OrthodoxHistory.org

Earlier this week, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch, Yusuf al-Absi, gave a very significant speech at an event celebrating the publication of a volume about the history of the so-called “Zo...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2024/04/12/melkite-catholic-identity-and-relations-with-orthodoxy/

Last week, the World Russian People’s Council, chaired by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, issued a document called “The Present and Future of the Russian World.” The document contains several p...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2024/04/02/st-john-maximovitch-russian-diaspora/

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is undoubtedly one of the most consequential figures in modern Orthodox history – not only the longest-tenured Patriarch of Constantinople ever, but also a man ...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2024/03/07/the-ecclesiology-of-ecumenical-patriarch-bartholomew-over-time/

For a while now, I’ve been documenting the close relationship between the U.S. government and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras in the early years of the Cold War. It was thanks in large part to...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2024/02/15/athenagoras-the-ep-is-not-an-orthodox-vatican/

The 1923 Pan-Orthodox Congress is most (in)famous for proposing the Revised Julian (“New”) Calendar, which was subsequently adopted by many (but far from all) of the world’s Orthodox Church...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2024/02/05/meletios-metaxakiss-support-for-st-tikhon/

The following is a translation from Asad Rustum’s History, vol. 3 pp. 357-362. It is not only interesting in terms of the description of the ceremony, but also because the conversion seems to ...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2024/01/29/a-non-chalcedonian-bishop-converts-to-orthodoxy-in-1912/

In 1894, Pope Leo XIII issued a papal encyclical on the “Eastern Rites” — that is, the Uniates, those groups who use ancient Orthodox liturgical rites but submit themselves to the Pope of R...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2024/01/23/st-raphael-hawaweeny-vs-the-pope-of-rome/

Antony Bashir arrived in America in 1922, as a 24-year-old archdeacon. He and Archimandrite Victor Abo-Assaly were accompanying the Antiochian Metropolitan Gerasimos Messara, who was ostensibly c...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2024/01/10/son-of-antioch-the-american-ministry-of-metropolitan-antony-bashir/

On October 22, 1991, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew was enthroned in Istanbul. As far as I can tell, his enthronement speech has never been published in English, although a broadcast of the ent...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2023/12/18/patriarch-bartholomews-enthronement-speech/

The following remarkable letter appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on March 18, 1915. It offers a well-informed but obviously partisan perspective on the Orthodox reality in America and global...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2023/10/02/amazing-1915-letter-on-jurisdictionalism-in-american-orthodoxy/

If you search the internet for Orthodoxy and Freemasonry, most of what you’ll find will be condemnations of the movement. You might also find my 2012 article on Freemasonry in American Orthodox...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2023/09/27/freemasonry-and-the-orthodox-church/

Holy Trinity Publications, out of Jordanville, NY, has just published a book that will surely be of interest to many readers of this website: Glorified in America: Laborers in the New World from...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2023/08/17/new-book-on-american-orthodox-saints/

It almost goes without saying that the Orthodox world is a mess right now. The situation in Ukraine alone is a disaster: a Russian invasion of the country backed by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, pe...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2023/07/19/how-did-orthodoxy-get-into-this-mess/

The history of Orthodoxy in 19th century Greece is extraordinarily complicated. Beginning with the Greek Revolution in 1821, the Church of Greece began to detach itself from the Ecumenical Patria...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2023/05/10/the-condemnation-of-unauthorized-orthodox-teachers-in-19th-century-greece/

There is not universal agreement about the manner in which converts are received into the Orthodox Church. In some Orthodox jurisdictions, all converts are received via baptism and chrismation, r...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2023/05/04/fr-seraphim-rose-and-corrective-baptism/

The Greek term typically translated as “Church” in the English New Testament (ekklesia, which can also mean “assembly”) is used throughout the Greek Old Testament to refer to the gatherin...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2023/03/28/a-patriarchate-is-not-a-church/

Last fall, I spoke at a conference at Hellenic College-Holy Cross, commemorating the centennial of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. I’ve already posted my main paper from that confere...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2023/03/23/patriarch-athenagoras-the-cia-and-the-state-department/

In the fall, I visited Hellenic College-Holy Cross (where I delivered this paper on the EP’s “barbarian lands” theory), and while I was on campus, I took the opportunity to visit the school...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2023/03/23/classified-british-documents-on-meletios-metaxakis/

Fr. Paul Kedrolivansky died on the evening of June 18, 1878, in the prison hospital in San Francisco, the victim of an apparent blow to the head. Since December 1870, Kedrolivansky had been the d...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2023/03/20/murder-in-san-francisco-the-mysterious-death-of-fr-paul-kedrolivansky/

Some people think of nineteenth century Russia as an idealized Orthodox society – Holy Russia, a civilization on par with the golden age of the Byzantine Empire as a bastion of Orthodoxy. The r...

https://orthodoxhistory.org/2023/02/22/the-unholy-side-of-holy-russia/