| John Anthony McGuckin Africa, Orthodoxy in JUSTIN M. LASSER Christianity on the African continent begins its story, primarily, in four separate locales: Alexandrine and Coptic Egypt, the North African region surrounding the city of Carthage, Nubia, and the steppes of Ethiopia. The present synopsis will primarily address the trajectories of the North African Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and the Nubian Orthodox Church. The affairs of Christian Alexandria and the Coptic regions have their own treatments elsewhere in the encyclopedia. ROMAN-COLONIAL NORTH AFRICA After the Romans sacked the city of Carthage in 146 during the Third Punic War, they began a sustained colonizing campaign that slowly transformed the region (modern Tunisia and Libya) into a partially “Romanized” society. In most instances, however, the cultural transformations were superficial, affecting predominantly the trade languages and local power structures. It was Julius Caesar who laid the plans for Carthage’s reemergence as Colonia Junonia in 44 bce. This strong colonial apparatus made North African Christians especially susceptible to persecution by the Roman authorities on the Italian Peninsula. Because the economic power of Carthage was an essential ingredient in the support of the citizens in the city of Rome, the Romans paid careful attention to the region. The earliest extant North African Christian text, the Passion of the Scillitan Martyrs (180 ce), reflects a particularly negative estimation of the Roman authorities. Saturninus, the Roman proconsul, made this appeal to the African Christians: “You can win the indulgence of our ruler the Emperor, if you return to a sensible mind.” The Holy Martyr Speratus responded by declaring: “The empire of this world I know not; but rather I serve that God, whom no one has seen, nor with these eyes can see. I have committed no theft; but if I have bought anything I pay the tax; because I know my Lord, the King of kings and Emperor of all nations.” This declaration was a manifestation of what the Roman authorities feared most about the Christians – their proclamation of a “rival” emperor, Jesus Christ, King of kings. The Holy Martyr Donata expressed that sentiment most clearly: “Honor to Caesar as Caesar: but fear to God.” Within the Roman imperial fold such declarations were not merely interpreted as “religious” expressions, but political challenges. As a result the Roman authorities executed the Scillitan Christians, the proto-martyrs of Africa. Other such persecutions formed the character and psyche of North African Christianity. It became and remained a “persecuted” church in mentality, even after the empire was converted to Christianity. |
| John Anthony McGuckin Bulgaria, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of STAMENKA E. ANTONOVA The Bulgarian state was established in 681 CE by Khan Asparuch (681–700) on the territory of the Roman imperial provinces of Thrace and Illyria to the south of the Danube river. Khan Asparuch was the leader of the Bulgars, who were Turanian nomads originating from Central Asia, who first led his people across the Danube into territory of the Roman Empire, and then established a long line of successors. In addition to the Bulgars, who possessed warlike tendencies and initiated later expeditions and territorial expansions, there were also Slavs who had been gradually immigrating and settling in the same region from the beginning of the 6th century. In spite of the fact that the Slavs were more numerous than the Bulgars, the latter gained hegemony due to their more aggressive policies. In 681 the Byzantine Empire was compelled to negotiate a peace treaty with Khan Asparuch and to legitimize the claims to power and territory by the immigrant population. In spite of the fact that a peace treaty was made, however, the Bulgars continued to pose a challenge to Byzantine authority. In 811 Khan Krum (803–14) defeated and killed the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus I (802–11), after an unsuccessful attempt on the part of the emperor to vanquish the new state. In 813 Khan Krum defeated Emperor Michael I, in addition to sacking the city of Adrianople and advancing as far as the walls of the city of Constantinople. After the sudden death of Kahn Krum, his successors Khan Omurtag (814–31) and Khan Malamir (831–52) agreed terms with the Byzantine Empire, and stopped the expansion of the Bulgar state to the east, turning instead to Macedonia and territories westward. Although there were pockets of Christians in the new Bulgar state from its inception, they were not only marginal in number but were also suspected by the political leaders as having allegiance to the emperor at Constantinople. In addition to the local Christians (who were indeed under the influence of Byzantine Christian civilization at the time), the Bulgars and the Slavs followed ancestral religious practices and worshipped the sky-god Tengri. Most of the hostile attitude toward Christianity in this era was primarily due to the Bulgars’ fear of Byzantine imperialism and the possibility of strengthening Byzantine influence among the more numerous Slavs. As a result, when Khan Omurtag’s son Enravotas converted to Christianity, he was executed publicly along with others in 833. In order to protect the political and religious integrity of the Bulgar state, Khan Omurtag also formed an alliance with the Frankish Kingdom against Byzantium. |
