV, was able to return to the region. By this point, Antioch itself had been reduced to a smaller town, and so in the 14th century Ignatius II transferred the seat of the patriarchate to Damascus, where it remains to this day, though the patriarch retains the Antiochian title.
The Ottoman Turks conquered the city in 1517, under whose control it remained until the breakup of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. During this period, in 1724, the Church of Antioch was again weakened by schism, as a major portion of its faithful came into submission to the Roman Catholic Church. The resultant Uniate body is known as the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, which in the current day maintains close ties with the Orthodox and is currently holding ongoing talks about healing the schism and returning the Melkites to Orthodoxy.
By the 18th century the great majority of the communicants of the Antiochian church were Arabs. In 1898 the last Greek patriarch was deposed, and an Arab successor was elected in 1899. Thus the patriarchate became fully Arab in character. A strong renewal movement, involving Orthodox youth in particular, has been under way since the 1940s.[94]
Influenced by the French Revolution's explosive ideas, Greece was the first to break the Turkish yoke, winning its independence early in the 19th century in the Greek War of Independence. Before long, a synod of bishops declared the Church of the new Kingdom of Greece autocephalous. The new Greek nation, in short, could not be headed by the patriarch. Indeed, Greece's autocephalous status, recognized by Constantinople in 1850, meant that it could elect its own head or kephale. The Church of Greece is today governed by a Holy Synod presided over by the Archbishop of Athens.
The Orthodox Church of Alexandria Egypt claims succession from the Apostle Mark the Evangelist who founded the Church in the 1st century, and therefore the beginning of Christianity in Africa. It is one of the five ancient patriarchates of the early Church, called the Pentarchy.
Sometimes called the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria to distinguish it from the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria. In Egypt, members of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate were also called Melkite, because they remained in communion with the Patriarch of Constantinople.
Since the schism occurring as a result of the political and Christological controversies at the Council of Chalcedon (451), the Greek Orthodox have liturgically been Greek-speaking. After the Arab conquest of North Africa in the 7th century the Eastern Orthodox were a minority even among Christians, and remai
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Four stages of development can be distinguished in the history of the Eastern Orthodox Churches. The first three centuries, through the age of Constantine the Great constitute the apostolic and ancient period. The medieval period comprises almost ten centuries from the death of Constantine to the fall of Constantinople. The age of captivity (under Islam) starts, roughly, for the Greek and Balkin communities in the fifteenth century with the fall of Constantinople and ends about the year 1830 which marks Greek and Balkin independence from the Ottoman Empire. The last stage is the modern period.
The Orthodox churches with the largest number of adherents in modern times are the Russian and the Romanian Orthodox churches. The most ancient of the Orthodox churches of today are the Churches of Constantinople, Alexandria (which includes all of Africa), Georgia, Antioch, and Jerusalem.[1][2] [3]
Apostolic era
Christianity first spread in the predominantly Greek-speaking eastern half of the Roman Empire. Paul and the Apostles traveled extensively throughout the Empire, establishing communities in major cities and regions, with the first communities appearing in Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and then the two political centres of Rome and Greece and what became Byzantium. Orthodoxy believes in the Apostolic Succession that was established by the Apostles in the New Testament; this played a key role in the communities' view of itself as the preserver of the original Christian tradition. Historically the word church did not mean building or housing structure (which would actually be the word Basilica) but meant community or gathering of like peoples (see Ecclesia).
The original church community of the East before the schisms, is the Greek communities founded by St Paul and later Byzantine churches or communities, the Coptic (or Egyptian) churches founded by St Mark (including the Ethiopian of Africa or Abyssinia), the Syrian (or Assyrian) and Antiochian churches founded by St Peter, Armenian, Georgian and Russian founded by St Andrew. By tradition St Jude and St Bartholomew as well as the churches of Israel founded by St James.[4] The church of Rome by tradition was founded by both St Peter and St Paul.
Systematic persecution of the early Christian church caused it to be an underground movement. The first above-ground churches were built in Armenia (see Echmiadzin). Armenia was the first country to legalize Christianity around 301 AD and also embrace it as the state religion. Of the underground churches that existed before legalization, some are recorded to have existed as the catacombs in Europe, Rome, Kerch and also in the underground cities of Anatolia and (see Cave monastery). Today the gates which Paul escaped through (named Bab Kisan), mentioned in Corthinians has been converted to a church in Paul's memory. This is a structure still standing that dates to the time of the Apostles.
The Patristic Age and Biblical Canon
The earliest forms of Christianity were Greek as contemporary ecclesiastical historian Henry Hart Milman writes: "For some considerable (it cannot but be an undefinable) part of three first centuries, the Church of Rome, and most, if not all the Churches of the West, were, if we may so speak, Greek religious colonies. Their language was Greek, their organization Greek, their writers Greek, their scriptures Greek; and many vestiges and traditions show that their ritual, their Liturgy, was Greek."[6]
The early Christians had no way to have a copy of the works that later became the canon and other church works accepted but not canonized (see Church Fathers and Patristics). Much of the original church liturgical services functioned as a means of learning these works. Orthodox Church services today continue to serve this educational function. The issue of collecting the various works of the eastern churches and compiling them into a canon, each being confirmed as authentic text was a long protracted process. Much of this process was motivated by a need to address various heresies. In many instances, heretical groups had themselves begun compiling and disseminating text that they used to validate their positions, positions that were not consistent with the text, history and traditions of the Orthodox faith.
Much of the official organizing of the ecclesiastical structure, clarifying true from false teachings was done by the bishops of the church. Their works are referred to as Patristics. This tradition of clarification can be seen as established in the saints of the Orthodox church referred to as the Apostolic Fathers, bishops themselves established by Apostolic succession. This also continued into the age when the practice of the religion of Christianity became legal (see the Ecumenical Councils).
The Bible
Medieval period
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Hagia Sophia at night
Sometimes Patriarchs (often of Constantinople) were deposed by the emperor; at one point emperors sided with the iconoclasts in the eighth and ninth centuries.
In the 530s the second Church of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) was built in Constantinople under emperor Justinian I. The first church was destroyed during the Nika riots. The second Hagia Sophia would become the center of the ecclesiastical community for the rulers of the Eastern Empire of Roman or Byzantium.
The Pentarchy
By the fifth century, the ecclesiastical had evolved a hierarchical "pentarchy" or system of five sees (patriarchates), with a settled order of precedence. Rome, as the ancient center and largest city of the empire, was understandably given the presidency or primacy of honor within the pentarchy into which Christendom was now divided. Plainly, this system of patriarchs and metropolitans was exclusively the result of ecclesiastical legislation; there was nothing inherently divine in its origin. None of the five sees, in short, possessed its authority by divine right. Though it was and still held that the patriarch of Rome was the first among equals. The original Pentarchy of the ancient Roman Empire: East and West.- Rome (Sts. Peter and Paul), i.e. the Pope, the only Pentarch in the Western Roman Empire.
