Category: Church History
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St. Kassia and the Mary Magdalene Complex
by Thomas Arentzen | български | ქართული | ελληνικά | Română | Русский | Српски It seems to me, we live in Kassiani times. Holy Week is approaching and with it the singing of the sticheron on the sinful woman, followed shortly by the Holy Saturday kanon, which is at least partly by the same […]
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How Origen Exposes Our Ecclesiastical Delusions
by Ambrose Andreano | български | ქართული | Ελληνικά | Русский | Српски If one were to put all my essays having to do with Origen in a single document, it would be about two hundred pages of material. I also did multiple (AFR) podcast episodes on Sts. Basil and Gregory the Theologian’s Philocalia of […]
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Culture Wars Are Not Our Wars
by Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun | български | ქართული | Ελληνικά | Српски American society is polarized to an extent that one can hardly recall. It is as if we have entered a cold civil war. There is another name for this war: culture war, which is a literal translation of the German Kulturkampf. Culture wars […]
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Encouragement from the Desert Mothers in Troubling Times
by V.K. McCarty | български | Ελληνικά | Română | Русский “In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35). Jesus may have prayed about several of the things that worry us today: the feeling that the world has […]
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“Remember, O Lord…”: Liturgy, History, and Communion Spoons in a Time of Pandemic
by Daniel Galadza | ελληνικά | ру́сский In recent weeks, Church authorities have been looking for historical precedent to find ways of continuing ministry to the faithful and maintaining worship in churches during a time of global pandemic—because, as others have pointed out, closing houses of worship and ceasing to serve the Liturgy is not […]
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Pope Francis’s Relic Diplomacy
by George Demacopoulos In June of 594, Pope Gregory the Great received a letter from Constantina, the empress, asking him to send the head of St. Paul to Constantinople so that she and others might benefit from venerating the bodily remains of such a great saint. St. Gregory denied the request, noting that it was […]
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On the Toll Houses Again: A Byzantinist’s Thoughts
by Eirini Afentoulidou David Bentley Hart’s recent article on the toll houses is very welcome in that the discussion has turned away from refuting the occasional “pro-toller” to a scholarly and detached examination of texts and contexts and the theological implications of their worldview. I do not intend to explain that the notion of the […]
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Studying Byzantine Cappadocia
by Elizabeth Zanghi This past June, I visited Cappadocia in central Turkey. It was my second trip to the region, and it certainly won’t be my last, as I have decided to focus on Cappadocian art history in graduate school. “Why Cappadocia?” I am frequently asked. The best way to answer that question is to […]