Tag: Constantinople


Early stages of the Bulgarian schism from Constantinople


We just finished running a series of six articles on the 1872 Council of Constantinople, published contemporaneously in the Methodist Quarterly Review. The following article is from about a decade earlier, and describes the early stages of the Bulgarian split from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. This piece is from an...

The “Bulgarian Question” and the 1872 Council of Constantinople, Part 6


This is the final Methodist Quarterly Review article dealing with the aftermath of the 1872 Council of Constantinople. From the Methodist Quarterly Review, April 1874.   The Bulgarian Church question has, on the whole, attracted less attention during the year 1873 than in the previous years. The Bulgarians, undoubtedly, have...

The “Bulgarian Question” and the 1872 Council of Constantinople, Part 2


Yesterday, I ran the first of six articles on the so-called "Bulgarian Question," a controversy that rocked the Orthodox world in the early 1870s and ultimately led to the 1872 Council of Constantinople, which condemned the heresy of "phyletism." Search the Internet -- both Google and the various subscriber-only databases...

The “Bulgarian Question” and the 1872 Council of Constantinople, Part 1


Recently, I had occasion to research the 1872 Council of Constantinople, which somewhat famously condemned "ethno-phyletism." The issue arose because, as I understand it, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church -- which was under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate -- declared itself autocephalous. Anyway, before I began this research, I could...

The Dionisije Conundrum and why deference doesn’t work


I'm assuming, in this short article, that you've read about Serbian Diocese v. Milivojevich. But for those who haven't: the Serbian Holy Assembly deposed Bishop Dionisije Milivojevich, and Illinois courts basically overruled the deposition on the grounds that the Holy Assembly hadn't followed its own rules. The US Supreme Court...

St. Philaret of Moscow on Orthodoxy in America in 1865


Editor's note: Last week, Nicholas Chapman introduced three documents he found in the National Archives in London, under the heading "The Russian Orthodox Church in America and Its Clergy in 1865." Today, we present the first of these documents -- a letter from His Holiness Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, to...