- Alexandria (St. Mark), currently in Egypt
- Antioch (St. Peter), currently in Turkey
- Jerusalem (St. James), currently in Israel
- Constantinople (St. Andrew), currently in Turkey
Ecumenical councils
| Part of the series on Eastern Christianity | |
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History Byzantine Empire Crusades Ecumenical council Baptism of Kiev Great Schism By region Eastern Orthodox history Ukraine Christian history Asia Eastern Christian history | |
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Traditions Oriental Orthodoxy Coptic Orthodox Church Armenian Apostolic Church Syriac Christianity Assyrian Church of the East Eastern Orthodox Church Eastern Catholic Churches | |
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Liturgy and Worship Sign of the cross Divine Liturgy Iconography Asceticism Omophorion | |
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Theology Hesychasm - Icon Apophaticism - Filioque clause Miaphysitism - Monophysitism Nestorianism - Theosis - Theoria Phronema - Philokalia Praxis - Theotokos Hypostasis - Ousia Essence-Energies distinction | |
Seven ecumenical councils were held between 325 (the First Council of Nicaea) and 787 (the Second Council of Nicaea), which the Orthodox recognize as the definitive interpretation of Christian dogma.
- The first of the Seven Ecumenical Councils was that convoked by the Roman Emperor Constantine at Nicaea in 325, condemning the view of Arius that the Son is a created being inferior to the Father.
- The Second Ecumenical Council was held at Constantinople in 381, defining the nature of the Holy Spirit against those asserting His inequality with the other persons of the Trinity. Under Theodosius I this council marks the end of the Arian conflict in the Eastern Roman Empire..
- The Third Ecumenical Council is that of Ephesus in 431, which affirmed that Mary is truly "Birthgiver" or "Mother" of God (Theotokos), contrary to the teachings of Nestorius.
- The Fourth Ecumenical Council is that of Chalcedon in 451, which affirmed that Jesus is truly God and truly man, without mixture of the two natures, contrary to Monophysite teaching.
- The Fifth Ecumenical Council is the second of Constantinople in 553, interpreting the decrees of Chalcedon and further explaining the relationship of the two natures of Jesus; it also condemned the teachings of Origen on the pre-existence of the soul, and Apocatastasis, etc.
- The Sixth Ecumenical Council is the third of Constantinople in 681; it declared that Christ has two wills of his two natures, human and divine, contrary to the teachings of the Monothelites.
- The Seventh Ecumenical Council was called under the Empress Regnant Irene in 787, known as the second of Nicea. It affirmed the making and veneration of icons, while also forbidding the worship of icons and the making of three-dimensional statuary. It reversed the declaration of an earlier council that had called itself the Seventh Ecumenical Council and also nullified its status (see separate article on Iconoclasm). That earlier council had been held under the iconoclast Emperor Constantine V. It met with more than 340 bishops at Constantinople and Hieria in 754, declaring the making of icons of Jesus or the saints an error, mainly for Christological reasons.
The Eastern Orthodox Church does not recognize as dogma any ecumenical councils other than these seven.[12] Orthodox thinking differs on whether the Fourth and Fifth Councils of Constantinople were properly Ecumenical Councils, but the majority view is that they were merely influential rather than dogmatic and therefore not binding.
Confronting Arianism
- See also: Feast of Orthodoxy
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Representation of Ulfilas surrounded by the Gothic alphabet
It should be noted that when Emperor Constantine I was baptised, the baptism was performed by an Arian bishop and relative, Eusebius of Nicomedia. Also the charges of Christian corruption by Constantine (see the Constantinian shift) ignore the fact that Constantine deposed Athanasius of Alexandria and later restored Arius, who had been branded a heresiarch by the Nicene Council. [20][21][22][23][24].
Constantine I was succeeded by two Arian Emperors Constantius II and Valens and a Pagan Emperor in Julian the Apostate. Even after Constantine I, Orthodox Christians remained persecuted but to a much lesser degree than when Christianity was an illegal community (see Persecution of early Christians by the Romans and Basil of Ancyra). It was not until Emperor Gratian that a Orthodox Emperor was again put on the throne (Jovian was only Emperor for 6 months). Emperor Gratian established the Spaniard Theodosius as his co-emperor in Byzantium. It was not until the co-reigns of Gratian and Theodosius that Arianism was effectively wiped out among the ruling class and elite of the Eastern Empire. Theodosius' wife St Flacilla was instrumental in his campaign to end Arianism.
However, much of southeastern Europe and central Europe, including many of the Goths and Vandals respectively, had embraced Arianism, which led to Arianism being a religious factor in various wars in the Roman Empire.[25] The Goths and Vandals later conquered the Western Roman Empire, including Italy, parts of Gaul, Hispania, and parts of North Africa. In the west, organized Arianism coexisted with Catholicism until the Byzantine reconquest in North Africa, the Council of Toledo in Hispania, and the 7th Century in Italy.
Nestorianism
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Assyrian Church of the East
- See also: Jesus Sutras
The Nestorian Schism was the first major schism of the Eastern Churches and was addressed with the Third Ecumenical Council held in Ephesus in 431. This council established the tradition of Mary the mother of Jesus being referred to as Theotokos. Nestorianism taught that is was proper to call Mary the Christotokos because as Nestorian had taught Mary only gave birth to Jesus Christ the person not Jesus Christ as God. Cyril of Alexandria charged that this teaching of Nestorius implied that there had been in fact two Jesus Christs; one Christ was a man born of the virgin Mary and the other was divine and not born but also Jesus Christ.
Cyril of Alexandria regarded the embodiment of God in the person of Jesus Christ to be so mystically powerful that it spread out from the body of the God-man into the rest of the race, to reconstitute human nature into a graced and deified condition of the saints (Jesus Christ as the new Adam), one that promised immortality and transfiguration to believers (see theosis). Nestorius, on the other hand, saw the incarnation as primarily a moral and ethical example to the faithful, to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Cyril repeatedly stressed the simple idea that it was God who walked the streets of Nazareth (hence Mary was Theotokos or Mother of God), and God who had appeared in a transfigured humanity (see the theophany). Nestorius spoke of the distinct 'Jesus the Man' and 'the divine Logos' in ways that Cyril thought were too dichotomous, widening the ontological gap between man and God in a way that would annihilate the person (hypostasis) of Christ a position termed dyophysite.[26]
Ecumenism between the Assyrian church and the Roman Catholic church is an on-going process. Most recently, on November 11, 1994, an historic meeting of Mar Dinkha IV and Roman Catholic Pope John Paul II took place in the Vatican and a Common Christological Declaration was signed. One side effect of this meeting was that the Assyrian Church's relationship to the Chaldean Catholic Church was improved.
In September 2006, Mar Dinkha IV paid a historic visit to Northern Iraq to give oversight to the churches there and to encourage the governor of the Kurdish region to open a Christian school as well as a library in Arbil.
