Great Church

English Etymology en grc-koi μεγάλη ἐκκλησία. In sense of “orthodox Christian church”, cf. Celsus (2nd century) describing mainstream Christian believers, quoted in Origen, Contra Celsum, 5.59: “grc Σαφῶς γε τῶν ἀπὸ μεγάλης ἐκκλησίας τοῦτο ὁμολογούντων ” (“Certainly, the members of the Great Church agree ”). Proper noun Great Church 1 en historical The orthodox Christian church of antiquity, after 380 the established church of the Roman Empire, especially as distinct from smaller Christian movements or heresies. en 1981 w:Christopher Butler 104 The Theology of Vatican II revised Such was the view held within the Great Church of the third and fourth centuries, from which all our existing forms of Christianity can trace their descent. en 1991 W. Montgomery Watt William Montgomery Watt Muslim–Christian Encounters: Perceptions and Misperceptions 1 Round about AD 600 there was a main body of Christians constituting the Great Church, which later divided into the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant churches of today; but there were also important bodies of Christians who had been expelled from the Great Church as heretics, notably those often known as the Monophysites (Jacobites and Copts) and the Nestorians. en 1995 1989 w:Aloys Grillmeier; Theresia Hainthaler John Cawte; Pauline Allen Christ in Christian Tradition 2/2 1 Although Chalcedon seemed to offer the possibility of their reconciliation with the Great Church, this hope was not fulfilled. en historical Hagia Sophia before the fall of the Byzantine Empire or one of the churches that previously occupied its site, the Great Church of Constantinople. en 1975 Robert F. Taft The Great Entrance: A History of the Transfer of Gifts and Other Pre-anaphoral Rites of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom 33 We must remember that the Byzantine rite is basically the rite of the Great Church, and in a cathedral the size of Hagia Sophia to have done all this in the church itself just before the transfer of gifts would have taken an enormous amount of time. en 1990 w:Kallistos Ware Eastern Christendom The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity 123 The ‘Great Church’, as it was called, standing at the heart of the city of Constantinople, may serve as a fitting visual symbol of Eastern Christendom. en 2000 Wendy Mayer; Pauline Allen John Chrysostom 42 At Constantinople, on the other hand, it appears that the bishop of the city, while based at the Great Church, preached according to a developed system in other churches of the city also. en Eastern Orthodoxy The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. en 1968 w:Steven Runciman The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence en 2002 Paul Robert Magocsi Historical Atlas of Central Europe 1907 revised Central Europe and eastern Europe (Muscovy/Russia) came under the jurisdiction of the so-called Great Church, or Patriarchate of Constantinople (the New Rome) en 2010 Eleonora Naxidou The Transition from Ecumenical Tradition to a Multinational Perspective: The Historical Evolution of the Orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire Empires and Peninsulas: Southeastern Europe Between Karlowitz and the Peace of Adrianople, 1699–1829 149 The Great Church managed to regain its essentially ecumenical character that was challenged in the Middle Ages by the ecclesiastical independence of Ohrid, Peć and Tărnovo. Usage notes orthodox church of antiquity Historians of Christianity seeking to take a neutral or critical position towards claims of orthodoxy may avoid the term “Great Church” or qualify it with quotation marks. en Christianity Organizations