| John Anthony McGuckin Constantinople, Patriarchate of JOHN A. MCGUCKIN The patriarch of Constantinople is today rooted in the ancient former capital city of the Roman Empire (not Rome, but after the 4th-century Christian ascent to power, “New Rome” or Constantine’s City, Konstantinopolis). The city retained the ancient name of Constantinople until the early decades of the 20th century when Ataturk, signaling new beginnings after the fall of the Ottoman sultans whose capital it had also been, changed the name to Istanbul (originally another Greek Christian shorthand for “To the City” – eis tin polin) and at the same time moved the capital of Turkey to Ankara. After the rise of Turkish nationalism, and the disastrous Greco-Turkish War of the early decades of the 20th century (reflected, for example, in Kazantzakis’ novel Christ Recrucified), Constantinople, which had always been a major hub of world affairs, and a massively cosmopolitan city, changed into becoming a monochromatic backwater. The many religious communities that had remained there even after its fall to Islam in the 15th century dwindled, until today, demographically, Orthodox church life in that once great metropolis is a sad shadow of what it once was. From the foundation of the city as a Christian hub of the Eastern Empire by Constantine in the early 4th century, the city was the center of a great and burgeoning Christian empire: the Christian style and culture of Byzantium made its presence felt all over the world, from the Saxons of England, to the Slavs of the cold North, to the southern plateaux of Ethiopia. The Great Imperial Church (once the cathedral church of the patriarchate, too) was Hagia Sophia. After the conquest of the city by Islamic forces in 1453, the last emperor was killed and Byzantine dynastic rule was ended, and the patriarchate took over (under the sultans) political and religious supervision of all the Christians of the large Ottoman dominion. Under Mehmet II and his successors, many churches in Constantinople were seized as mosques. It had lost the Great Church of Hagia Sophia at the time of the conquest, but was also later ousted from the large headquarters of St. Mary Pammakaristos. After many vicissitudes and sufferings, the patriarchate came in 1603 to be established in its present location in the very modest Church of St. George at the Phanar in Istanbul. |
| Michael Prokurat, Alexander Golitzin, Michael D. Peterson Скачать epub pdf CHURCH AND STATE CHURCH AND STATE. Until the 19th-c. rise of nationalism and the consequent appearance of state churches, and with the notable exception of Russia and certain earlier local churches (e.g., Armenia, Georgia [qq.v.], etc.), the understanding of the state in the Orthodox Church had been governed by the latter’s relationship to the two great Empires, Roman and Ottoman (qq.v.), which dominated the eastern Mediterranean basin for two millennia. Early Christian attitudes to the Roman Empire oscillated, depending on persecutions, between seeing the emperor and his imperium as the providential guardians of law and order (e.g., Rom 12 ), or else as the agents of the devil and the antichrist (e.g., Rev). The imperial cult of the emperor’s spirit or genius was, of course, consistently resisted. Radical change came with the accession to power of Constantine the Great (q.v.). Eusebius of Caesarea (q.v.), in numerous writings including his Church History and especially his oration In Praise of Constantine, sketched the outlines which would become the official, political theology of Byzantium (q.v.). This held that the Empire was a providential gift, intended by God to stretch across the oikoumene (q.v.; or “inhabited earth”) and to parallel the universal Church of Christ, to become in short the secular arm or reflection of the Church. The emperor, while no longer divine, was presented as the “image of Christ,” i.e., in Christ’s capacity as governor and ordering power of the universe (pantacrator). In a famous phrase, Constantine therefore called himself the “bishop” or overseer of the Church’s outer life-in effect, its chief executive officer-though he never claimed the right to define its faith. (See Caesaropapism.) Some two