Oriental Orthodoxy
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The Coptic Cross
Eastern Orthodoxy strives to keep the faith of the seven Ecumenical Councils. In contrast, the term "Oriental Orthodoxy" refers to the churches of Eastern Christian traditions that keep the faith of only the first three ecumenical councils — the First Council of Nicaea, the First Council of Constantinople and the Council of Ephesus — and rejected the dogmatic definitions of the Council of Chalcedon. Those who disagreed with the Council of Chalcedon are sometimes called "Oriental Orthodox" to distinguish them from the Eastern Orthodox, who accepted the Council of Chalcedon. Oriental Orthodox are also sometimes referred to as "monophysites", "non-Chalcedonians", or "anti-Chalcedonians", although today the Oriental Orthodox Church denies that it is monophysite and prefers the term "miaphysite", to denote the "joined" nature of Jesus. The council of Chalcedonia was held to clarify that the opposite of Nestorian's heresy was not established. Nestorianism did not necessarily oppose the divinity of Christ, it did assert that the divinity of Christ was separate from the person born of Mary. In the case of the council of Chalcedon Jesus Christ's existence (one hypostasis) was established to have both a human and a divine will. The difference however was that the Eastern Orthodox insisted that Christ be expressed as having both human and divine natures (physis) that are separate in his single person, from one another and did not mix are not confused and are in one existence or reality (hypostasis) called the hypostatic union. The dogma chosen by the Oriental Orthodox was interpreted to express that Jesus Christ had two natures (both human and divine) that were mixed into a one single nature (physis). Leading to an argument that the human will of Christ was not of freewill.[27]
The Church in Egypt or the Coptic church and the (Patriarchate of Alexandria) split into two groups following the Council of Chalcedon (451). Eventually this led to each group (Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox) having its own Patriarch (Pope) established in Alexandria. Those that remained in communion with the other patriarchs (those who accepted the Council of Chalcedon) were called "Melkites" (the king's men, because Constantinople was the city of the emperors) [not to be confused with the Melkite Catholics of Antioch], and are today known as the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria, currently led by Patriarch Theodore II. Those who disagreed with the findings of the Council of Chalcedon are today known as the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. This included the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Armenian Orthodox church. There was a similar split in Syria (Patriarchate of Antioch) into the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch and the Syriac Orthodox Church.
Both the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches formally believe themselves to be the continuation of the true church and the other to have fallen into schism, although in the past 20 years much work had been done toward ecumenism or reconciliation between the Oriental and Eastern Orthodox churches.[28]
Iconoclasm
Resolved under the Seventh Ecumenical Council, Iconoclasm was a movement within the Eastern Christian Byzantine church to establish that the Christian culture of portraits (see icon) of the family of Christ and subsequent Christians and biblical scenes were not of a Christian origin and therefore heretical[29]. There were two periods of Iconoclasm 730-787 and 813-843. This movement itself was later defined as heretical under the Seventh Ecumenical council. The group destroyed much of the Christian churches' art history, which is needed in addressing the traditional interruptions of the Christian faith and the artistic works that in the early church were devoted to Jesus Christ or God. Many Glorious works were destroyed during this period.[30] Two prototypes of icons would be the Christ Pantocrator and the Icon of the Hodegetria. In the West the tradition of icons have been seen as the veneration of "graven images" or against "no graven images" as noted in Exodus 20:4. From the Orthodox point of view graven then would be engraved or carved. Thus this restriction would include many of the ornaments that Moses was commanded to create in the passages right after the commandment was given i.e. the carving of cherubim Exodus 26:1. The commandment as understood by such out of context interpretation would mean "no carved images". This would include the cross and other holy artifacts. The commandment in the East is understand that the people of God are not to create idols and then worship them. It is "right worship" to worship which is of God, which is Holy and that alone.[31]
Hesychast Controversy
- See also: theoria
)
Gregory Palamas
Trained in Western Scholastic theology, Barlaam was scandalized by Hesychasm and began to campaign against it. As a teacher of theology in the Western Scholastic mode, Barlaam propounded a more intellectual and propositional approach to the knowledge of God than the Hesychasts taught. In particular, Barlaam took exception to, as heretical and blasphemous, the doctrine entertained by the Hesychasts as to the nature of the uncreated light, the experience of which was said to be the goal of Hesychast practice. It was maintained by the Hesychasts to be of divine origin and to be identical to that light which had been manifested to Jesus' disciples on Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration. Barlaam held this concept to be polytheistic, inasmuch as it postulated two eternal substances, a visible and an invisible God.
On the Hesychast side, the controversy was taken up by Antonite St Gregory Palamas, afterwards Archbishop of Thessalonica, who was asked by his fellow monks on Mt Athos to defend Hesychasm from the Barlaam's attacks. St Gregory was well-educated in Greek philosophy and thus able to defend Hesychasm using Western precepts. In the 1340s, he defended Hesychasm at three different synods in Constantinople, and also wrote a number of works in its defense.
In 1341 the dispute came before a synod held at Constantinople and was presided over by the Emperor Andronicus; the synod, taking into account the regard in which the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius were held, condemned Barlaam, who recanted and returned to Calabria, afterwards becoming a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church. Three other synods on the subject were held, at the second of which the followers of Barlaam gained a brief victory. But in 1351 at a synod under the presidency of the Emperor John VI Cantacuzenus, Hesychast doctrine was established as the doctrine of the Orthodox Church.
One of Barlaam's friends, Gregory Akindynos, who originally was also a friend of Gregory's, later took up the controversy. But in 1351 at a synod under the presidency of the Emperor John VI Cantacuzenus, Hesychast doctrine was established as the doctrine of the Greek Orthodox Church. Another opponent of Palamism was Manuel Kalekas who sought to reconcile the Eastern and Western Churches. Following the decision of 1351, there was strong repression against anti-Palamist thinkers. Kalekas reports on this repression as late as 1397, and for theologians in disagreement with Palamas, there was ultimately no choice but to emigrate and convert to Catholicism, a path taken by Kalekas as well as Demetrios Kydones and Ioannes Kypariossiotes. This exodus of highly educated Greek scholars, later re-inforced by refugees following the Fall of Constantinople of 1453, had a significant influence on the first generation (that of Petrarca and Boccaccio) of the incipient Italian Renaissance.
Up to this day, the Roman Catholic Church has never fully accepted Hesychasm, especially the distinction between the energies or operations of God and the essence of God, and the notion that those energies or operations of God are uncreated [32]. In Roman Catholic theology as it has developed since the Scholastic period, the essence of God can be known, but only in the next life; the grace of God is always created; and the essence of God is pure act, so that there can be no distinction between the energies or operations and the essence of God (see, e.g., the Summa Theologiae of St Thomas Aquinas). [33].
