Orthodox History

There’s a Piece of the True Cross at the Truman Library in Missouri

Yesterday, I published an article about the ouster of Ecumenical Patriarch Maximos V. In that article, I mentioned that on February 10, 1947, the Greek Archbishop Athenagoras awarded President Harry Truman with a piece of the True Cross. I tracked down the cross, and it turns out that Truman held...

Ousting the Ecumenical Patriarch: the removal of Maximos V according to CIA records

World War II ended in 1945, and immediately, the United States and the Soviet Union began jockeying for leadership in the postwar world. The Soviets swept as many countries as possible into their orbit; meanwhile, the United States adopted the Truman Doctrine, a foreign policy based on the containment of...

Greek Archbishop to proto-CIA: “Your directions will be executed faithfully.”

It's long been an open secret that Patriarch Athenagoras' election as Ecumenical Patriarch was arranged, or at least facilitated, by the United States government. It's difficult to write about this as an historian, though, because smoking guns for that kind of thing tend to be kept under wraps. Occasionally, though,...

A Tour of the Orthodox World at the Turn of the 20th Century: The Serbian Churches

In 1908, a Roman Catholic priest and writer, Adrian Fortescue, published his landmark book The Orthodox Eastern Church, presenting Orthodoxy to the English-speaking world through the eyes of a very well-informed but also very papist Roman Catholic from England. In one section of the book, Fortescue surveys the Orthodox world, telling...

A Tour of the Orthodox World at the Turn of the 20th Century: Mount Sinai and the Lost Church of Georgia

In 1908, a Roman Catholic priest and writer, Adrian Fortescue, published his landmark book The Orthodox Eastern Church, presenting Orthodoxy to the English-speaking world through the eyes of a very well-informed but also very papist Roman Catholic from England. In one section of the book, Fortescue surveys the Orthodox world, telling...

A Tour of the Orthodox World at the Turn of the 20th Century: The Church of Greece

In 1908, a Roman Catholic priest and writer, Adrian Fortescue, published his landmark book The Orthodox Eastern Church, presenting Orthodoxy to the English-speaking world through the eyes of a very well-informed but also very papist Roman Catholic from England. In one section of the book, Fortescue surveys the Orthodox world,...

A Tour of the Orthodox World at the Turn of the 20th Century: The Church of Russia

In 1908, a Roman Catholic priest and writer, Adrian Fortescue, published his landmark book The Orthodox Eastern Church, presenting Orthodoxy to the English-speaking world through the eyes of a very well-informed but also very papist Roman Catholic from England. In one section of the book, Fortescue surveys the Orthodox world, telling...

A Tour of the Orthodox World at the Turn of the 20th Century: The Ancient Churches

In 1908, a Roman Catholic priest and writer, Adrian Fortescue, published his landmark book The Orthodox Eastern Church, presenting Orthodoxy to the English-speaking world through the eyes of a very well-informed but also very papist Roman Catholic from England. In one section of the book, Fortescue surveys the Orthodox world, telling...

The Legacy of Father Nicola Yanney

Ancient Faith Publishing recently released a wonderful biography of Fr. Nicola Yanney, the remarkable Syrian priest from Nebraska who died in 1918. I can highly recommend it -- the title is Apostle to the Plains -- but I'm hesitant to review it because I'm a bit conflicted, as I wrote...

The Ukrainian Crisis and Orthodoxy’s Impasse, by Carol Saba

Carol Saba is an attorney in France and one of the leading thinkers and writers in the Patriarchate of Antioch. Recently, he published a 5-part series in the widely-read Lebanese newspaper an-Nahar, describing the historical context for the current Orthodox crisis. This series was translated into English and published at Notes on...