centuries later, Justinian (q.v.) articulated the doctrine of “symphony”: imperium and sacerdotium coexist as the mutually complementary and supporting aspects of a single Christian polity, with the emperor seeing to its good order and defending its orthodoxy and the bishops retaining full authority (q.v.) for Christian teaching and discipline, and in particular the exclusive right to pronounce on the truth or falsity of doctrine. It was thus the emperor’s general duty to enforce the standards of the Church and, in times of doctrinal debate and imperial crisis, to convoke a universal synod of the episcopate, the Ecumenical Council (q.v.), for a decision on the disputed issues. While this was the theory, the practice depended on the relative strengths of the different emperors, patriarchs, and bishops, and, not least of all, the influence of the monks as a third and often very powerful element. |
| I. Император Константин и христианство Александр Дворкин. Очерки по истории Вселенской Православной Церкви. Литература: Walker; Карташев А. Вселенские соборы. Париж, 1963; Chadwick; Runciman S. Byzantine Civilization. N.Y., 1956; Runciman S. The Byzantine Theocracy. Cambridge, 1977; Meyendorff J. Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions. N.Y., 1989; Meyendorff J. The Orthodox Church; Шмеман, Исторический путь; Болотов; Ostrogorsky G. History of the Byzantine State. New Jersey, 1969; Vasiliev A.A. History of the Byzantine Empire (2 vols.). Wisconsin, 1952; Jones A.H.M. The Later Roman Empire (2 vols.). Baltimore, 1986; Previte-Orton C.W. The Shorter Cambridge Medieval History (2 vols.). Cambridge, 1982. 1. Обращение Константина - поворотный момент в истории Церкви и Европы. Оно значило гораздо больше, чем просто завершение эпохи гонений. Император - суверенный самодержец - немедленно и неизбежно оказался вовлеченным в развитие Церкви, и, соответственно, Церковь оказалась все более и более втянутой в принятие важных политических решений. Радикальная трансформация, которой в IV в. подверглись отношения христианской Церкви и римского государства, всегда была предметом особого внимания ученых и исследователей, пытавшихся определить последствия ее для государства и Церкви. Когда государство прекратило преследовать христиан, изменилось ли оно фундаментально? Или на самом деле изменилась Церковь? Интересно, что в западной историографии отношение к обращению Константина было куда более двойственным, чем в восточной. Согласно старому - еще со средних веков - традиционному взгляду, императоры внезапно преобразились из гонителей в «равноапостольных», и все, что они делали с тех пор, было в соответствии с Евангелием. Однако западные либеральные теологи, в Особенности протестантские историки XIX в., считали, что христианство было настолько порабощено государством и настолько отравлено проникновением в него в IV в. элементов язычества, что это равнялось измене евангельской Благой Вести. В конечном итоге, были ли последствия деятельности Константина на пользу Церкви или они изменили ее изнутри, направив ее по ложному пути? |
| A Homily offered by Deacon Michael Schlaack on the Strength of the Faith of the Centurion This morning’s Gospel reading teaches a very important lesson about salvation: It is not who you are, but how you believe that will ultimately determine your place in God’s Kingdom. The account tells us that Jesus encounters a Centurion in the city of Capernaum. The soldier, a Gentile, approaches the Lord concerning his slave who is paralyzed and, in St. Luke’s telling of this account, the slave is near death. Now if the story had stopped at this point it would have still been very remarkable due to the fact that the Centurion, an officer in the Roman army, was the muscle that enforced the oppressive rule of the Roman Empire against the people of Palestine. One would conclude that the Centurion’s plea to Christ was nothing more than a last-ditch effort to cure his beloved servant. But as with all of the Gospels, the true meaning behind the story goes beyond the act of the physical healing. So often our contemplation about the miracles of Christ recorded in the Gospels are limited to physical realm. We read about the miraculous, “long-distance” physical healing of the Centurion’s servant, and become satisfied that we fully understand the meaning behind the today’s account. Yes, the physical healing was important; to the Centurion as well as to the servant. I am sure that those who had the privilege of observing this event certainly benefitted as well from the miraculous physical healing. But it is because of the greater miracle for which Jesus commends the Centurion: The strength of his faith. In his commentary on this passage, St. John Chrysostom commented that the faith displayed by the Centurion was even greater than that shown by the four friends who lowered the sick man’s cot through the opening in the roof to place the friend in the presence of Jesus, as recorded in Saints Mark’s and Luke’s Gospels. The Centurion’s faith was so great that he did not need to have his sick servant brought into the physical presence of Christ. The Centurion’s prayer was heard and granted…and the servant was completely healed at that very moment. |