Contemporary historians Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos and Nicephorus Gregoras deal very copiously with this subject, taking the Hesychast and Barlaamite sides respectively. The Orthodox perspective is one that states that there is scientific knowledge based on demonstration and spiritual knowledge based on demonstration. That the two understandings must remain separate in order to have a proper understanding of both in order to reject dualism. The Eastern appoach to understand God and spiritual matters as one that should not be approached with a Scholastic or dialectical method.[34]
Modern Ecumenism
Modern Ecumenism between different Orthodox groups of the Mideast is a long and evolving process as can be seen in the mention in this article of the very active Ecumenist movement between the Oriental Orthodox and the Eastern Orthodox. As well as the recent reconciliation between the Patriarch of Moscow and the ROCOR in the United States (see the Act of Canonical Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate). Also the very active communication between Rome and Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox communities.Modern Ecumenism under such organizations as the World Council of Churches or WCC is seen as a movement that at its core, has the reversal of the Early church councils as its intention. Rather than seeking God as truth and submitting to God as truth the modern movement appears to place unity as the highest priority, at the expense of truth. [35][36][37]
Tensions between the East and the West
The events leading to schism were not exclusively theological in nature. Cultural, political, and linguistic differences were often mixed with the theological. Any narrative of the schism which emphasizes one at the expense of the other will be fragmentary. Unlike the Copts or Armenians who broke from the Church in the fifth century and established ethnic churches at the cost of their universality and catholicity, the eastern and western parts of the Church remained loyal to the faith and authority of the seven ecumenical councils. They were united, by virtue of their common faith and tradition, in one Church.
Nonetheless, the transfer of the Roman capital to Constantinople inevitably brought mistrust, rivalry, and even jealousy to the relations of the two great sees, Rome and Constantinople. It was easy for Rome to be jealous of Constantinople at a time when it was rapidly losing its political prominence. In fact, Rome refused to recognize the conciliar legislation which promoted Constantinople to second rank. But the estrangement was also helped along by the German invasions in the West, which effectively weakened contacts. The rise of Islam with its conquest of most of the Mediterranean coastline (not to mention the arrival of the pagan Slavs in the Balkans at the same time) further intensified this separation by driving a physical wedge between the two worlds. The once homogeneous unified world of the Mediterranean was fast vanishing. Communication between the Greek East and the Latin West by the 600s had become dangerous and practically ceased.[38]
Two basic problems -- the primacy of the bishop of Rome and the procession of the Holy Spirit -- were involved. These doctrinal novelties were first openly discussed in Photius's patriarchate.
By the fifth century, Christendom was divided into a pentarchy of five sees with Rome holding the primacy. This was determined by canonical decision and did not entail hegemony of any one local church or patriarchate over the others. However, Rome began to interpret her primacy in terms of sovereignty, as a God-given right involving universal jurisdiction in the Church. The collegial and conciliar nature of the Church, in effect, was gradually abandoned in favor of a supremacy of unlimited papal power over the entire Church. These ideas were finally given systematic expression in the West during the Gregorian Reform movement of the eleventh century. The Eastern churches viewed Rome’s understanding of the nature of episcopal power as being in direct opposition to the Church's essentially conciliar structure and thus saw the two ecclesiologies as mutually antithetical.
This fundamental difference in ecclesiology would cause all attempts to heal the schism and bridge the divisions to fail. Characteristically, Rome insisted on basing her monarchical claims to "true and proper jurisdiction" (as the Vatican Council of 1870 put it) on St. Peter. This "Roman" exegesis of Mathew 16:18, however, was unknown to the patriarchs of Eastern Orthodoxy. For them, specifically, St. Peter's primacy could never be the exclusive prerogative of any one bishop. All bishops must, like St. Peter, confess Jesus as the Christ and, as such, all are St. Peter's successors. The churches of the East gave the Roman See, primacy but not supremacy. The Pope being the first among equals, but not infallible and not with absolute authority.[39]
The other major irritant to Eastern Orthodoxy was the Western interpretation of the procession of the Holy Spirit. Like the primacy, this too developed gradually and entered the Creed in the West almost unnoticed. This theologically complex issue involved the addition by the West of the Latin phrase filioque ("and from the Son") to the Creed. The original Creed sanctioned by the councils and still used today by the Orthodox Church did not contain this phrase; the text simply states "the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father." Theologically, the Latin interpolation was unacceptable to Eastern Orthodoxy since it implied that the Spirit now had two sources of origin and procession, the Father and the Son, rather than the Father alone.[40] In short, the balance between the three persons of the Trinity was altered and the understanding of the Trinity and God confused.[41] The result, the Orthodox Church believed, then and now, was theologically indefensible. But in addition to the dogmatic issue raised by the filioque, the Byzantines argued that the phrase had been added unilaterally and, therefore, illegitimately, since the East had never been consulted.[42] [43]
In the final analysis, only another ecumenical council could introduce such an alteration. Indeed the councils, which drew up the original Creed, had expressly forbidden any subtraction or addition to the text.
Photian schism
In the 9th-century-AD, a controversy arose between Eastern (Byzantine, later Orthodox) and Western (Latin, Roman Catholic) Christianity that was precipitated by the opposition of the Roman Pope John VII to the appointment by the Byzantine emperor Michael III of Photius I to the position of patriarch of Constantinople. Photios was refused an apologize by the pope for previous points of dispute between the East and West. Photius refused to accept the supremacy of the pope in Eastern matters or accept the filioque clause. Which the Latin delegation at his council of his consecration, pressed him to accept in order to secure their support.
The controversy also involved Eastern and Western ecclesiastical jurisdictional rights in the Bulgarian church, as well as a doctrinal dispute over the Filioque (“and from the Son”) clause. That had been added to the Nicene Creed by the Latin church, which was later the theological breaking point in the ultimate Great East-West Schism in the eleventh century.
Photius did provide concession on the issue of jurisdictional rights concerning Bulgaria and the papal legates made do with his return of Bulgaria to Rome. This concession, however, was purely nominal, as Bulgaria's return to the Byzantine rite in 870 had already secured for it an autocephalous church. Without the consent of Boris I of Bulgaria, the papacy was unable to enforce any its claims.
Conversion of Eastern and Southern Slavs
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Orthodox churches in Vologda, Russia
The Slavs were among the last of the European peoples to become Christianized. Adoption of Christianity was a long and a complex process, but, at the same time, an unavoidable one. The neighboring lands had become Christian centuries before and the paganism of the Slav nations stood out in sharp contrast against this Christianized milieu. It was only a matter of time and circumstance before the Slavs would also become Christian. Part of the question revolved around language. The Roman churches held their liturgy in Latin whereas the Greek churches held their liturgy in Greek. The Slavs resisted adopting Christianity in a language foreign to them.
In the ninth and tenth centuries, Christianity made great inroads into Eastern Europe mainly in Bulgaria, including Kievan Rus'. The evangelization, or Christianization, of the Slavs was initiated by one of Byzantium's most learned churchmen - the Patriarch Photius. Photius has been called the "Godfather of all Slavs". For a period of time, there was a real possibility that all the newly baptised South Slav nations: Serbs, Bulgars, Croats would be placed under Roman, i.e. Papal, spiritual jurisdiction. In the end, only the Croats wound up in the Roman Catholic Church.
