Category: Global Orthodoxy
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An Interview with Meletios Metaxakis
In the spring of 1919, Meletios Metaxakis was the Metropolitan of Athens and primate of the Church of Greece. World War I had ended the year before, and the Great Powers were still sorting out what the world would look like going forward. On April 27, 1919, the Atlanta Constitution published a long article summarizing…
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St John of Kronstadt’s Surprising Respect for Anglicanism
W.J. Birkbeck was a living bridge between Orthodoxy and Anglicanism at the turn of the last century. An Englishman, he fell in love with Russia and spent huge amounts of time there, developing contacts with pretty much every major figure in the Russian Orthodox Church. He visited monasteries and village churches, elders, bishops, Tsar Nicholas…
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The Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Loss of Its ‘Privileges’ in the Late 19th Century
For over a year now, I’ve been telling the story of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the nineteenth century. Here are the previous articles I wrote on the subject: The Ecumenical Patriarchate at the Mercy of the Sultan (1821 to 1835) The Patriarch Who Defied the Ottoman Empire (1835 to 1840) The Ecumenical Patriarchate on the…
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The Georgian Patriarch’s Rebuke of St Tikhon
For centuries, the Orthodox Church in Georgia was autocephalous, with its own Patriarch (also known as “Catholicos”). In fact, for a long time there were actually two autocephalous Georgian Churches, one in the east and one in the west, each led by its own Catholicos-Patriarch. In 1783, the King of Kartli (the eastern kingdom) entered…
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The Origins of the ‘Barbarian Lands’ Theory
This paper was originally presented at the conference “The Greek Archdiocese at 100 Years,” Hellenic College-Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, October 7, 2022. I am indebted to numerous friends and colleagues who reviewed the paper in advance and provided feedback. I am especially grateful to M., who provided original translations of the 1908…
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Who Had Jurisdiction Over the Diaspora in 1907?
As readers of this website surely know, a large Greek diaspora emerged at the turn of the last century, with hundreds of thousands of Greeks (and other Orthodox Christians) emigrating from their homelands, particularly to the United States. These new immigrants established churches that were loosely tied to various Old Country hierarchies — some looked…
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The War of the Two Kyrilloses
On May 22, 1900, Archbishop Sophronios II of Cyprus died. This left just two bishops in the entire Church of Cyprus – the Metropolitan of Kition and the Metropolitan of Kyrenia. Both of these men were named Kyrillos. They would spend the next nine years vying for the Archiepiscopal throne. As one contemporary writer, Adrian…
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Romanian Autocephalies & the Birth of the Modern Patriarchate of Romania
Today I’m going to try to tell the story of how the Romanian Orthodox Churches became independent. You’ll notice that I said “Churches,” not “Church” – that’s because, in the 19th century, there were no fewer than three distinct, independent Romanian Orthodox Churches: The “Danubian Principalities” of Wallachia (aka Muntenia, in the south of modern…
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When Did Today’s Autocephalous Churches Come into Being?
The oldest autocephalous church in the world attained its current form in 1845. Today, depending on whom you ask, there are fourteen or fifteen or maybe sixteen (or seventeen?) autocephalous Orthodox Churches in the world. In dispute are the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), which everyone accepts as canonical but most churches don’t accept as…
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The Athens Gospel Riots of 1901
At the end of the 19th century, the Russian-born Queen Olga of Greece commissioned her private secretary to translate the four Gospels into Modern Greek to make them more accessible to the ordinary laypeople. In December 1898, the secretary completed this project, and the Queen presented the translation to the Holy Synod of Greece for…