| John Anthony McGuckin Antioch, Patriarchate of JOHN A. MCGUCKIN Antioch has a glorious Christian past. It was here that one of the most vibrant Christian communities in the apostolic age sprang up, and here that the first tentative workings out of the relation between Jewish and Gentile disciples of Jesus took place. The Apostle Peter was based here as a leader of the church community before he moved towards his martyrdom at Rome, and many scholars believe that it was in this church also that the Gospel of Matthew received its final editing and arrangement in the Greek text. It was one of the main cities of the international Christian world, third-ranking city of the Roman Empire (after Rome and Alexandria), site of great achievements and momentous struggles, with several martyrdoms during the time of the Roman persecutions, that made it feature high in the calendar of the saints. But the advances of Islam from the 7th century onwards left Antioch’s Christian civilization in a state of slow suffocation. It was also vulnerable to sociopolitical changes because of the way its ecclesiastical territories (those churches that looked to Antioch for guidance and which followed its traditions) were so widely scattered and into such impassable mountain territory, which made communication so hard to sustain but so easily disrupted. Several of Antioch’s greatest theologians have left their mark on the church’s universal patristic tradition: writers such as Mar Theodore the Interpreter (of Mopsuestia), St. John Chrysostom, Mar John of Antioch, Theodoret of Cyr, and numerous ascetics and saints such as Sadhona, or Isaac of Niniveh. The cultural and theological sphere of influence exercised by the Syrian Church in its time of glory was much greater than the (very large) extent of its ancient territories. The Syrian ritual gave the substructure to the Byzantine liturgical rite, for example. It was also the Syrians who perfected the art of setting poetic synopses of Scripture to sung melodies. The church’s greatest poets such as Ephrem and Romanos the Melodist were Syrians who taught this theological style to Byzantium and prepared the way for the glories of medieval Orthodox liturgical chant. The Syrian Church, especially in its Golden |
| John Anthony McGuckin Rome, Ancient Patriarchate of BRENDA LLEWELLYN IHSSEN By the 5th century a system of pentarchy existed among the apostolic sees of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. Though the patriarchates of Rome and Constantinople would eventually enter into periods of dispute and eventually schism, the ancient patriarchate of Rome was, in the first millennium of Christianity, held in high regard as a significantly important see due to multiple factors: the city of Rome was an early recipient of the Christian message; Rome was an apostolic foundation; it was a city where the foremost of the apostles, Peter and Paul, visited; it was where they were martyred; and it is where their bodies remain to this day. Rome was also a city noted for edifying resistance to Roman oppression on the part of many Christians, for the development of poor-relief programs, for strong resistance to internal schism and heresy, for lively theological discussion, and as an early model of noteworthy leadership for the international church. All of these factors would be significant in the initial development of the ancient patriarchate of Rome and contributed to the development of papal theory. ROMAN CHRISTIANITY AND APOSTOLIC FOUNDATION IN THE FIRST CENTURIES As the capital, Rome was a city of primary importance in a largely urban empire that was in the process of transforming itself in the 1st century. With a population of roughly half a million inhabitants, and with both people and philosophies arriving frequently, Rome was a natural goal. Evidence suggests that Christianity arrived in the city shortly after the death of Jesus, likely arriving in the 40s due in part to the migration of Jews as merchants, immigrants, or prisoners from Syria and Palestine to the Trastevere, the Jewish quarter of Rome. The constant flow of individuals, ideas, and influence between Rome and Jerusalem attests to the close relationship that the two cities shared prior to the rise of Christianity, a relationship that aided in the development of an immigrant Christianity when it arrived (Vinzent 2007). |