Mission to Great Moravia
When Rastislav, the king of Great Moravia, asked Byzantium for teachers who could minister to the Moravians in their own language, Byzantine emperor Michael III chose two brothers, Constantine and Methodius. As their mother was a Slav from the hinterlands of Thessaloniki, the two brothers had been raised speaking the local Slavonic vernacular. Once commissioned, they immediately set about creating an alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet; they then translated the Scripture and the liturgy into Slavonic. This Slavic dialect became the basis of Old Church Slavonic old Bulgarian which later evolved into Church Slavonic which is the common liturgical language still used by the Russian Orthodox Church and other Slavic Orthodox Christians. The missionaries to the East and South Slavs had great success in part because they used the people's native language rather than Latin or Greek.In Great Moravia, Constantine and Methodius encountered Frankish missionaries from Germany, representing the western or Latin branch of the Church, and more particularly representing the Holy Roman Empire as founded by Charlemagne, and committed to linguistic, and cultural uniformity. They insisted on the use of the Latin liturgy, and they regarded Moravia and the Slavic peoples as part of their rightful mission field.
When friction developed, the brothers, unwilling to be a cause of dissension among Christians, traveled to Rome to see the Pope, seeking an agreement that would avoid quarreling between missionaries in the field. Constantine entered a monastery in Rome, taking the name Cyril, by which he is now remembered. However, he died only a few weeks thereafter.
Pope Adrian II gave Methodius the title of Archbishop of Sirmium in Bulgaria (now Sremska Mitrovica in Serbia) and sent him back in 869, with jurisdiction over all of Moravia and Pannonia, and authorization to use the Slavonic Liturgy. Soon, however, Prince Ratislav, who had originally invited the brothers to Moravia, died, and his successor did not support Methodius. In 870 the Frankish king Louis and his bishops deposed Methodius at a synod at Ratisbon, and imprisoned him for a little over two years. Pope John VIII secured his release, but instructed him to stop using the Slavonic Liturgy.
In 878, Methodius was summoned to Rome on charges of heresy and using Slavonic. This time Pope John was convinced by the arguments that Methodius made in his defense and sent him back cleared of all charges, and with permission to use Slavonic. The Carolingian bishop who succeeded him, Wiching, suppressed the Slavonic Liturgy and forced the followers of Methodius into exile. Many found refuge with King Boris of Bulgaria (852-889), under whom they reorganized a Slavic-speaking Church. Meanwhile, Pope John's successors adopted a Latin-only policy which lasted for centuries.
Conversion of the Serbs
Methodius' next project was to convert the Serbs. Building on the legacy of Constantine I being of Serbian descent. The Byzantine Empire achieved a great success in 870 when it managed to baptize the Serbian rulers, thus opening the way to the mass conversion of the Serbs to Christianity, accompanied by strong political and cultural influences from the Empire. The Serbian principalities were subordinated to the ecclesiastical metropolises in Split and Syrmium. With Christianization, some of the differences among the tribes were pushed into the background, especially those which were rooted in pagan beliefs, and the path to unification was opened up on the basis of a common Christian culture.Conversion of the Bulgarians
Some of the disciples, namely St. Kliment and St. Naum who were of noble Bulgarian descent and St. Angelaruis, returned to Bulgaria where they were welcomed by the Bulgarian Tsar Boris I who viewed the Slavonic liturgy as a way to counteract Greek influence in the country. In a short time, the disciples of Cyril and Methodius managed to prepare and instruct the future Bulgarian clergy into the Glagolitic alphabet and the biblical texts and in AD 893, Bulgaria expelled its Greek clergy and proclaimed the Slavonic language as the official language of the church and the state.Conversion of the Rus'
The success of the conversion of the Bulgarians facilitated the conversion of other East Slavic peoples, most notably the Rus', predecessors of Belarusians, Russians, and Ukrainians. By the beginning of the eleventh century most of the pagan Slavic world, including Russia, Bulgaria and Serbia, had been converted to Byzantine Christianity.Bulgaria was officially recognized as a patriarchate by Constantinople in 945, Serbia in 1346, and Russia in 1589. All these nations, however, had been converted long before these dates.
The traditional event associated with the conversion of Russia is the baptism of Vladimir of Kiev in 989, on which occasion he was also married to the Byzantine princess Anna, the sister of the Byzantine Emperor Basil II. However, the presents of Christianity in these areas is documented to have predated this event.
The Great Schism
The Crusades against the Eastern Orthodox
The final breach between East and West is often considered to have arisen after the capture and sacking of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Crusades against Christians in the East by Roman Catholic crusaders was not exclusive to this crusade nor the Mediterranean. The sacking of Constantinople and the Church of Holy Wisdom and establishment of the Latin Empire in Constantinople and also throughout West Asia Minor and Greece (see the Kingdom of Thessalonica, Kingdom of Cyprus) are considered definitive though. This is in light of perceived Roman Catholic atrocities not exclusive to the capital city of Constantinople in 1204. The establishment of the Latin Empire in 1204 was intended to supplant the Orthodox Byzantine Empire. Symbolized by many Orthodox churches being converted into Roman Catholic properties and churches like Hagia Sophia and Church of the Pantokrator (Constantinople). It is viewed with some rancor to the present day. Some of the European Christian community activily endorsed the attacking of Eastern Christians.[45]
The Teutonic Order's attempts to conquer Orthodox Russia (particularly the Republics of Pskov and Novgorod), an enterprise endorsed by Pope Gregory IX,[46] can also be considered as a part of the Northern Crusades. One of the major blows for the idea of the conquest of Russia was the Battle of the Ice in 1242. With or without the Pope's blessing, Sweden also undertook several crusades against Orthodox Novgorod. Many in the East saw the actions of the West in the Mediterranean as a prime determining factor in the weakening of Byzantium which led to the Empire's eventual conquest and fall to Islam.[47] Another though minor point of contention (primarily with the Serbs) is the looting of the Serbian country side during the People's Crusade and also the establishment of the Empire of Trebizond in Ukraine by the Fourth Crusade. Some Eastern Orthodox see a continuation of Roman Catholic hostility in the establishment of the Uniate or Eastern Catholic churches (see the sainting of Bissarion in 1950). [48]
In 2004, Pope John Paul II extended a formal apology for the sacking of Constantinople in 1204; the apology was formally accepted by Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. Many things that were stolen during this time: holy relics, riches, and many other items, are still held in various Western European cities, particularly Venice.
Byzantine Empire
The establishment of the Eastern Roman Empire
It was in the establishment of the Eastern Roman Empire by Constantine I that Christianity was legalized. Christianity as Orthodox (or those who rejected the theology of Arius) was not established as the State Religion in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire until Theodosius I convened The First Council of Constantinople or the (second ecumenical council) in 381. This council putting an end to the Arian controversy by establishing the Trinitarian doctrine.The Roman-Persian Wars
Byzantine-Arab Wars
- See also: Muslim conquests
Following the death of Muhammad in 632, there was a vigorous push by the Arab Muslims to conquer Arab tribes of the East such as the mostly Christian Ghassanids. The Byzantine-Muslim Wars were a series of wars between the Arab Muslims Caliphates and the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire. These started during the initial Muslim conquests under the Rashidun and Umayyad caliphs and continued in the form of an enduring border tussle until the beginning of the Crusades. As a result the Byzantines saw an extensive loss of territory.
