Category: Global Orthodoxy

The death of Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople, 1821

Today is both the Feast of the Annunciation (on the New Calendar), and Greek Independence Day. With that in mind, I decided to look in my archives for American accounts of the Greek War of Independence, in 1821. I have quite a few reports from various newspapers and journals, and...

Reconstructing the life of St. Andrew

This has nothing to do with American Orthodox history, but given what I know of our readership here, I think many of you will greatly enjoy this article. It's an interview with Greek author George Alexandrou, published in the journal Road to Emmaus. Alexandrou wrote a thousand-page book on St....

“Thank you; we have the original.”

Most of the time, on this website, we talk about the history of Orthodoxy in the Americas. But it's important to remember that, especially in the 19th century, American Protestant missionaries were traveling in the other direction, going to places like Greece and Syria in an effort to convert Orthodox...

Isabel Hapgood on St. John of Kronstadt

A couple of weeks ago, we reprinted St. Alexander Hotovitzky's 1904 account of his meeting with St. John of Kronstadt. Nearly a decade earlier, the famous translator Isabel Hapgood wrote her own profile of St. John -- then known as Fr. John Sergieff, pastor of St. Andrew's Church in Kronstadt. The...

St. Alexander Hotovitzky on St. John of Kronstadt

  St. Alexander Hotovitzky was the rector of St. Nicholas Church (and then Cathedral) in New York City from his ordination in 1896 until his return to Russia in 1914. For almost all of that time, he was the highest-ranking priest in the Russian Mission. Of course, he was dean...