| Thomas E. FitzGerald 1. THE ORTHODOX CHURCH: AN INTRODUCTION Orthodox Christians in America today believe that their church had its origins not in this country but in the land of Palestine nearly 2,000 years ago. This unique community of faith was established by Jesus Christ in a public manner with the call of the first apostles in Galilee. This community of believers was enlivened by the Holy Spirit on the first Pentecost when the apostles and disciples were empowered to begin their missionary activity. This is described in the Book of Acts of the Apostles. Orthodox Christians in America today remember that the first Christians were faithful to the commandment of Christ to preach the gospel to all peoples. Guided by the Holy Spirit, they set out to establish Christian communities in the cities of the Mediterranean world and beyond. These first communities became the bases from which other missionaries went forth to spread the gospel of Christ to the wide varieties of peoples in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Christian communities speaking languages such as Aramaic, Syriac, Greek, Coptic, and Latin came into being despite persecution from the pagan Roman government during the first three centuries of the Christian era. The early Christians knew that their faith was a universal one, not to be confined to a particular place, people, or time. In the early fourth century, the governmental persecution ceased, and in 381 Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, whose capital had been moved to Constantinople in 324. The cessation of persecution led to greater missionary activity, a flowering of liturgical rites, and greater reflection upon the apostolic faith. Orthodox Christians in America today claim to profess the same apostolic faith that was preached by the apostles and other early Christian missionaries. Orthodox Christians claim to confess and teach this faith without addition or diminution. Rooted in God " s own revelation as manifested most especially in the person and activity of Christ, this apostolic faith expresses the fundamental affirmations about the Trinitarian God and his relationship to human persons and the rest of the creation. 1 EASTERN AND WESTERN CHRISTIANITY |
| Tweet Нравится Saints Piran and Constantine of Cornwall Dmitry Lapa St. Piran " s Church in Perranarworthal, Cornwall (source - Geograph.org.uk) Cornwall is an English county and an ancient Celtic region in the extreme southwest of England. It is washed by the Celtic Sea (part of the Atlantic Ocean between the southern coast of Ireland and western Brittany) to the north and west, by the English Channel to the south. Cornwall borders the county of Devon in the east over the River Tamar. It is unknown exactly when Orthodoxy was first brought to Cornwall. According to unreliable medieval legends, St. Joseph of Arimathea may have visited Cornwall together with the Infant Christ. There is no evidence at all to confirm this, but Joseph was a trader and Cornwall has been famous for its tin since time immemorial, so it is not completely impossible. However, in the fourth century Orthodoxy of the “Roman-British” variety was legalized throughout Britain, as elsewhere in the Roman Empire. In the fifth century the first monks arrived in Cornwall and the whole region gradually became Christian. There were many missionaries from Ireland and Wales, as well. St. Piran " s cross at Perranzabuloe, Cornwall Although a small region, Cornwall over its Orthodox period produced roughly between fifty and sixty individual saints who can be identified, but their number may be greater, given the existence of many obscure saints. Cornwall remained in the Celtic tradition of Orthodoxy and independent from the rest of England more or less until the tenth century. After the Norman Conquest it became Roman Catholic, as all other parts of Britain. The Bible was not translated into the Cornish language until quite recently, and that is why the language has died out, although attempts have been made to revive it. In the nineteenth century, Cornwall was under the strong influence of Methodism, but a liturgical revival began approximately 100 years ago. Today nearly every town and village of Cornwall has its own patron saint, and there are over 100 holy wells in Cornwall (on average, each English county has three or four local saint, and the number of wells is considerably lower also). Lives of many Cornish early saints were well researched by the Anglican hagiographer Gilbert Hunter Doble (1880-1945) and by our contemporary Prof. Nicholas Orme from University of Exeter. Let us now talk about two saints of Cornwall, one of whom was Irish but moved to evangelize Cornwall, and the other one who was Cornish but left his native land to preach in faraway Scotland. They are Sts. Piran (feast: March 5/18) and Constantine (feast: March 9/22). |
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