The initial conflict lasted from 629-717, ending with the Second Arab Siege of Constantinople that halted the rapid expansion of the Arab Muslim Empire or Umayyad dynasty into Asia Minor. Conflicts with the Caliphate however continued between the 800s and 1169. The Muslim victories resulted in the Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus request for military aid from Pope Urban II at the Council of Piacenza in 1095; one of the events often attributed as precursors to the First Crusade.
Ottoman Empire
- See also: Treaty of San Stefano
By this time Egypt had been under Muslim control for some seven centuries. Jerusalem had been conquered by the Umayyad Muslims in 638, won back by Rome in 1099 under the First Crusade and then finally reconquered by the Ottoman Muslims in 1517.
Orthodoxy however was very strong in Russia which had recently acquired an autocephalous status; and thus Moscow called itself the Third Rome, as the cultural heir of Constantinople.
Under Ottoman rule, the Greek Orthodox Church acquired power as an autonomous millet. The ecumenical patriarch was the religious and administrative ruler of the entire "Greek Orthodox nation" (Ottoman administrative unit), which encompassed all the Eastern Orthodox subjects of the Empire.
The Ottoman Empire was marked by periods of limited tolerance and periods of often bloody repression of non-Muslims. One of the worst such episodes occurred under Yavuz Sultan Selim I.[49][50] These event include the atrocities against the Serbs in AD 1804-1878 the Greeks in AD 1814-1832 .[51] and the Bulgarian AD 1876-1877[52] to selectively name but a few instances (also see Phanariote). As well as many individual Christians being made martyrs for stating their faith or speaking negatively against Islam.[53] [54] The Janissary army corps consisted of young men who were brought to Istanbul as child-slaves (and were often from Christian households) who were converted, trained and later employed by the Sultan (the devshirme system).
)
Stavronikita monastery, South-East view
Isolation from the West
As a result of the Ottoman conquest of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, and the Fall of Constantinople, the entire Orthodox communion of the Balkans and the Near East became suddenly isolated from the West. For the next four hundred years, it would be confined within a hostile Islamic world, with which it had little in common religiously or culturally. Only the Russian Orthodox Church was the only part of the Orthodox communion which remained outside the control of the Ottoman empire. It is, in part, due to this geographical and intellectual confinement that the voice of Eastern Orthodoxy was not heard during the Reformation in sixteenth century Europe. As a result, this important theological debate often seems strange and distorted to the Orthodox; after all, they never took part in it and thus neither Reformation nor Counter-Reformation is part of their theological framework.Religious Rights Under the Ottoman Empire
- Further information: Islam and anti-Christian persecution, :Further information: Dhimmitude
The new Ottoman government that arose from the ashes of Byzantine civilization was neither primitive nor barbaric. Islam not only recognized Jesus as a great prophet, but tolerated Christians as another People of the Book. As such, the Church was not extinguished nor was its canonical and hierarchical organization completely destroyed. Its administration continued to function though in lesser degree, no longer being the state religion. One of the first things that Mehmet the Conqueror did was to allow the Church to elect a new patriarch, Gennadius Scholarius. The Hagia Sophia and the Parthenon, which had been Christian churches for nearly a millennium were, admittedly, converted into mosques, yet countless other churches, both in Constantinople and elsewhere, remained in Christian hands. They were endowed with civil as well as ecclesiastical power over all Christians in Ottoman territories. Because Islamic law makes no distinction between nationality and religion, all Christians, regardless of their language or nationality, were considered a single millet, or nation. The patriarch, as the highest ranking hierarch, was thus invested with civil and religious authority and made ethnarch, head of the entire Christian Orthodox population. Practically, this meant that all Orthodox Churches within Ottoman territory were under the control of Constantinople. Thus, the authority and jurisdictional frontiers of the patriarch were enormously enlarged.
However, these rights and privileges (see Dhimmitude), including freedom of worship and religious organization, were often established in principle but seldom corresponded to reality. The legal privileges of the patriarch and the Church depended, in fact, on the whim and mercy of the Sultan and the Sublime Porte, while all Christians were viewed as little more than second-class citizens. Moreover, Turkish corruption and brutality were not a myth. That it was the "infidel" Christian who experienced this more than anyone else is not in doubt. Nor were pogroms of Christians in these centuries unknown (see Greco-Turkish relations and Massacres during the Greek Revolution).[55] [56]Devastating, too, for the Church was the fact that it could not bear witness to Christ. Missionary work among Muslims was dangerous and indeed impossible, whereas conversion to Islam was entirely legal and permissible. Converts to Islam who returned to Orthodoxy were put to death as apostates. No new churches could be built and even the ringing of church bells was prohibited. Education of the clergy and the Christian population either ceased altogether or was reduced to the most rudimentary elements.
Corruption
The Orthodox Church found itself subject to the Turkish system of corruption. The patriarchal throne was frequently sold to the highest bidder, while new patriarchal investiture was accompanied by heavy payment to the government. In order to recoup their losses, patriarchs and bishops taxed the local parishes and their clergy. Nor was the patriarchal throne ever secure. Few patriarchs between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries died a natural death while in office. The forced abdications, exiles, hangings, drownings, and poisonings of patriarchs are well documented. But if the patriarch's position was precarious so was the hierarchy's. The hanging of patriarch Gregory V from the gate of the patriarchate on Easter Sunday 1821 was accompanied by the execution of two metropolitans and twelve bishops.Devshirmeh
Devshirmeh was the system of the collection of young boys from conquered Christian lands by the Ottoman sultans as a form of regular taxation in order to build a loyal slave army (formerly largely composed of war captives) and the class of (military) administrators called the "Janissaries", or other servants such as tellak in hamams. The word devşirme means "collecting, gathering" in Ottoman Turkish. Boys delivered to the Ottomans in this way were called ghilmán or acemi oglanlar ("novice boys").
Fall of the Ottoman Empire in the East
The fall of the Ottoman was precipiated by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox disputed possession of the Church of the Nativity and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. During the early 1850s, the two sides made demands which the Sultan could not possibly satisfy simultaneously. In 1853, the Sultan adjudicated in favour of the French, despite the vehement protestations of the local Orthodox monks. The ruling Ottoman siding with Rome over the Orthodox provoked out right war (see the Eastern Question). As the Ottoman Empire had been for sometime falling into political, social and economic decay (see the Sick Man of Europe) this conflict ignited the Crimean War in 1850 between Russia and the Ottoman Empire.Persecution by the "Young Turks"
During 1894-1923 the Ottoman Empire conducted a policy of genocide against the Christian population living within its extensive territory. The Sultan, Abdul Hamid, issued an official governmental policy of genocide against the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire in 1894. Systematic massacres took place in 1894-1896 when Abdul savagely killed 300,000 Armenians throughout the provinces. In 1909 government troops killed, in the towns of Adana alone, over 20,000 Christian Armenians.When World War I broke out, the Ottoman Empire was ruled by the "Young Turks" that allied the empire with Germany. In 20th century, the number of Orthodox Christians, and of Christians in general, in the Anatolian peninsula has sharply declined amidst complaints of Turkish governmental repression of various Eastern and Oriental Orthodox groups.[57][58]
In the first two decades of the 20th century, there were massacres of Orthodox Greeks, Slavs, and Armenians in the Ottoman empire, culminating in the Armenian Genocide,[59][60] the exodus of Pontian Greeks resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands Pontic Greeks,[61][62][63] and the near destruction of the ancient Assyrian community in Anatolia or Asia Minor.[64][65]
Eastern Orthodox Church under the Republic of Turkey
- Further information: Greco-Turkish relations, :Further information: Population exchange between Greece and Turkey
During the Lausanne Conference in 1923, the Turkish and Greek sides after some discussions accepted the proposal of a population exchange. Muslims in Greece (save the ones in Eastern Thrace) were expelled to Turkey, and Greek Orthodox people in Turkey (save the ones in Istanbul) were expelled to Greece.
In September 1955, a pogrom was directed primarily at Istanbul's 100,000-strong Greek minority.[66][67] In 1971, the Halki seminary in Istanbul was closed along with other private higher education institutions in Turkey.[68]
The modern Turkish state requires the Patriarch of Constantinople to be a Turkish citizen but allows the Synod of Constantinople to elect him.
Orthodoxy under other Muslims regimes of the Middle East
- Further information: Siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem
Russia under Muslim Mongol rule
The Eastern Catholic Churches or Byzantine Rite Churches
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The domes of a Ukrainian Catholic parish in Simpson, Pennsylvania
- Further information: Eastern Catholic Churches
Eastern Catholic Churches make up 2% of the membership of the Catholic Church, and less than 10% of all Eastern Christians. Most Eastern Catholic Churches have counterparts in other Eastern Churches, whether Assyrian or Oriental Orthodox, from whom they are separated by a number of theological differences, or the Eastern Orthodox Churches, from whom they are separated primarily by differences in understanding of the role of the Bishop of Rome within the College of Bishops.
The Eastern Catholic Churches were located historically in Eastern Europe, the Asian Middle East, Northern Africa and India, but are now, because of migration, found also in Western Europe, the Americas and Oceania.
Origins
The Eastern Catholic movement within the Antiochian church started after the Ottoman Turks conquest of Antioch in the early 15th century, under whose control it remained until the breakup of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. During this period, in 1724, the Church of Antioch was again weakened by schism, as a major portion of its faithful came into submission to the Roman Catholic Church. The resultant Uniate body is known as the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, which in the current day maintains close ties with the Orthodox and is currently holding ongoing talks about healing the schism and returning the Melkites to Orthodoxy.The Uniate movement within the Eastern Bloc of the Roman Catholic church was started in 1698 by Habsburg emperor Leopold I in his bid to assimilate the Eastern Orthodox in his territories (including Romania). The movement asked the Eastern Orthodox patriarchs to accept Papal supremacy, the unleavened Eucharist bread, the existence of purgatory and the filioque doctrine. Leopold I offered in return that the various Eastern Orthodox churches who complied would receive equal privileges with the Hapsburg Catholics, along with an exemption for the clergy from labor services and other financial duties[69].
Conflict between Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox
Since the beginnings of the Uniate movement, there have been periodic conflicts between the Orthodox and Unia in Poland and Western Russia. [70]. During the Time of Troubles there was a plan (by the conquering Polish monarchy) to convert all of Russia to Roman Catholism. Patriarch Hermogenes was martyred by the Roman Catholics during this period (see also Polish-Lithuanian-Muscovite Commonwealth).The Eastern Catholic churches consider themselves to have reconciled the East and West Schism by keeping their prayers and rituals similar to those of Eastern Orthodoxy, while also accepting the primacy of the Bishop of Rome.
Some Eastern Orthodox charge that joining in this unity comes at the expense of ignoring critical doctrinal differences and past atrocities. From the perspective of many Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Catholicism is a ploy by Roman Catholicism to undermine and ultimately destroy their church by undermining its legitimacy and absorbing it into the Roman Catholic church. It is feared that this ploy would diminish the power to the original eastern Patriarchs of the church and would require the acceptance of rejected doctrines and Scholasticism over faith. [71][72]
In the 20th century, there have been conflicts which involved forced conversions both by the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox. In Croatia, the Ustaše forced the conversion of Eastern Orthodox to Roman Catholicism. Other forced conversions included the Roman Catholics inside the USSR and Eastern Bloc after the October Revolution.[73].
Rejection of Uniatism
At a meeting in Balamand, Lebanon in June 1993, the Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church declared that these initiatives that "led to the union of certain communities with the See of Rome and brought with them, as a consequence, the breaking of communion with their Mother Churches of the East ... took place not without the interference of extra-ecclesial interests" (section 8 of the document); and that what has been called "uniatism" "can no longer be accepted either as a method to be followed nor as a model of the unity our Churches are seeking" (section 12).At the same time, the Commission stated:
- 3) Concerning the Eastern Catholic Churches, it is clear that they, as part of the Catholic Communion, have the right to exist and to act in response to the spiritual needs of their faithful.
- 16) The Oriental Catholic Churches who have desired to re-establish full communion with the See of Rome and have remained faithful to it, have the rights and obligations which are connected with this communion.
Russian Orthodox Church in the Russian Empire
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Churches of the Moscow Kremlin, as seen from the Balchug
The church was involved in the various campaigns of russification [74], and, as a consequence of that involvement, it was accused of participating in anti-Jewish pogroms.[75] [76] In the case of anti-semitism and the anti-Jewish pogroms, no evidence is given of the direct participation of the church, it is important to remember that many Russian Orthodox clerics, including senior hierarchs, openly defended persecuted Jews, at least from the second half of the nineteenth century.[77] Also, the Church has no official position on Judaism as such.[77] [78] [79] In modern times, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn has been accused of antisemitism for his book Two Hundred Years Together where he alleges Jewish participation in the political repression of the Soviet regime.[80][81] The Church was allowed to impose taxes on the peasants.
The Church, like the Tsarist state was seen as an enemy of the people by the Bolsheviks and other Russian revolutionaries.
Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union
- See also: Society of the Godless
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The Mask of Sorrow.
Before and after the October Revolution of November 7, 1917 (October 25 Old Calendar) there was a movement within the Soviet Union to unite all of the people of the world under Communist rule (see Communist International). This included the Eastern European bloc countries as well as the Balkan States. Since some of these Slavic states tied their ethnic heritage to their ethnic churches, both the peoples and their church where targeted by the Soviet and its form of State atheism.[82] [83] The Soviets' official religious stance was one of "religious freedom or tolerance", though the state established atheism as the only scientific truth (see also the Soviet or committee of the All-Union Society for the Dissemination of Scientific and Political Knowledge or Znanie which was until 1947 called the The League of the Militant Godless and various Intelligentsia groups). [84][85][86] Criticism of atheism was strictly forbidden and sometimes lead to imprisonment.[87]
The Soviet Union was the first state to have as an ideological objective the elimination of religion. Toward that end, the Communist regime confiscated church property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in the schools. Actions toward particular religions, however, were determined by State interests, and most organized religions were never outlawed. Some actions against Orthodox priests and believers along with execution included torture being sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals.[88][89] The result of this militant atheism was to transform the Church into a persecuted and martyred Church. In the first five years after the Bolshevik revolution, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed.[90]
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Christ the Savior Cathedral Moscow after reconstruction
In the Soviet Union, in addition to the methodical closing and destruction of churches, the charitable and social work formerly done by ecclesiastical authorities was taken over by the state. As with all private property, Church owned property was confiscated into public use. The few places of worship left to the Church were legally viewed as state property which the government permitted the church to use. After the advent of state funded universal education, the Church was not permitted to carry on educational, instructional activity for children. For adults, only training for church-related occupations was allowed. Outside of sermons during the celebration of the divine liturgy it could not instruct or evangelise to the faithful or its youth. Catechism classes, religious schools, study groups, Sunday schools and religious publications were all illegal and or banned. This persecution continued, even after the death of Stalin until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. This caused many religious tracts to be circulated as illegal literature or samizdat.[93] Since the fall of the Soviet Union there have been many New-martyrs added as saints from the yoke of atheism.
World War II
- Further information: Ustashe, :Further information: Jasenovac concentration camp, :Further information: Salonika
Diaspora emigration to the West
One of the most striking developments in modern historical Orthodoxy is the dispersion of Orthodox Christians to the West. Emigration from Greece and the Near East in the last hundred years has created a sizable Orthodox diaspora in Western Europe, North and South America, and Australia. In addition, the Bolshevik Revolution forced thousands of Russian exiles westward. As a result, Orthodoxy's traditional frontiers have been profoundly modified. Millions of Orthodox are no longer geographically "eastern" since they live permanently in their newly adopted countries in the West. Nonetheless, they remain Eastern Orthodox in their faith and practice. Virtually all the Orthodox nationalities - Greek, Arab, Russian, Serbian, Albanian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Bulgarian - are represented in the United States.National churches
Church of Jerusalem
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The Stone of the Anointing, believed to be the place where Jesus' body was prepared for burial. It is the 13th Station of the Cross.
Church of Antioch
The community and seat of the patriarchate according to Orthodox tradition was founded by St Peter and the given to St Ignatius), in what is now Turkey. However, in the 15th century, it was moved to the "Street called Straight" in Damascus, modern-day Syria, in response to the Ottoman invasion of Antioch. Its traditional territory includes Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and parts of Turkey.
Its North American branch is autonomous, although the Holy Synod of Antioch still appoints its head bishop, chosen from a list of three candidates nominated in the North American archdiocese. Its Australasia and Oceania branch is the largest in terms of area.
Disputes over the Christology of the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon—the Monophysite controversy—in 451 led to a schism within the Church of Antioch, which at that same council was elevated to the status of a patriarchate. The larger group at the time repudiated the council and became the Syriac Orthodox Church (also called the "Jacobites" for Jacob Baradeus, an early bishop of the group who did extensive missionary work in the region). They currently constitute part of the Oriental Orthodox communion and maintain a Christology somewhat different in language from that of Chalcedon.
The remainder of the Church of Antioch, primarily local Greeks or Hellenized sections of the indigenous population, remained in communion with Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. This is the current Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East which is considered by the other bishops of the Orthodox Church to be the sole legimate heir to the see of Antioch.
The schism of the Council at Chalcedon greatly weakened the Antiochian church, and in 637 when Antioch fell to the Muslim Arabs, the "Greek" church was perceived by the invaders as allied to the Romano-Byzantine enemies of the Arabs. During the subsequent period, Antiochian Orthodox Christians underwent a lengthy period of persecution, and there were multiple periods of either vacancy or non-residence on the Antiochian patriarchal throne during the 7th and 8th centuries. In 969, the Roman Empire regained control of Antioch, and the church there prospered again until 1085, when the Seljuk Turks took the city. During this period of more than a hundred years, the traditional West Syrian liturgy of the church was gradually replaced by that of the tradition of the Great Church, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. This process was completed sometime in the 12th century.
Crusader and Muslim conquests
In 1098, Crusaders took the city and set up a Latin Patriarchate of Antioch to adorn its Latin Kingdom of Syria, while a Greek patriarchate continued in exile in Constantinople. After nearly two centuries of Crusader rule, the Egyptian Mamelukes seized Antioch in 1268, and the Orthodox patriarch, Theodosius IV, was able to return to the region. By this point, Antioch itself had been reduced to a smaller town, and so in the 14th century Ignatius II transferred the seat of the patriarchate to Damascus, where it remains to this day, though the patriarch retains the Antiochian title.
The Ottoman Turks conquered the city in 1517, under whose control it remained until the breakup of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. During this period, in 1724, the Church of Antioch was again weakened by schism, as a major portion of its faithful came into submission to the Roman Catholic Church. The resultant Uniate body is known as the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, which in the current day maintains close ties with the Orthodox and is currently holding ongoing talks about healing the schism and returning the Melkites to Orthodoxy.
By the 18th century the great majority of the communicants of the Antiochian church were Arabs. In 1898 the last Greek patriarch was deposed, and an Arab successor was elected in 1899. Thus the patriarchate became fully Arab in character. A strong renewal movement, involving Orthodox youth in particular, has been under way since the 1940s.[94]
Church of Greece
- See also: Megali Idea
Influenced by the French Revolution's explosive ideas, Greece was the first to break the Turkish yoke, winning its independence early in the 19th century in the Greek War of Independence. Before long, a synod of bishops declared the Church of the new Kingdom of Greece autocephalous. The new Greek nation, in short, could not be headed by the patriarch. Indeed, Greece's autocephalous status, recognized by Constantinople in 1850, meant that it could elect its own head or kephale. The Church of Greece is today governed by a Holy Synod presided over by the Archbishop of Athens.
Church of Cyprus
Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Church of Cyprus has been engaged in a struggle between rejoining the mainland Church of Greece, being reunited with the Turkish Empire and independence.Church of Egypt in Alexandra
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St Mark
Sometimes called the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria to distinguish it from the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria. In Egypt, members of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate were also called Melkite, because they remained in communion with the Patriarch of Constantinople.
Since the schism occurring as a result of the political and Christological controversies at the Council of Chalcedon (451), the Greek Orthodox have liturgically been Greek-speaking. After the Arab conquest of North Africa in the 7th century the Eastern Orthodox were a minority even among Christians, and remai